#361: Writing Well: Repurposing Your Content to Reach More People

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Welcome to this Writing well episode.

My name is Shelly Hitz, and I.

Am going to share today about repurposing your content. And in the spirit of repurposing, I decided to repurpose an episode from my Hits Blitz private podcast. If you're not a subscriber over there, I really encourage you to check it out.

There are, there are some just, you.

Know, great, great content and tips and wisdom in it for you. You can sign up for free@training authors.com forward/hits blitz.

And I'm not just saying that because.

It'S my podcast, but because that's what people are telling me. They're short, actionable, encouraging, motivating, and so definitely, if you enjoy my style, go over there and make sure you get subscribed. But Heather had given me some feedback. She's a Christian Book Academy member and she's like, shelly, I took your repurposing content to heart. And she's taking content from her first book and, you know, reusing it as a podcast interview, reusing it for blogs, for social media posts and her email newsletter.

And I love it.

She said she's just reworking it a little bit and she was so inspired by this episode. So I thought, man, this is awesome. I love it when people take action. They hear something and then they take action. It makes their life easier. How many of you want to make things easier for yourself? And if you're in the process of writing your book right now, then I.

Want you to just listen to this.

Episode and start getting ideas. Like, how can you repurpose some content either to put inside your book as you're writing it, or how can you repurpose your content that you're writing for your book to also do things like once it's published and you're marketing it, if you've already published your book, then.

I just think you're going to get.

A ton of ideas. But I hope this episode encourages you and inspires you. Hit Splits is more of a casual podcast, and I just kind of share off the cuff, just share what I'm thinking. It's like kind of sitting across the table talking with you over a cup of coffee. So I hope you enjoy this episode.

I just wanted to share a quick thought with you today about repurposing your content. If you've been around me for any amount of time, you know, I talk about this quite a, quite a bit. And what happens is what you put your heart and soul into, your book into a piece of content, whether it's a blog post or a podcast or something else. And then it's just there. And it's like, why not repurpose that content and reach more people with the time and energy that you've put into it? So what would that look like? It could look like a million different scenarios. But I'm just going to give you one example from the recent series on this podcast, the Kingdom Marketing Mindset for Authors. So that series started as a podcast series, and you can go back and find the original podcast series on our website, trainingauthors.com they were longer episodes and it was a series we did a few years ago. Well, we decided then to take that series and for our conference, this most recent conference that we had last September, it was all about marketing. So I decided to do kind of like what. What you heard on this podcast was the miniseries that I did leading up to the conference. So that was a shortened version and it was just me instead of CJ and I, but it was a shortened version of what we originally had done on our main podcast. And then that got me thinking because we got some great feedback from, you know, those who had listened to that miniseries and were taking it in before the conference. And I thought, man, you know, we've already put all the time and energy into creating this content. Why not make it into a youversion plan? So CJ took the content. He is great at writing devotions, and so he rewrote the series into devotions for a youversion plan. And then I thought, hey.

Why not put this into a short Kindle ebook? Yes, it's very short. It's sweet. Short, sweet to the point. But, you know, for 99 cents, you get inspiration. You might get one nugget or, you know, encouragement. And some people prefer to read on their Kindle. Some people may not be on you version. It's just another way to reach more people. So we also put it on Kindle. And then I thought, hey, we're, you know, launching this into the world as a youversion plan, as a Kindle book. Why don't I repurpose the miniseries I did for the conference on my hit splits private podcast? So are you seeing my thought process along the way? It wasn't like I had the whole master plan at once. I just kept going. And then I would think, oh well, why don't we also do this? And why don't we also do this? So now that same content was originally on our public podcast as a much longer series. It was used at our conference for a pre conference miniseries and it's still available for anyone who had gotten the all access pass or who signs up in the future. And then we created a youversion plan. We created a Kindle ebook and then I republished that miniseries, audio miniseries, onto this podcast. So it's five different ways that we used that content and it will be consumed by different people on those different platforms. Some of you may have listened to the miniseries that we just shared last week and you may not ever read the youversion plan. You may not ever read the Kindle ebook. You may not have been at the conference. You know, I mean, that may be the only piece of content you consume. Some people may only ever read the youversion plan because you know, there are a lot of people that find us simply by reading our devotional plans on YouVersion. So they might only ever read that. Some people may only ever read the Kindle ebook. Maybe they're searching on Amazon or they, they it's recommended by a friend or something and they find it on, on Amazon. So can you see like how sometimes taking one piece of content and repurposing it into different formats can really help you reach more people. Now with your book, obviously you can have the print version, the Kindle version, you can have an audiobook vers, you can translate your book into other languages. And we cover all of this in Christian Book Academy if you're a member and you know, you can do all sorts of things with your book once you have it. You know, we've published large print versions, we've had, you know, hardback. You know, they have hardback versions now that you can do with your book. I mean there's just so many different things you can do. But.

