I love blog posts. And here’s one reason why: they are endlessly useful for repurposing. One blog post can easily yield at least three new pieces of content with very little effort. If you’re willing to put in a little more work you can squeeze even more content out of just one blog post.

Keep reading and learn how you can use my content creation flow to help you maximize your time, fill up your content calendar, and do it all in about 5 hours a week. I’ve included an estimate of how much time each step should take you. This is just an estimate and depends on your own working style. It may take you more or less time.

Start With a Blog Post

Total Time Commitment To Write Your Blog Post: 1.5 to 2  Hours

This is the foundation all the rest of your content will be built. Be intentional about what you’re writing about and make sure it’s something your audience wants to know. You can get blog post ideas from the most frequently asked questions potential clients ask.

But what makes a good blog post? Here are the elements that hood readers in and keep them hanging on every word.

Title

A good title is the key to a successful blog post. The perfect title is not too long, not too short, tells readers what to expect but doesn’t give everything away. Your title should also draw readers in but also not be clickbait. I use a tool called Headline Studio to help me refine my title to be as SEO-friendly as possible.

Research

Time Commitment: 20 Minutes

I know, I know. You’d rather dive right into the writing process. But believe me, if you spend a few minutes researching the following parts of your blog post your entire writing process will go much faster.  

SEO

SEO might sound too technical or intimidating, but at the heart of it SEO is very simple. It’s just the way that Google finds the most relevant results for your target audience based on what keywords they’re searching for. Find a keyword that has a large enough search volume and is easy to rank for. I use Ubersuggest to find that perfect keyword.

External Links

Provide even more value by pointing your readers to additional online sources, or external links, that will help them reach their goals. Make sure your sources are credible and fairly recent. Avoid linking to posts that are more than 3 years old.

Internal Links

Internal links, or links to other posts on your site, are the most important links to include in a blog post. They help keep your reader on your site, giving them more opportunities to interact with you. Choose one or two great posts that you think are the most relevant to your current post.

Outline

Total Time Commitment: 30 Minutes

Now that you’ve got some research, it’s time to outline. An outline provides you with the foundation for a great post. It will keep you on track while you’re writing.

Intro and Outro

Your intro tells your reader what the post is about. But more importantly, this is where you hook your reader into

The outro summarizes what you covered in the post and gives the reader some direction of what to do next in your CTA. Your CTA should make sense for the blog post topic. For example, if your post is an introduction to a topic, it doesn’t make sense to direct the reader to a link to buy something. They’re simply not ready. It might make more sense to direct them to a free download or to another blog post.

H2s and H3s

Headlines are part of SEO. Google reads your headlines as part of ranking pages. Even more importantly, headlines are reader-friendly. They break up large swaths of text and help skimmers know when to slow down and pay attention.

A Heading 2, or H2s, are used like chapters of a book. They signal your main points. And heading 3, or H3s break your H2s down into smaller, more manageable pieces of information. In this blog post, I used H2s to break down each main step of the content creation flow, and H3s to break down each step into smaller tasks.

Insert Your Main Ideas And Turns of Phrase

Once you have all of your main points broken down, start to summarize what you’re actually going to say. Include a summary of what you will cover in each section. You don’t even have to use complete sentences here, just give yourself a good idea of what you want to say. If you happen to come up with a great line, feel free to include it.

Finish it off by inserting your links.

Write It Out

Total Time Commtment: 30 Minutes – 1 Hour

All that work you’ve just done should make writing the actual post a snap. Here’s your chance to inject your personality.  Crack some jokes, tell some stories about your life. As long as you are bringing authenticity along with your expertise, you’ll kill it.

New Content: One beautiful new blog post.

Repurpose

Ok, Now that you have that great piece of content all done, it’s time to turn it into more content.

Easiest

Total Time Commitment: 30 minutes (including creating images)

Those H2s you wrote earlier make great social media posts! You can just copy and paste the whole thing into a social media post. You may have to tweak a few words here and there, but if you’ve written a great blog post, you’ll have a great social post.

What I love about this is how easy it is to provide value to your audience. Each heading is its own mini-lesson, and an invaluable nugget of content that can help your readers solve a problem.

You’ll probably have at least three social media posts, if not more. But get creative! Your intro and closing are full of wisdom as well.

Then, add a call to action, or CTA to the end of the post. Some of the most common CTAs direct the reader to:

Read the blog post on your site.

Sign up for your email list.  
Invite them to schedule a call with you.

If you stopped right here you could easily have a week’s worth of content from one blog post. If you’re feeling adventurous, keep reading for a more advanced content repurposing strategy.

Bonus: Speaking of your email list, don’t forget to let your most loyal followers know about your latest blog post! Link to it in your email newsletter.  

New Content: Three (or more) social media posts and a bonus email newsletter.

Intermediate

Total Time Commitment: 30 – 45 Minutes

Use your blog post as an outline for a video! You’ve already outlined your post. Use that outline as an outline for a video. Or, you can use your blog post as a script and read it to camera.  

Bonus content. Edit your video into clips for social media. Once again you can use your headlines to divide the video into posts.

New Content: One Video and Up to Three New Video Clips for Social Media

Expert Repurposer

Total Time Commitment: 1 Hour, including promoting your live session

Take the topic of your blog post and make it the subject of a Live session. You can use the blog post title as the name of your event. Take questions from your audience and dive even deeper into the topic.

Bonus Content. Take the video of your live session and repost it on another platform. You can also carve this video into smaller clips to post on social media.

Bonus Bonus. Turn this live session into an email newsletter. Take some of the questions you receive from your audience as inspiration for the newsletter copy.

New Content: A live session that will live in your feed, plus any clips you pull from the video.

Overall Time Commitment: On the low end, around 2 Hours for a blog post and some social media posts. On the high end, around 5 hours to generate around 10 pieces of high-quality content for every platform you’re active on.

I know, five hours is no small commitment, especially for a busy small business owner. But following this content creation flow means that you will have a clear message throughout all of your content. Which means that your posts will be valuable. Which will keep your audience commenting on your posts, saving them for later, and coming back for more of your content.

 

And here’s another thing to keep in mind: you can also put your social media posts into a rotation and reuse the exact same copy. Yes, it’s OK to use the same copy over and over again because not everyone who follows you sees all of your posts. Just space out your content throughout the year. If you create a wealth of content, you will always have something to post.

 

Please steal this workflow! Connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to learn more ways to optimize your blog posts.