Create Once, Use Seven Times
It’s all because of the rule of 7
Even when you love writing or you’re considered a great writer, there is at least one thing that keeps us amateurs and experts on a level playing field: a blank page. Writing daily or weekly is more than just the act of putting words on a page.
It’s what: brainstorming, outlining, researching, finding images that connect to the written piece, and writing the first draft.
It’s where: blog articles, email sequences, captions on social media, scripting for podcasts, and more.
It’s when: 2-hour deep writing or snack writing through the day when there’s free time.
Today, though, we focus on how. Keep reading on how you can cut down the effort in creation by making your hard-earned content go further.
How to repurpose your content
Common advice on how to feed the content machine comes down to one word: repurpose.
“create once, use seven times,” — helena knows
The content prompts swirling around the internet were supposed to help us avoid getting stuck. These prompts are very popular and used to varying effect. What’s your industry’s biggest controversy or hot topic at the moment? What’s your take on it? What’s the most interesting piece of scientific research you’ve read recently? If someone wanted a career like yours, what would you tell them?
Helpful, yet you’re still creating e v e r y s i n g l e piece of content.
With that in mind, keep reading on how and where you can cut down the effort of creation by making your hard-earned content go further. It relates to the rule of 7.
What’s the rule of 7?
Popular opinion from the 1930s was that a message needed to be communicated seven times for it to have any chance of sticking in a person’s mind. Back then, it may have been the same brand message in a newspaper reprinted many times.
Why 7 times?
It’s fair to say that today’s communication and media environment is far more complicated and fragmented. Let me give you an example. It’s a product example, but the principles remain the same.
Now take a moment to think about the brand of ice-cream you have in the freezer. Is it one of the tried-and-true brands you can count on to get you through break-up tears, or perhaps it’s one you’ve grown up on?
Or is it a new flavour you sampled at last weekend’s festival, eavesdropped on a work friend raving about it, or thumbed past a print ad in a glossy mag? Not to mention the arty flat lays featuring the ice cream tubs in your Instagram feed. And did you notice the 30' ad playing straight after another drama-filled episode of MAFS (Married At First Sight)?
These little branding points reflect on you. What you do, where you go, who you play with, look up to, and being a savvy shopper — the hook line and sinker was a free sample in Woolies and a 20% off special.
Information is hurled at us like a hurricane, more random stuff trying to grab our attention than ever. Our attention span is now worse than a goldfish. Would it be fair to ask a stranger (or a potential buyer) to remember our brand name, much less our blog message?
This is why repetition helps. This is where repurposing shines.
In my case, my product is my writing. And when you’ve spent ten hours creating a blog article, it’s helpful to spend as many hours (or more) sharing it.
Where can I use the same content 7 times?
If you’re writing a blog post already, here is where you can get creative about repurposing it. When you’ve written a blog article on your website, you can repurpose it 7 more times.
- Re-post full blog article on Medium.com with a canonical link (as part of the Medium partner program you can get paid for member viewing time).
- Re-post a paragraph from your blog article on LinkedIn with a link to the full article on your website.
- Re-post sections of the blog article as captions on social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook). This could serve as up to 2–3 captions minimum based on a 750–1000 word article.
- Create a pin using images from your blog post on Pinterest and copy from your post as the description.
- If relevant, use paragraphs or the full article in your email marketing sequence to your subscribers.
- If the blog article is part of a series, collate the series into an ebook.
- Get the blog article transcribed into an audio file to broaden your reach.
That’s my list. Most of the time I use and repurpose the content at least 4–5 times. Take a peek here on Instagram, Medium, Pinterest and if you sign up to my mailing list here. After all that, the original blog article is “ Try This Guided Meditation to Soothe Your Kids to Sleep.”
1 action step
Even when you’re in love with the ritual of writing, sometimes the process of creating, editing, distributing can drain the soul a little. Even when you’ve been writing for a long time. If you need to write content regularly, think about how to maximise the return on investment of that effort. Repurposing the content in seven ways will send you on your way to sipping an ice tea rather than chipping away. Kudos to that!
Originally published at https://www.helenaknows.com.au on March 2, 2021.