How to Make Your Content Work as Hard as You Did Creating It

If you can use a quick spark to ignite your content reach and make your content work even better, then this post is for you!

I’ll show you a simple process for re-purposing quality content in 5 easy steps. And, I’ll be sure to give you some extra helpful hints peppered in along the way.

My goal is to be everywhere to gain more visibility for my business and brand.

To reach what may seem an impossible goal, I’ve been working hard on new ways to go out and get noticed by igniting best content pieces to leverage new business results.

The re-purposing process I’m using with the 5 easy steps I’ll tell you about, will give you options to extend your reach for:

• Driving traffic to your website
• Increasing awareness of your brand
• Engaging with your audience
• Getting noticed to develop working relationships for business
• Building your authority
• Attracting new customers
• Escalating sales and growing your business

It’s true. You’ll gain tons of results by putting this technique to work for you. One of the best things about it is you’ll be stretching results from quality work you’ve already done.

You work long and hard at creating valuable content. But, without amplifying it through promotion and distribution, it can truly be fruitless. I don’t know about you, but I’m not okay with that. Nope. Not so much.

Re-purpose your content. Grow your reach.Click To Tweet

Ready to Help Yourself Be Everywhere?

Me too! And this process makes it easy as pie. Remember. make your content work for you.

Mainly, you’re extending the viability of your work while increasing visibility and reach by repurposing to SlideShare PDF’s in this 5 step process. This is only one way (but a good one) to shake things up for more exposure.

This is the 5 easy steps outlined for you, then we’ll go deeper:

Step 1:           Select an Original Post or Article to Ignite

Step 2:           Canva for a Reason and How to Use It

Step 3:           Ordering/Merging to Create a New SlideShare PDF Upload

Step 4:           Compress PDF Files for faster uploads, smaller embeds & stuff

Step 5:           Upload Brand Spanking New Work to SS (bigger) Audience

What Content Do I Use?

I’ll give you a couple ways to look at this but, my first recommendation for selecting content to re-purpose is the criteria of high quality.

Pushing and promoting pieces of not-so-great content (don’t worry, we all have some) is spamming rather than igniting valuable content to reach a bigger audience.

So first, carefully consider what you pick and don’t be afraid to update or upgrade your work in this process.

If you already have a great response and know something resonates with your audience, you may want to expand its reach even more.

On the other hand, you may have a hidden treasure. But, since this gem hasn’t taken off for you yet, you may want to spark extra awareness and interest by tapping a bigger or new audience, like SlideShare’s.

One way to determine what pieces to use or what topics to focus on with your re-purposive approach is to analyze your most popular posts by using your Google Analytics dashboard. Similarly, you can check analytics on your social channels to make sure your content topics are relevant for social promotion.

You’ll want to review your selected content for changes or adjustments (read improvements) and plan an appropriate CTA (call to action) for the last page in this first Step. Conversion—getting readers to take a specific action—will be the goal of your CTA.

What action you want people to take will depend on your goals and objectives but, remember, a single relevant action gets the best conversion rates, so try to stick to one CTA per content piece.

I use Printfriendly.com to turn posts or articles into PDF’s quickly and painlessly, thanks to Ana Hoffman, who walks you through how to do this in this hugely popular post on her hugely popular site.

Hint: Check that tweetables work.

Canva’s Magic Helps Make Your Content Work

Canva saves the day! Again.

I keep finding new ways to use this brilliant tool and love how Canva continually brings the magic to make me look better than I am, design-wise.

This time Canva helps to make a PDF more SlideShare friendly by giving you a quick way to add key components to a presentation. And I think it is key to know that the first three slides on your SlideShare are not clickable!

Make a note. Links do NOT work on your first 3 slides in a SlideShare presentation.

That’s why I suggest a 3 slide introduction to entice readers to check out your PDF by hooking them with an interesting headline and attention-grabbing lede, perhaps.

You can add branding, interesting visuals, and take the time to really think about the perfect headline to draw people in; perhaps, different from your original post. Maybe by asking a question, for example.

Think keywords here as well. Remember improvements are a plus and now is the time to upgrade as much as you can.

Make sure you select the A-4 template on the Canva dashboard for the perfect sizing to use for this part of your re-purposing project.

Design with a no-click mindset but, don’t be afraid to show your website URL or additional brand identity as part of your intro. Just make sure your message is on-point with the content you are presenting. Try to embrace the “Bucket Brigade” technique to keep people moving to the next, and the next, slide.

While you’re working in Canva, you’ll want to produce a separate PDF for your final slide. This slide has one job to do. It is your call-to-action. This is the point of conversion, your big chance to drive traffic to your site, ask for shares, or collect emails.

Create CTA’s Relevant to Both Reader and Presentation Topic

Whatever your CTA, make a strong case to drive clicks and increase conversions on this very last slide.

Luckily, you can easily add links while creating this final slide in Canva. Definitely be sure you have some branding here.

You may want to design a custom template to keep a consistent branding message, styling, and colors, even if you adjust it for each presentation CTA.

Make sure to download your Canva creations—3-page intro section and final slide with CTA—as PDF’s. Save them to a file you can easily work from, along with your printfriendly PDF, for the next step.

