Module 4
Repurposing Content
Running Time: 10 mins
Reasons to Repurpose Content
Once you’ve created a piece of content, it really only makes sense to get the most traction, the most
use out of it that you possibly can. In this video, we’re going to talk about some of the most
compelling reasons for you to consider going through the process of repurposing content.
Learning Styles
So, the first reason that I want to get into as far as why do we repurpose your content is because
people have different learning styles. Take a look back at yourself in, maybe, 6th grade and
remember a time when your teacher was giving a lecture on Ancient Mesopotamia or something like
that, were you one of those students who was reading along with the book or were you taking notes
as she spoke, were you looking at the window and daydreaming or maybe doodling in a notebook or
were you listening intently and just taking it all in as she spoke? How you answer those questions
might give a peak into your own learning style. And while, of course, this isn’t a scientific quiz, those
questions, your preferences could be seen through how you responded in the school learning
environment.
So, the student who is taking notes may be your read/write learner. And the person who was
listening intently might be an auditory learner. If you’re interested in learning this sort of thing
about yourself, what your learning style is and what’s the strongest method of learning for you,
there’s a great quiz over at Edutopia that you can take:
http://www.edutopia.org/mi-quiz
I took the quiz. And my results show that you I am strongest with intrapersonal and
interpersonal learning with linguistic learning coming up third. It says I often set goals for
myself. I self-manage and reflect on results. I enjoy teaching and sharing my thoughts. And I have
the ability to use words effectively for reading, writing, listening and speaking. And all of those I think
are pretty applicable given my choice in careers I think, right?
But aside from just being personally interested in the results of your own quiz, the fact that different
people have different strengths and different preferred ways of learning is something that you should
take into account as you’re creating and publishing your content. If members of your audience are
highly visual learners, it would serve you to provide some visual ways of interacting with you and
interacting with your content, so that you can capture those people too and not just the linguistictype of learners who prefer to read.
If a visual learner lands on your web page and it’s thick with text and there’s no visual stimulation,
they could decide that the site is boring because it doesn’t stimulate their visual learning style and
click off to another option. And you don’t want that. You want, instead, for everyone to be able to
use the content that you produce in their preferred learning style.
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So, let’s take a look at some of the main learning styles and how they might apply to the way that
you’ll repurpose your content to reach people with different learning styles.
Visual-Spatial
Now, visual-spatial learners tend to picture things in their minds. To figure out the right
spelling for a word, a visual-spatial learner might imagine the word in their head and imagine how it
would look on paper and think about whether that looks right or wrong. When remembering a
slideshow like this that you’re watching right now, the images that they see on the screen will spark
their memory of the content. I think a visual learner is the people who always picture a concept in
their head.
So, things like charts and graphs and interesting pictures and video are all ways that you can
make your content more appealing and more memorable for visual-spatial learners and you can
repurpose your existing content to suit visual-spatial learners by including things like that like pictures
or repurposing something into video.
Auditory
Now, auditory learners might have a harder time remembering material that they’ve read, but they
could remember it much better had they heard it in a lecture. They learn best by hearing, by
participating in discussions or if they’re reading text, they might actually repeat the key points out
loud to themselves to help them remember. So, they’re the kind of person who can actually do better
with background noise like the music or TV when they’re doing homework or studying because that
background noise helps them concentrate. And they’re also the kind of people who might prefer to
use speech-recognition software like Dragon Dictate over writing.
So, to cater to the portion of your audience that are stronger auditory learners, you might repurpose
your content to include a spoken narration. Using background music in a video will also help
auditory learners because they associate the patterns and the music with the material that you’re
covering.
Read-Write
Read-write learners are the kind of folks that you imagine to be the perfect student in school, the
stereotypical 4.0 GPA kids (or grown-ups for that matter). They absorb the material that they’re
trying to learn very well just by reading it, so they are great blog readers, but they might not
care as much for video or audio kinds of posts or content.
They also learn very well by writing things down, so they’re the type that will retain more if they
take notes on materials. You can repurpose materials that are auditory or visual and you can
repurpose those for read-write learners by providing a transcript so that they can read the
information. You can also give out supplementary materials like worksheets so that they have
the opportunity to write things down and help them retain the information that you’re putting out
there.
