Photo via Cbuckley, Jpowell & Max Pixel

I’m fortunate enough to enjoy writing, whether it’s a tweet or an article for Equities. The norm, and a big problem for startups, is that the founders are busy founding and raising money for their startup; they don’t give a hoot about content. Sure, they know they must get their message out, but the resources they have allocated to producing content is usually woefully inadequate.

We all know the web is content-based, and marketing is content-driven, so how can the average startup keep up with providing consistent and quality content to the masses through all the channels open to them? Most people will post their blog on their business site intermittently, if at all, and write another post in a couple of weeks or longer. There is nothing worse for a prospective investor or customer than to go to your corporate website and see a blog post that is months old. It just says a lot about your business.

Blog posts are the meat of your corporate website that gives it the dynamic function of change. Without change, people will go to your corporate site once and never return. If you can engage them in the first visit with a compelling blog post, they will bookmark your website. However, if you don’t think posting is important for engagement and keep your website static and stale, you will never get a single return visitor.

You’re the founder of your business. It’s innovative, disruptive and unique, so you must be the expert in your field. There is gold in those posts you hate to write. If you don’t have the time to write (seriously?) or simply hate the process, why post it only once? People were often told that Google (GOOG) only likes original work and that they mess with your algorithm if you use non- original work. That’s not true! Google does reserve the right to penalize a blogger if they excessively copy content in a manipulative manner, but it won’t happen to the average blogger. I prefer to repackage my work and I do it often, because, frankly, I find I can always add something to my writing. Here’s how it works:

I write a blog post and post links to my blog in all of my social media. I get the best results from Twitter. With a link to my post on Twitter (TWTR), I can grab the attention of an immediate 1000 people who will visit my blog and read the article. If I repost my tweet with a slight variation three other times during the day, I can reach all the time zones on the globe… getting more readers.

I take my Twitter post, add a bit more to it and add it to my corporate and personal Facebook (FB) pages. For added value I will take the Facebook post and put it on my LinkedIn (LNKD) page as an ‘Update’. I revisit this post in a month and add to it so the majority of the post is original so it doesn’t upset my subscribers. Then I’ll send it to an online newspaper like the Vancouver Observer. I send links of that article to my social media. I also can modify a post and have it posted as a guest writer on other blogs, because they may reach the same demographic as me but with different people. Do you see the plan? It’s all about reaching the highest number of potential clients with the least effort. By the way, you can take your favorite blog post, and in Twitter, you can ‘pin’ it at the top of all of your tweets as the first tweet people will see when they go on to your Twitter account. While other tweets are dynamic by date, the one you pick will stay there until you change it. It is a good way to plug your best articles or send people to your product page.

Between posts, I may look up old posts of mine and work forward from oldest to newest and send out links to them on Twitter. I know that I get about 1000 new followers to Twitter per week, so I’m hitting new people all the time with what they consider new material.

I’ll take my repurposed article and convert it to a PowerPoint presentation, so I can use it in speeches and ultimately a webinar. My first book, “How to Start a Successful Business – the First Time” on Amazon (AMZN) was actually, for the most part, a compilation of many blog posts over two years. Content is constantly upgraded, updated and merged.

It produces consistency in my brand message and gives me the opportunity to refine my posts, cause they can always be better. I have many loyal followers to my blog because I give them what they want, so if they see something familiar, no one complains. I like to change up my distribution channels when I send links out to reach a wider and/or different community depending on the posts. I may fire off several different links on Twitter and some older posts I may publish on my LinkedIn account. I think you get the point.

I update my LinkedIn account every few days with my Facebook posts, but I ‘publish’ an article or blog post once a week. This works really well, since, again, I am repurposing something already created but showing it to a new audience. My 9000 LinkedIn best buds love longer content, so this is a good venue for a detailed analysis of your company, a case study or a comparative analysis to your competition. I always add ‘Reprinted from ____ “ with a link to the original article and a link to my corporate website at the bottom.

If your blog post is graphic heavy with charts or cool pictures of your product then use Instagram. People are divided into two groups – those who read, and those who prefer visuals. You can put a brief description of the image, and then you can hashtag the Instagram post to cover just about every aspect of your product or service.

You can utilize YouTube in much the same way as Instagram. We are still talking about the same article that took you days to write so go through it, find your best points and do a 90 second video to post on YouTube. Again, you place all the relevant keywords and links to your corporate or product page. Watch the subscribers sign up!

An app that I signed up for ages ago but really only found it again for this article is Medium. Medium is an online publishing platform developed by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. So again you can actually copy and paste your blog post into Medium in the same way that you published your post on LinkedIn. Isn’t life grand?

When you cross-collateralize your single blog post to numerous platforms you are the winner. Remember, you don’t have to have gazillions of followers, you can guest post or put your content on other who do have massive traffic.

The world continues to look for enlightenment; by repurposing your work you get to share your original content with a whole new audience many times over.