How To Leverage Your Content To Market Your Website Or Blog

What is content leveraging?

Content Leveraging Diagram

In simple terms content leveraging means using your content to maximize the traffic and backlinks flowing back to your website or blog. I first heard about this idea through an interesting webinar hosted by Rich Schefren and Pete Williams. The main idea from the webcast was that your target audience is now scattered on the web. Some of your audience may prefer videos, others PDFs, still others may enjoyed audio podcast. Of course trying to create original content for each one would be nearly impossible for someone to consistently produce. With a streamlined system though one could easily take one unique piece of content and re-purpose it as videos, PDFs, podcast, PowerPoints and more. Now in the their system most of the work was done by outsourcing and using expensive video editing tools and other software. In this article I can show you exactly how you can do much of this work with completely free tools.

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Start With A Mind Map

Remember those brainstorming activities from High School with the little bubbles that you fill in? Turns out those are really useful for planning out blog posts, articles and PDFs. MindMaps  have now gone digital and can be shared on the web making them even more useful. If you start with a MindMap you will have the foundation to easily re-purpose your content. The software I recommend for this is called FreeMind it is a free Java based program that can create fold-able MindMaps that can be exported as HTML, JavaScript and JPEG images. Each Map will start with a root node, this is where you put your main idea or theme that you're working on. From there you can add child nodes which would act as the subtopics for your project. You can add as many nodes as you like and can even add graphics to show how the different points interact. Here is a small video showing how to use MindMaps:

Create A PowerPoint Presentation And PDF

As you can see in the video above, a finished MindMap is very similar to an outline. This makes it very easy to transfer a MindMap over to a PowerPoint presentation. I recommend using Open Office by Oracle it's open source, free, and can export files to many different file types including PDF and PPT. Open up the main application and choose Open Office Impress. Using your MindMap from earlier take each main node and turn it into a slide, each sub-node can be a bullet point in the presentation. When completed click File>Save As, in the dialog box choose MicroSoft Office PPT as the file type and click Save. You have also just created a PDF which you can share on document sharing websites. Go back to File>Export As PDF, you will be presented with some options most of which you can leave as the default. If you don't want others to be able to copy the PDF, then click the Security tab and set a permission password.

Making A Simple Video Presentation

One of the best ways to share content on the web is through simple videos. Contrary to popular belief a video doesn't need to be flashy or professional to get views on YouTube. It just needs to answer the problem the user is searching for online. This is where your PPT is going to be used again. All you need to do is record yourself talking about your PowerPoint presentation. This can easily be accomplished using free screen recording software like Hypercam 2 or CamStudio. Simply open up your PowerPoint and begin recording (you'll need a mic for your PC). If you know your subject well then it should not be too hard to explain the points from your presentation to your audience.

Your Final Blog Post

Now you have a MindMap, PowerPoint, PDF and a video. Using these as the basis it should be easy to write a blog post. After all you have an outline and you can use the audio from your video to fill in the gaps. You can also export the MindMap as a JPEG and feature it in your blog post. Or you can embed the video in the post with the article underneath for those who prefer video.

Maximizing Your Exposure On The Web

With all this content comes the power to build links and exposure for your main site or money page. Make sure you do the following to get more traffic out of this technique:

1. Share Your MindMap As Picture On Social Networks. Nothing is shared more on social media than informative graphics and pictures so make sure to share your's whenever possible.
2. Share Your PowerPoint On Presentation Sites. Sites like www.slideshare.com allow you to share your PowerPoint presentations online so take advantage of them. Make sure your slides also reference your website.
3. Share Your PDF On Document Sites. Document sites like www.scribd.com are growing popularity upload your PDFs so other can download and read them.
4. Upload Your Videos With A Link. Videos are a great way to build links, in the description place the your link to your main and or squeeze page. Upload your video to more than one site using www.oneload.com.