Pray, pray and ask God, okay, I have this content. Maybe it's content that you're creating for social media. Social media is like, that content is gone and you know, people are not going to see it again for a long time. So how can you reuse that content? Well, here is a great idea. Take that social media content and especially if you've gotten good feedback from it, people are commenting or responding to it, make it into an email for your subscriber list and then add that to an evergreen series. So like your welcome series. So when Somebody signs up for signs up for your email list, you send them their free gift, and then a lot of times that's it. But you can introduce yourself. You can, you know, talk about other books, you have other products, you can help them with other free content. And so it's something that you could even add to the end of an autoresponder series like that, and just keep adding content. So when people join your list, they're getting content without you having to write it all the time. So if that seems too complicated, you can just reformat it into an email, send it to your out as a broadcast to your email list, and there you've repurposed that content.

Right?

It's reached more people because some people will open your emails that will never see your content on social media. That's just one small, one small thing that you could do. But I encourage you always be thinking, how can I repurpose this content? CJ will share with our Christian Book Academy members on our virtual writing retreat kickoff. So we do this once a month, two days virtual writing retreat. One of our mentors, Deb Butterfield, she hosts those two days. And it's an amazing time where you get so much done in community. And we, C.J. and I join you to kick it off. And he always has some encouragement that he shares. So it's usually 15 to 20 minutes. Well, then we repurpose that for the mentoring moment on our podcast. It usually goes out the next month. And then he also those times of encouragement, he's written out notes. And so then a lot of times those also become devotions. So if you have one of his devotional books, like the Priestly Pens book, that was a devotional book that he wrote. Much of that content originally came from our virtual writing retreat kickoffs. And then he, he rewrote it and massaged it and, you know, put it into that format for a devotional. But he'd already done all the research, he'd already had all of the content that he felt like God had given him for that time. And then CJ preaches at our local city mission, and he usually preaches like twice a month, but a lot of times he'll then take the same content that he shared with Christian Book Academy. He'll expand on it or he'll change, you know, the emphasis instead of being on writers, he'll change the emphasis to the guys that are going through this program at the mission. And so a lot of times that one piece of content gets repurposed three or four times. And it reaches different people in different ways and in different formats. So I hope that this has gotten your wheels spinning a little bit. I think even if you are repurposing your content right now, there's probably even other ways that you could be doing it. So just be asking the Lord, how can I repurpose this content? And especially if it's content people are responding to, especially if it's something you've put a lot of time and energy into, why not, why not reuse it? And the thing is, some people say, oh, but you know, people already saw that on my social media or people already saw that on my email. You know what, most people are not opening all your emails, they're not seeing all your posts on social media. And so giving them another way to get that content is amazing. And the thing I have found too, like when I repeat things, I still have people that are like so excited.

To get that information.

For instance, I've talked about writing a short Kindle ebook so many times and yet I get so much good feedback every time I share that. And sometimes it's people have already heard it before, but it's a reminder or it triggers a new idea for a different book at that particular season. So anyways, don't be afraid to repeat things. You know, sometimes we need to hear things over and over. How many times have you read the Bible? Hopefully you've read it all the way through from front cover to back cover. But like how many times have you read Psalm 23 or certain, you know, certain psalms or certain scriptures in the Bible over and over and over. And you know, it seems like every time God will touch my heart in a different way. And now His Word is alive and active. It's different than our words, but it's just an example to say that sometimes hearing something more than once is so effective. Oh, so that was just a bonus tip.

That was a bonus tip. But anyways, I hope that, that, that this you just got your, your wheel spinning and that you'll ask God for his wisdom on what you can repurpose and do it in a way so that it reaches more people, it impacts more lives because they're going to be consuming it either in a different format, audio versus written versus you know, something else, or they're going to be getting access to it on a different platform. So anyways, I hope this encouraged you and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Would you like more? If you are enjoying this podcast but want more, I have something exciting to share with you. We have released one what's called a private podcast. So a private podcast you will not find by searching an apple. You have to know specifically how to subscribe to it. It's more private and exclusive and it just can be more relaxed behind the scenes. And my new private podcast is called Hits Blitz and it's wisdom for writers that you're going to learn from my 18 plus years of experience in publishing and online marketing so that you can move forward in God's Call to write. I am best known for injecting energy and enthusiasm into everything I do and inspiring those around me to take action. So I encourage you to listen in to this exclusive private podcast. It is free, 100% free. You don't have to pay for it and be prepared to be inspired by my next hits bullets. So you can sign up@trainingauthors.com hits and if you have any other writing friends that you think could benefit from it, definitely share it with them. They can go to the Same link training authors.com forward/hits blitz to get access. Again, this is a private podcast so you cannot get access to it any other way. It's completely free. All you have to do is sign up and then you'll get all the information on how to add it to your podcast player of choice. So I can't wait for you to join me over there. I share a lot of things behind the scenes and more content just in a real time basis. So it's more like chatting with a friend or following someone on stories on social media. Except you don't have to get caught up in any of the algorithms. You'll just have this in your podcast player and be able to listen in wherever you're at, whatever you're doing. Some of the listeners told me this week that they were listening while waiting in the Target parking lot, while brushing their teeth. You can fit this into the pockets of time that you have.

So I hope you'll join me.

Come over to trainingauthors.com hitsblitz.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you as a Christian writer have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where we help you give birth to to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.