Ep 271 | Turning Existing Content into Blog Posts

You're already creating a lot of incredible content – so reuse it! You do. not need to create brand new for your blog posts. Simply repurpose things that already exist and turn them into blog posts! Once you listen to this episode, you'll start to come up with ideas from content you are creating everywhere! I can't want to hear what creative elements you come up with.

What you'll learn:

→ How to transform your annual report into multiple blog posts
→ Ways to highlight common donor questions and objections in blog content
→ Tips for embedding videos, podcasts, and other multimedia into blog posts
→ Strategies for repurposing content from press releases, social media, and email newsletters

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[03:37] Start with your annual report. Repurpose annual report content into 5-6 blog posts. You can highlight donors, the impact statements you put together, stories, etc. You can even have one post that is the entire report in a format that is easy to skin and consume.
[03:37] Think about the commonly asked questions. Create blog posts highlighting common donor questions or misunderstandings. Each question can be its own blog post.
[05:41] Have a YouTube channel, or have you created videos? Embed existing videos and transcripts on your website as blog content. Include a summary of what's in the video and then paste your transcript.
[08:11] Repurpose press releases, social media content, and email newsletters into blog posts. Having a great relationship with media means you're already generating content. Share it as a blog also. If you have a regular social media series you can also create a blog post you update regularly with your social media posts.

Resources

The Ultimate Guide to Repurpose Content for Blogs

Full Transcript

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Coming up with content ideas, figuring out how to take the time to create blog posts, all of the things can make you feel like creating blog posts or long form content on your website is something that is impossible. And so today, we're going to tackle that topic, so that we can think about some ways that we can turn content we already have into blog posts, we have talked in the past about repurposing your blog posts for multiple uses. But now let's talk about different ways that you can create blog posts from content you've already created in other places. So that's the topic for today, I'm so excited to share this with you because I think you might find that you have content in a lot of places that you haven't been maximizing on that you can use as blog content. But before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by our August freebie, if you want some tools to create some original content faster, we've got that for you 11 tools to be exact. From AI to editing tools to project management tools, this guide has everything that you need to make sure that you are getting your content done faster than ever, and connecting with your audiences in a more authentic and emotional way. So to grab that guide, go to thefirstclick.net/resources Download it now or any of the other freebies that we have there for you, and get on your content creation way. For now, let's get into the episode.

Intro
You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
So from your program team, to your development team, to your marketing team, even if that's all just you, you are creating content on a regular basis. And it's important to think about the things that we are creating in a unique way and figure out how we can turn them into meaningful pieces of content on our websites. Because we know that having regular blog content is important, and that it helps us connect with our audiences provide new information, share information with people, we're talking to all of the things that we talked about regularly on this podcast. So where can you pull content from in order to kind of create these blog posts, if you're feeling stuck, and don't have time? Let's get to it. So the first thing that I want to talk to you about is your annual campaign or not your annual campaign I'm sorry, your annual report, what your Annual Report has is eight on have information, stories, stories about the people you serve the communities you serve stories about the people that are involved in your organization, financial stories, all of the things research, right. So you can take that annual report and probably create five or six blog posts from it. Yes, you'll have it available to download on your website. But also, you can highlight some of those things and the visuals that you've already created in a blog post on your website. So I love that because it's just another avenue to be able to share the specific parts, right, somebody might not want to comb through all of the PDF of your annual report. But they might be interested in a particular snippet. And now they can look at just that piece that they want to. And therefore you're kind of playing into the right message right time for the right audience, they can highlight the pieces that they want to look at, and engage with them.

So your Annual Report is a great thing to repurpose, repurpose into blog content. The other thing is really thinking about the conversations that you're having with donors or potential donors, and taking all of those little snippets and turning it into a blog post. So it could be what our donors say about us. And it's a narrative just with actual quotes from what people have said about your organization, how they feel about your organization, all of those things. You could also do the opposite what donors or what people don't understand about our organization. And that could be questions that you've been getting about, you know, when you say, Okay, here's what we do, or you introduce yourselves, and they're saying, well, we didn't know about that, or we didn't know you did that or whatever it might be right. So putting those objections or did you know with questions that you get from people, and then your responses, so you're creating a blog out of the conversations that you're typically having with your audience, it doesn't take long, you might be able to pull snippets out of your email, from your phone conversations, whatever, ask your team to just provide you with three questions that they get all the time. You'll have a whole bunch of content that you can put in to that blog post. Now some of the other ones are a little bit easier, right? Like if you have YouTube videos that you're already creating, put those into blog posts, embed the video on your website, put a transcript in there put a big long summary of what they can expect give people the opportunity to watch the video on your website, the great thing is is going to give you YouTube views, it's also going to give you time on site. And it's also going to encourage people to stay on your website when they're excited about what they're learning and engage deeper on the things that you're talking about. Similarly, this podcast becomes a blog post, right, we created a shownotes. So we embed the YouTube video, we have the audio version of the podcast embedded as well. And we have a description in the transcripts. Really, the whole point here is to make sure that people can engage with the content or creating however they feel most comfortable.

