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How to Repurpose Content

Well, we've taken a look at a lot of things that surround the topic of repurposing content, including the benefits of content repurposing and where to find content to repurpose. Now, it's time to move on to the meat of this subject - how to actually repurpose content. However, before we begin it is important to remember the reason content repurposing is so important to your business, above and beyond the reasons we've already discussed. Repurposing content is important because it extends the reach of your marketng and promoton efforts. Therefore, as we go through the various ways of repurposing content, keep an open mind. Not all of these ways may initally make sense, or even appeal to you. Yet, if you give each of these ways a try you will be able to find which ones work for your own personal approach. Remember, the more you adopt, the greater your reach will become and the better your results will be! So, if you're ready, let's get started.

Create New Content by Expanding on Old Content

A little bit earlier we talked about going back through your archives to look for content to repurpose. While we touched briefly on the idea of updatng some of this content with newly developed informaton, if applicable, we didn't really explain how you should go about the task. So, now let's take a closer look at exactly what you should do with some of that old content.

When you write a blog post you provide the informaton in whatever flow makes sense at the tme. You may gloss over some points and give more attenton to others. When you repurpose that content you essentally change that flow. For example, if you originally put some informaton into bullet points for the sake of convenience, you can now go and expand one or more of those points into pieces of stand-alone content. Alternatvely, if you had a longer piece (or more than one shorter piece that are thematcally related), you can condense some of the informaton into a briefer follow-up artcle.

The idea is that you take what you originally had and alter the manner in which the informaton is presented. Shorter things get longer and vice versa. Brief mentions become stand-alone content in their own right. You aren't creating new content per se. Instead, you are re-arranging information in much the same way that you can redecorate a room and make it appear different and new without altering the basic structure one iota.

Create a Slide Deck

This one is fairly straightforward. If you think about it, the original content that you write or purchase can be easily broken down into main points. These "high points" of your content can then be re-communicated via a slide presentation or what's known as a slide deck.

A slide deck is what a speaker uses to visually communicate his or her "talking points" to an audience during a presentation. The blurbs on the slide deck appear behind the speaker and reinforce the message of the talk. When you do the same thing to your content and turn your talking points into a slide deck, you reinforce the message of your content in the same way

If you think about how you learned to make an outline back in grade school you'll get a pretty good idea of how to proceed. What you want are the main topics of your piece of content laid out in a logical order of presentation. If you already had topic or section headings in your piece of content then your job is nearly done. All you do is take those topic headings and transfer them to slides via a program like Canva and then into a viewable deck using a program like Powerpoint. You should end up with one slide for each talking point, plus an introductory slide containing your title and an ending slide containing your contact information.

Once you have your slide deck complete, you can upload it to a slide deck sharing site such as SlideShare. Once your deck is on SlideShare anyone interested can view it and contact you for further information. This is content repurposing at its finest.

Turn Your Slide Deck into an Infographic

Study after study has shown that people respond more positively to visual graphics. One of the best ways to present informaton visually is through the use of an infographic. Infographics have become increasingly popular over the last few years and people have come to expect receiving chunks of informaton in this highly digestble format. The good news is that it is relatvely simple to create stunning looking infographics on your own.

All you do is take the informaton from you slide deck and use those points as the basis for the informaton portion of your infographic. Remember, the info in an infographic needs to be brief and to the point. Statstcs work wonderfully if you have them, so do short info blurbs. Infographics work best with some dense informaton, this would be the tme to, once again, alter the flow of the way you presented the informaton in your slide deck. This tme, you'd go back to the original content that inspired the deck and add some of the content back in to beef up the points on the slides. Again, you're not creatng new content, your repurposing the original content.

For the graphic porton of your infographic, you can use a program like PicMonkey or Piktochart to set down your text and spice it up with some eye catching graphics. Alternatvely, you can hire a graphic designer from a site like Fiverr to do the job for you. Once you're done, you can submit your infographic to one of the many infographic aggregator sites, like Visual.ly, and extend the reach of your message even further.

Turn Your Infographic into a Videographic

Here, you can begin to see the genius behind the content repurposing process. You can take your infographic (which started life as old content, was repurposed into new expanded content, was repurposed into slide deck and then into an infographic) and alter the flow of the informaton yet again to make it into a videographic.

A videographic is nothing more than an infographic that moves. People love graphics. People also love moving graphics. A videographic gives them what they want and love.

