Have you considered using blogging to be the backbone of your social media content and marketing? Why spend hours upon hours creating brand new content for all of your different platforms when your blog could be the source of all of your content creation.

Let me explain what I mean. Blogging is a great way for you to write long form content that really answers the questions of your audience in detail. You can provide stats, make reference to research papers, reference other credible sites, share your own customers results and of course your own knowledge and experience. But what are you then doing with that? Are you getting the most from your blog? Are you getting the most ‘bang for your buck?’ 

Make Your Blog Work harder

If you’ve gone to the trouble of writing a stellar blog then you need to make sure that you get the most from it. Yes, sharing your blog with your email list is great, and yes telling your followers on social media to go and read it is also great, BUT that’s just not enough. In an age where the online world has become crowded and noisy, we need to do more in order to stand out.

Your blog can, and should, work harder for you.

As entrepreneurs we talk about working smarter not harder. Are you doing that? Are you using your energy on the right activities so you can work smarter? Or are you fooling yourself and still working towards exhaustion and burnout? It’s easy to get caught up in thinking that you need to do all of the things all of the time, but then we get stuck in a cycle of taking never taking time out for yourselves for fear that we might miss that one activity that could lead to a new customer.

Using your blog as the backbone of your social media and marketing content can allow you to change that and can give you back some much needed time freedom.

Here are just a few of the benefits you can expect can using your blog to create the rest of your content:

• Maintain a consistent message across your platforms
• Only do the hard work once
• Free up valuable time
• Have regular new content on your website – search engines love this
• Have regular new content that answers questions in detail – potential customers love this
• Drive more traffic to your website which can ultimately lead to a higher rate of conversions

Doesn’t that all sound like exactly what you need? Making your time and effort work harder for you, rather than you having to try and work even harder. Wouldn’t this start to give you back some of the work / life balance that we talk about and strive for but often find so elusive? But what do you need to do? And how easy is it to achieve?

How to turn your blog into the backbone of your content creation

Writing good quality in-depth content that really answers questions and helps your audience get to know you and what you can offer, takes times. Crafting content that not only answers questions but also helps to build the know like and trust factor that we hear about so often takes even more time. So, after you gone to all of that trouble and effort to write your blog it’s time to break it down and use it across the different platforms that you operate on.

Which platforms do you use to help you grow your audience and connect with new people?

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• Others…

Your blog can provide you with content for all of those platforms and you don’t even have to write fresh content.

Rather than sitting and trying to think of new content to write for all of your platforms take your blog and break it down into smaller sections ready to share. You can take those smaller sections and turn them into all sorts of different posts – create info-graphics, go live, record some reels, share them as written posts, turn them into sneak peek or quote graphics – the scope of what you can do is endless. The beauty is that you can then keep directing people back to your website where they can read the blog in full. 

Breaking it down…

Typically speaking a blog of 1000 words (and all blogs should be at least this long – I’ll explain why in another blog) can be broken down into at least 6 to 10 smaller chunks for your social media content. Each of those chunks can then probably be made in 2 to 3 different formats. So now you have ne long form content for your website and potentially 30 posts for your social media…

Does it sound too easy to be true? I assure you that it isn’t and once you get into the swing of it and you create a routine then you will see just how much time you are saving yourself. I aim to publish a new blog every 2 weeks (sometimes life gets in the way and it doesn’t quite happen but it’s always wise to have a plan). From that I usually have content for up to 10 social media posts – and those are just bog-standard text with graphics/pictures posts – if I get myself organised and record some reels then that’s another 10 posts. Before I know it, I have enough content to carry me through to when I publish my next blog. And that’s not even taking into account that my blog gives me fresh content to add to my email newsletters and a reason to point my entire list to head over to my website. 

So, how do you actually break it down? Just take a look at the structure of your blog – most of us will use subheadings (if you aren’t then you should, I’ll explain why another time), and we write in paragraphs. This helps us to define the sections of our content and the different ideas / information we are discussing. Those subheadings and paragraphs are the natural breaks in your writing and can easily be the starting point for breaking down you blog into those smaller chunks. 

Then all you need to do is decide what kind of post you are going to create:

• Text post with graphic/picture
• Info-graphic
• Live
• Pre-recorded short video/reel
• Story post

You already have the bulk of the content, you don’t need to generate lots of additional ideas you just need to go and make your graphics or record your videos, then get posting them. Don’t forget to always include a call to action where you direct your audience to your website so that they can read the blog in full.

I would love to hear from you if this is something you already do, or if you plan to give it a try. Drop me a comment below and let me know how you’re getting on. Or if you want some help to get started then pop me a message and we can book in a power hour where I’ll help you to map out some blog content and look at how you can chunk it down. And you can head ovr to my website to check out my services further - Laura B Empowered Words - All of your writing needs. (laurab-empoweredwords.com)