And so that's what we try to do with our podcast. And it's a one stop shop for the resources or the information about the guests when we have them, or additional resources that we share here. So we might have additional podcast episodes that we've talked about blog content or blog creation. In fact, we will link up our whole category of blogs in the show notes for this episode. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you can go to the playlist that has all of our blog information. If you're here on our website, you can grab everything for your blog content in our categories on our blog page. So it gives people an opportunity to really connect and dive deeper on the things that we're talking about, that are strong core categories for who we are as an organization, so that you can build trust, get more resources, and hopefully connect with us to either become a client or become a donor or to take advantage of the services that you provide. So YouTube videos, podcast episodes are great for that. If you've been on a radio interview, sometimes you get great long radio interviews, and they'll share with you the audio file, turn that into a blog post with their permission, share the audio interview, share the content that was in there, maybe put some transcripts if you can, I'm a huge fan of transcripts, if you haven't learned that by now. But just share that information with your audience. It's a great way to add value and build trust, right? Because you were on somebody else's show. And now here you are sharing it, and they if they had you on their radio station, then that's probably great. Similarly, if your guest podcasting quite a bit, you could have some blog posts that are sharing those episodes if you'd like to. And that's there's a lot of different ways that you can showcase that information. But with their permission, you could also create blog posts around that which is really fantastic. So really, I want you to think about all of the things that you're creating videos that you create for your gala or promotions, put those on your website, it's a great way to link people to your donation page is also a great way to connect with people post event to say here's all the information that we shared with you that night. Here's a blog post that you can link people to and it can stay on your website for a long time to give people information about who you are and what you do. You spend a lot of money on those promotional videos. So make the most of them. They don't need to just be or night have on your Gala, you can share them as blog posts, reach a wider audience and hopefully get more engagement and more donations, right

Thinking about the people that couldn't show up for that event. But they maybe wanted to be a part of it. This is a great way to reconnect with them and say, Hey, you couldn't be there tonight. Don't worry, we got you. Here's what you missed. Here's all the information, check it out. The other thing that I really liked to repurpose as blog posts are press releases. If you're sending out press releases, this is a great opportunity to just duplicate that content on your website, share it, if you're already trying to share it with the with the press, why would you not want to share it with your audience. So that's another great avenue to create. Now, really, I just hope this gets the wheels turning whatever you're creating, it could be a summary of social media posts that are all around a particular topic. Maybe you have a series that's happening on social media, and you want to put all of those in one place so that people can take a look at them at one time. Right? Maybe it's National Adoption Month. And that's what your organization does. And you have a whole great educational series that you put on social media, take all of those and create a blog post that says what you didn't know that adoption. And all of those posts can be there, right? You can link people back to your social media and the content that's there. The last one that I want to share is your email newsletter. Now if you have a really brilliant storytelling, email newsletter that has great content on it, repurpose it on your blog, create a blog out of your email newsletter. It's just that simple. You can copy and paste all of the information, put it there, and then people that aren't on your newsletter can still see the information that you're sharing. And you could also put a call to action in there that says want this information first, right like maybe your newsletter goes out on a Tuesday, but it doesn't show up as a blog post until a week or two later. So people want to stay up to date on the most recent happenings with your organization, they need to sign up for your newsletter to get early access to the information, right creating that FOMO that people need to hear. So you're already creating a lot of these things, take them and turn them into blog posts, so that you can continue to share the content, and many, many more ways that how you already are, let's make the most of the work that we are doing. So that is it. I hope that you have like I said, your creative juices going and you are ready to go. Ready to share your information in as many places as you can. If you have any more questions about content and how to create content on your website, hit me up. Hello@thefirstclick.net I'd be so happy to chat with you. For now make sure you check out all the other episodes that we have on blog content and blog creation. We have one more episode coming to you this month that I'm so excited for. While you're here, hit that subscribe button. Make sure you leave us a review and help us get this podcast out in front of all the other small to medium sized nonprofits that are struggling with content creation that could really use some support and multiply their impact for now. Thank you so much for listening to this short episode, and I will see you in the next one.