How to Create Great Content From the Material You Already Have

How to create great content from the material you already have… seems too simple right? Creating content is a huge part of any business’s online marketing strategy. It takes a great deal of time and effort. But before you create a detailed production calendar and get to work, you should look at the material you already have to see if it can be used to achieve your current content goals. This can save you a serious amount of time and work.

It truly helps you to work smarter not harder by clarifying what is your successful content. I frequently have made the mistake of reading an article and getting inspiration for my next latest and greatest project. Quickly, I get to work, writing, creating printables, making images and more. I am convinced it will be my next big post. Then the dust settles and the post doesn’t get much traction. This is quite the opposite steps I need to take to create great content.

Instead, I needed to stop going down all these sidetracks and follow the steps on how to create great content from the material I already have on the website. It has paid off! My organic search traffic continues to increase as well as my profits.

Last year, I reached a new accomplishment on one of my websites – every single month was a five-figure month in sales!

Clarify Your Business Goals

Start by clarifying the goals for your business and how you see your content strategy helping you reach them. The old material you have may not be relevant now. You may have written in a different niche in the past or for another audience. Make sure you know exactly what type of content you need so that you can assess the efficacy of what you have.

Organize Your Content into Files

Scour your computer for all the work you’ve created thus far. Create a folder for each broad topic area and drop each file into the appropriate folder. Create folders for sub-topics within your topic folders to better organize. As a general guideline, you should have three topic area files, and a maximum of three sub-topic files to keep things simple.

Depending on how much material you have, organizing it all can be a daunting task. If you have a lot to tackle, work on this task a little at a time. Set aside an hour or so each day for moving files around and don’t try to do it all at once.

Use the Cloud

Back up your folders using a cloud storage service. When you put files in the cloud, you keep them safe in case your computer crashes. You can also access them from any device that has Internet.

In the future, you may outsource content creation. Another advantage of the cloud is that you can grant access to your virtual help without having to send them the files or give them physical access to a certain computer.

Your Content “Big Picture”

Once you have your files organized, you’ll have a “big picture” view of your content and a good idea of what you need to do next. You can choose pieces to use either as-is or by making minor changes. Taking the steps below are the best way to learn how to create great content. You can:

• Update old content with new information
• Change the angle of a piece to meet the needs of your current market
• Take a piece and put it into a different format like video or a slide presentation
• Expand the points of one article into several articles
• Take blogs and bundle them together or summarize to create a new piece of content

Moving Forward with Your Content Management

You’ll also be able to easily see where there are gaps in the material you have. Then, you know what you need to create going forward. It helps you get a very clear picture of where you are headed.

This is how you get started with a comprehensive content strategy. It takes energy to keep your audience following you, but if you’re organized, your efforts will pay off.

Need More Help to Learn How to Create Great Content?

Take action and start learning how to create great content today. Check out my course, Conquer Your Content. It teaches you how to leverage your existing content and develop a plan that works.

If you want to be a leader in your niche, the Conquer Your Content course will walk you through all the action steps to turn your existing content into impactful material that will attract more of the customers you want online to help increase sales.

The Conquer Your Content course will help you:

• take the useful information you already have and turn it into powerful content that creates leverage for your brand.
• create a comprehensive inventory of all your existing content, both published and non-published, so you have a database to draw on when you need it.
• identify your core areas of expertise and become a leader in those areas.
• learn time-saving methods to work smarter not harder.
• create a process that streamlines and supercharges your content creation.

If you are frustrated with working constantly on new content but never getting ahead or just plain overwhelmed, the Conquer Your Content course may be just what you need to help you break out of this cycle and start earning more money. Get started today!