Repackage your blog posts to get more mileage out of them

Blogging takes time and energy, so naturally you want to get the biggest possible return on your investment (ROI). Repackaging helps you boost your ROI. I have experience with three kinds of repackaging that you may consider using.

1. Round-ups on your blog

You can recycle your blog posts by linking to them in new posts with a theme, such as topic or popularity. For example, if you blog about different kinds of education savings plans, you could write one post that links to your posts about 529 plans.

“Most popular” round-ups give your readers more of what they’ve already proven they want, as measured by Google Analytics. I used to create such a post annually, as in “Most popular blog posts of 2012.” However, when I boosted my frequency to quarterly in April 2013, some readers thanked me for highlighting posts they’d missed earlier. That’s why I’m continuing on a quarterly basis.

2. E-book compilations

Investment Writing Top Tips is my collection of the best posts that appeared on my blog during the preceding one to two years. New subscribers receive it when they sign up. Existing subscribers receive an invitation to download it as part of a newsletter that goes via email.

I’ve generally formatted my Top Tips documents as Adobe PDF files. If you’re feeling more ambitious, you can use an e-book format. Sites such as Amazon will give you instructions, but be prepared for hiccups in the formatting.

3. Other media

It typically requires some rewriting, but you can repackage your blog posts for other media. For example, there are slidecasts, podcasts, and video. I’ve used slideshare to repackage several blog posts. Different media will appeal to people with different learning styles. They may also work better for people surfing the web on a phone, rather than sitting in front of a big computer monitor.