Hint: In addition to the share buttons provided by SlideShare, you may want to add buttons to promote shares too. So, here’s another newly discovered trick for you. You can convert the SlideShare URL to code your own “share buttons” by going to sharelinkgenerator.com and putting the URL you want to share (presentation URL) into the appropriate social channel “generator.” It will then give you a new link code to use for linking to each of the social share button icons you want to include.

Order and Merge

Now you have 3 PDF’s ready to create your brand spanking new SlideShare presentation to re-purpose your quality work, ignite your content reach, and drive your conversion metrics.

Looks like time for a little more magic so I introduce another tool, giving you a few more secret potions to perform magical feats galore on files, formats, and documents, alike.

Smallpdf.com allows you to order and then merge your three PDF files to put the pages of your new work together in one perfectly beautiful PDF file, ready to upload.

But, wait.

Additionally, this software performs the next step I recommend you take before uploading your file.

And, that’s to condense your PDF by compressing your new single PDF file. Again, what luck, because this can be done using smallpdf, too.

So, go ahead and compress your newly merged PDF for faster uploads, smaller embeds, etc. using this same tool. You’ll notice all kinds of possibilities for changing file types, compressing, merging, ordering, and even ungrouping.

Why Compress?

Keeping your files and uploads as compressed as possible helps keep things uploading and downloading faster, uses less storage space, and helps site speed when rendering in a viewer’s browser.

Since we can use the same tool as the order and merge step for PDF’s, we’re ready to move to the final uploading step.

But, I thought it may be helpful for you if I mention two other compression tools you can use to keep file sizes down.

In fact, if you are putting visuals, like picture files for example, into Canva projects like those title slides, maybe, or to use on your website, try these:

Compresspng.com

Compressjpeg.com

While I just recently discovered these easy to use file compression tools, I’m wondering if—by using these prior to uploading visuals to my site—I can do away with the smushit plugin I’ve been using on WordPress to condense image file sizes from the admin panel?

I figure one less plugin is a good thing. What do you think? What’s your favorite tool for compressing files and pictures? What tools did I miss?

Uploading a Re-Purposed PDF to SlideShare

Hope you find the tools and information to be as helpful to you as I find them. I’ve re-purposed five things for SlideShare over the last month and I’m seeing traffic from SlideShare coming to my site, for the first time! 

I catch myself laughing at me when I see I can now fill an entire Trello board, or two, with the software I am now using and love for my writing business. When I started writing, software scared me to death. Stone cold fear, I tell you.

I’m letting you know about my software phobia, I suppose, for two reasons right now. The first is to let you know you can do it, too.

Trust me, I still don’t know if I even work email (not automated, just plain Gmail) correctly.  Yet, here’s a whole new list of things that are becoming everyday tools. You know…on the computer!

Secondly, I’ve produced a “How-To” Video for you to go with this post. And, for those who learn better by seeing or trying, the video is another way to get you the information from this post, in a way you can easily use.

But, talk about stretching skills and going outside of your comfort zone! Whew. I still can’t believe I’m working with video, scripts, and even animation at this point. You can, too. Take it one step at a time.

And please, feedback on this early video production is appreciated so let me have it! Not too harsh, please, it’s my first “How-To” ever, remember?

Go to your SlideShare panel to upload, or re-upload, if that’s the case, your presentation PDF.

Hint: Don’t forget to fill in the title, meta description details, and keywords on the SlideShare dash.

Watch the “HOW-TO” Video

Make Your Content Work by Re-Purposing to PDF for SlideShare from Sue-Ann Bubacz on Vimeo.

Okay, so I’m a little excited after creating a how-to video for you. It’s a  Show and Tell method to give you all the details. Now you can start using this Easy 5 Step Process for How to Make Your Content Work as Hard as You Did Creating It!

The video shows you how to re-upload your re-purposed PDF SlideShare presentation and this is something you may want to watch because:

1. Uploading is straightforward, re-uploading is NOT; it may help to see it
2. You CAN re-upload SlideShares without losing any views or shares!
3. You can re-upload to update or improve your work, keeping it fresh and evergreen
4. When you re-upload, you are new in the feed again, increasing your reach and visibility one more time
5. If you’re a stickler, like me, you’ll want to correct any mistakes or errors that pop up, accidentally

Once you upload, you’ll want to check that things look right. Some tips to save you trouble later:

• using fonts of at least 38 pt. for easiest visibility; 2 font styles, maximum
• keeping your headline slide wording as large as possible
• placing words near the center to be sure it’s not cut off in the viewer and easy to read
• using contrasting colors and consistent typesetting for easy viewing and flow
• testing links and buttons to be sure all work properly
• double-checking for typos, spelling, or grammar issues
• maintaining consistent branding for presentations

Wrap and Re-Purpose Again

If you plan to re-purpose SlideShares for videos, make sure you use the proper ratio setting. Go with 16:9 for your presentation so you’ll be ready for yet another way to make your content work as hard as you did creating it. Why not keep expanding your reach, right?

I love the idea of stretching your work, your reach, traffic, visibility, and more by doing more re-purposing to get the most from valuable and useful content.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Also, I can’t wait to share my next re-purposed content where I’ll be stretching my work and testing skills even further.