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16. Know your business

The best way to ensure the answers and help you provide to your customer is accurate is knowing your business, and the products/services it sells, inside and out. You (and your employees) should strive to know every liPle aspect of it in order to best serve your customers, and connect them with the solution that is right for their partcular needs.

Being unable to answer a queston from a customer without first consultng a manual (or even worse, Google) leaves them with a poor impression of your company, because to them it will seem like you don 't know what you' re talking about. On the other hand, if you seem like you know just about everything when they ask you, the opposite will be true and they ' ll be highly likely to trust your knowledge and opinions.

17. Reward employees who perform well

Offering rewards and bonuses to employees who perform well is usually a great idea. In the customer service department, however, you need to make sure you ' re not just rewarding your service reps based on the number of cases they ' ve handled successfully in a given period of tme. The reason is probably obvious: this would encourage your staff to only do the bare minimum to resolve as many issues as possible, never going that extra mile that ensures customers come back to your business.

If you have the means to do it, try to set it up so you can easily gauge customer satsfacton (for example by sending out surveys). Then, base your rewards and bonuses on the actual feedback you get from your customers. That should lead to bePer customer service overall.

18. Deliver on your promises

This may seem like a given, but it ' s important to menton anyway. Never promise more than you can actually keep, or you' ll end up with some extremely disgruntled customers. Breaking a promise you' ve made is sure to turn a customer off from doing any more business with you, and it just isn' t worth it.

If anything it ' s always better to under-promise and over-deliver. If you' re not sure you can deliver on something, better be safe than sorry and tell them you probably cannot do it. If it later turns out you actually can do it, they ' re likely to be pleasantly surprised and feel like you've really done your best to help them out.

19. Learn to apologize frequently

When something goes wrong, apologize. Even if it ' s just something minor, like a one day delay in shipping an item to a customer. Apologizing is just another way of showing that you accept responsibility and that you, as a business owner, care about your customers.

In fact, you should probably make a point of including an apology in every interaction with a customer when it ' s been established that they have a problem that is directly or indirectly caused by you or your company. It doesn't require much effort, but will go a long way towards making the customer a bit less hostile.

Don 't overdo this one though, as it only works if it seems like you're being sincere. People are often able to tell when you ' re not being honest and you' re just telling them what they want to hear, so try to make sure you really do mean what you say.

20. Own up to your mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes - including business owners and customer service reps. What ' s important is to never try to put the blame on someone else. As a business owner, mistakes are your responsibility, even if they weren' t directly caused by you. Own up to them and try to resolve them without causing a fuzz; that ' s really all you can do.

It may be tempting to tell a customer that "oh it ' s this and that person' s fault, they ' re new here", but the reality is that customers really don 't care about that. They care about geEng their problem solved, and want to know that you (the business owner) are on the case, even if you didn' t personally cause the problem in the first place.

Sometimes it ' s also a good idea to assume responsibility even if the fault actually lies with the customer. PuEng the blame on them is a sure way to get them defensive, and by not doing that you may be able to turn an otherwise unpleasant interaction into something much bePer for all parties involved.

21. Treat your customer service reps well

You should, of course, treat all your employees well, but it ' s often a good idea to take extra care keeping your customer service reps happy. If they ' re not happy they will likely provide poor service to your customers, directly affecting your business for the worse. A good rule of thumb is trying to treat your employees like you want them to treat your customers.

That ' s why it just makes sense to pay them a decent wage and offer them a good working environment. Working in customer service can be quite difficult and draining, so keep that in mind when you' re evaluating their performance.

If someone makes a mistake, let them know how to fix it but don' t be too hard on them. The most important thing is making sure they learn something from it and don't repeat it in the future.

22. Take complaints and criticism to heart

When a customer comes to you with a complaint, you have three choices. You can choose to ignore it completely (probably not a good idea). You can rectify the problem and hope it doesn't happen again. Or, you can try to learn something from it to prevent it from happening again.

It ' s easy to get defensive when someone complains about your business, especially if they ' re harsh about it. However, by just changing your perspective from treating it like a personal aPack to a helpful lesson, you can find that complaints and criticism are two of the best allies you have in perfecting and growing your business.

From time to time there will also be complaints that are completely unfounded, and those are obviously safe to just ignore. Some customers are probably mostly looking to vent, and those are unlikely to be of use to you for improvement purposes. Listen to their complaints with a smile and move on!