A guest post from my friend Sarah Arrow, a prolific blogger.
More bucks from your blog – repurposing your older blog posts
Do you ever wonder what you can do with a blog that you have written? Y’know, get more mileage from your blog post…
In this blog post I am going to share with some additional places you can share your blog posts to grab more readers and create ways to grab more traffic. All for free (or low cost) with no duplicate content worries. Plus you can use these methods to lower your bounce rate and engage with your readers who are not that fond of reading – those that are more visual.
Sounds like a lot of hard work? Well actually… the first one is done in under 4 minutes.
Recognise this?
It’s this post here communication with focus, re-purposed.
It took 4 minutes to create that slideshow, and it looks like it took 4 minutes! Imagine what you could so with an old blog post and twenty minutes. It was created using Google Docs, then published and embedded here. Google Docs is a free tool at present, so go make use of it!
Using the very same slides and taking 10 minutes we can take the blog post and turn it into a video…
Animoto supply stock music and it’s free to use for 30 second videos like this one. For just $30 a month you have more features and the pro version means you can remove all of the Animoto branding. The video clip here can easily be embedded on Facebook pages, blog posts and even uploaded to your You Tube Channel.
And our final use of the old blog post is a ScreenCast – click the image to hear more
Screen casts are easily created using a low cost tool – Jing Pro.
I have read the post whilst recording. Whilst the spoken words are not identical, and the image is is static it does show you a taster of what you can do with 20 minutes and not 5 minutes. Jing Pro is less than $15 in price. I understand there are free versions of Camtasia which will allow you to so similar. I like Jing as it is fast and simple. Again Jing Screencasts can be uploaded to You Tube and Facebook and in turn shared on Twitter and other social media channels.
Each format of the blog post is unique,
- Animoto video is set to music,
- The slideshow is plain
- And the Screencast is your own voice.
Each format of the original blog post will appeal to a different audience, and bring you traffic back to your site if you add them to places such as You Tube, Slideshare.net and embed them on Facebook. Using the links in your newsletter adds an extra dimension for your readers, they can hear your voice.
One final tip – If you are more confident (and I’m not) use a tool like Pamela to record a webcam video and read out your blog post so your readers can see you. Pamela has a 30 day trial for you to work on your recordings.
If you have a spare 5 minutes give it a go and if you have 20 minutes you can create something really special.
Sarah Arrow is the Co Author of Easy Video for Bloggers with Graham Hunt. You can read about Screencasting for beginners here