On the Go
Another reason to get into the habit of repurposing your content is to allow people to access it while
they’re on the go. Just like we want people to be able to absorb our content in whichever format they
enjoy the most based on their learning style, we also want them to be able to access the content
wherever they are or in whichever format is most convenient for them wherever they are.
Of course, none of this means that every single piece of content that you create needs to be
repurposed ten times over, but you should have something available on your site for each and every
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learning preference. So, you may have some written posts or you may have some things that contain
an audio component or some things that contain a video component here and there.
Accessibility
You need to make certain that people can access your content, though, regardless of
which device they’re on - because not everybody is sitting at their desktop anymore - or what kind
of Internet connection they have is another concern, as well.
Now, that might be as simple as making sure that your blog, your Wordpress blog, has a mobilefriendly theme or using a Wordpress plug-in like WP-Touch (Wordpress Touch) to make it more
mobile-friendly.
On the right-hand side on this picture, we’ve got my site as it normally looks on a mobile browser.
And on the left-hand side, here’s what it looks like with Wordpress Touch installed. So, it’s much
easier to read and navigate obviously with the Wordpress Touch plugin installed. And so,
that will make it easier for people on their mobile devices to consume my content when they visit my
site.
Now, on that blog, MichelleMacPhearson.com, about 10% of visits come from people on iPhones
and iPads and Androids and Blackberries and that sort of thing. But that is not just a phenomenon
within the Internet Marketing niche.
These stats that are looking at now are from another site of mine in a health niche. And this site got
about 10,000 visits in the last 30 days. And as you can see from this screenshot of Google
Analytics, 1700 or over 17% of the site’s visitors were actually using mobile devices to access the
site.
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So, take a peek at your own stats. I’d imagine that whatever niche you’re in, you’re going to see
some similar numbers. It doesn’t make sense to not cater to those people as they are coming in
bigger and bigger numbers. My Internet Marketing site has 10%. This site has about 17% of visitors
coming from their mobile devices to the site and you absolutely want them to be able to access your
content in a format that is convenient and easy for them to read.
Give the Wordpress Touch plug-in a try. It’s been really great for my sites and my site visitors and
the folks who are accessing the content on a mobile device. We’re going to talk more about other
ways to get your content on specific platforms in another video.
More Formats = More Coverage
Now, when you’ve taken the time to create a really great piece of content and you serve that piece of
content up in several different ways, you’re just going to get more people seeing it. It’s kind of the
law of averages. And that might mean taking a blog post and turning it into a YouTube video.
That’s one way of repurposing. And it might mean taking several articles and piecing them together
to create a larger eBook. And those are just a couple of examples.
But the point being is that the more ways that you put your content out there, the more ways that
people have to consume it and the more ways that people will have to find it. And plus, when you
host that content on platforms outside of your own site - like we talked about making a blog post and
turning it into a YouTube video - you’ll also be given the opportunity to create backlinks to your site.
And even in this new SEO economy of social sharing being an important ranking factor, backlinks are
still a very important ranking factor and not something that you should give up on or abandon. Plus
having your content out there in the wild gives people more opportunity to socially share the content,
which of course is becoming increasingly important in SEO.
Wrap Up:
So, there’s a multitude of reasons to repurpose your content, all of which lead to you establishing
yourself even further as the market leadership in your niche and then, to reaping the rewards of that
status.
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Summary:
Reasons to Repurpose Content:
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People have different learning styles, which you can accommodate
o Visual-Spatial - picture things in their minds
 Create charts and graphs
 Add interesting pictures
 Use video
o Auditory - learn best by hearing
 Include a spoken narration
 Use background music in your videos
o Read-Write - learn best by reading and writing things down
 Provide transcripts
 Give out supplementary materials, like worksheets
People may want to consume your materials “on the go”
Make sure that people can access your materials in the way that they want to
o Make your Wordpress blog mobile-friendly with the WP-Touch plugin
More formats = more coverage
o More ways people will have to consume it
o More ways people will have to find it
o More opportunities for Social Sharing
o More opportunities for backlinks
Resources:
Learning Styles - http://www.edutopia.org/mi-quiz
Learn more about learning styles at Edutopia.
WPTouch Plugin - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/
Learn more about the Wordpress Plugin WPTouch.
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