The Power of Repurposing - A Super Fast Way to Get Your First Draft DONE

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Hi, this is Shelly Hitz. I'm the author coach@authoraudienceacademy.com and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. And in today's training, I want to talk to you about a super, super fast way to get your first draft done. I mean, it can be really, really fast. Now, I'm not saying your first draft is your final draft. Actually, your first draft is never your final draft. But a super fast way to get your first draft done is to use repurposing is to repurpose your content. I have done this over and over and over again and yet it surprises me how many people do not use this technique. And so I wanted to share with you a few ideas just to get the ball rolling to get you thinking about repurposing. So I'm on my iPad Pro today with my Apple Pencil. This was a fun little splurge I had recently because I've just been loving doing some artwork, but I'm going to be using this to go through our training today. So the first thing that you can use is blog posts and I have written several of my books this way. I was able to publish my very first book, Mirror Mirror, Am I Beautiful? From blog posts on my website. I wrote the content over the course of a year based on the most frequently asked questions, questions I would get at speaking engagements. I was a speaker before I was an author and then I turned that content into a book. I added additional information, transitions and a very valuable fill in the blank Bible study in the back as well as a leader's guide. So I added valuable content, but it helped me get my first draft done a lot quicker because I had the content already done. I also did this with my book, self publishing books 101. It's a perma free book on Amazon and I teach all about perma free books in Author Audience Academy. In the Author Automation System, a perma free book is able to bring you new customers that are interested in your topic 247 on Amazon. I mean it is amazing. And that book continues to get downloaded about a thousand times a month. And so that book came from content on my website and it's amazing. It brings me new buying customers and new email subscribers, new Author Audience Academy members on an ongoing basis. That is the first step. Now the second step is transcripts. And I love transcripts because I am a speaker. You may not be a speaker and that is cool. But if you have any kind of spokes, spoken content, you can repurpose that into a book by having it transcribed. I like to use the service Rev.com or I have now hired somebody on Upwork.com and she works for me on a regular basis now. And I'm able to pay less because I was able to work it out with her on Upwork and she, she's just available on an ongoing basis for me. But Rev.com is awesome. It's super fast and super accurate, so I definitely recommend that. But with transcripts, you can get transcripts of your videos, any videos you've done. And I use Facebook Live to record these trainings for you and then I have them repurposed in multiple places. But one of the things I do is I have them transcribed and put onto my website, shellyhits.com so if you prefer written content, definitely go to my website. Usually the transcripts are there seven to ten days later. It just depends on my team and how fast they're able to get to everything. But you could have your videos transcribed, you could have your podcast transcribed. So maybe you have podcast audio that you can have transcribed and then you can use that content for part of your book. You can also have just audios from your speeches or sermons. So speeches, sermons. If you're a pastor. I have some pastors that follow me. That could be something you could get transcribed. Now anytime you use a transcript, it will need to be heavily edited, but this is an amazing way to get your first draft done fast. I was able to take a transcript from one of my webinars and I did a webinar earlier this year called prolific publisher Seven Strategies. I used to publish 50 books in seven years. People always ask me, how have you published so many books? And I'm sharing all of that information in that webinar. Well, that was a live webinar and I'm like, okay, that's really good content. People loved it. They really responded well to it. I'm like, how can I use that content? And in another way. And I decided to have it transcribed and I had one of my VAs just do a basic edit of it. I took that transcript to my in Person Writing Retreat, Colorado Writing Retreat.com it was just a few weeks ago. And I was able to edit it, work it out, you know, add more information. And from that one hour webinar, I was able to create a short Kindle ebook that will be available for sale on, on Amazon soon. If you're on my email list, be watching because I have a very special bonus during the launch of that book. But how cool is that? And I was able to finish that book in two days. It was just amazing. But it was transcribed material. I was at a speaking engagement recently and I was talking about repurposing and someone was like, oh my goodness, I have hundreds of blog posts. I think they had like 500. I don't know. It was an amazing amount. And the thing is, take your very best blog posts. You know, the ones that people have shared, you know, the things that get commented on, you know what people are reacting to. They love that content. And so some people will say, shelley, why would I sell something that's available for free on my website? People love convenience. They love speed. If it's going to save them time from having to dig through all of your archives and then you're going to have everything in the right order. Going to be a win win for both of you. Okay, so transcripts. This is powerful. I have done this over and over and over again. I'm actually working on a book with my co author, Heather Hart. We've co authored several books together and it's a book on book launches. I took several transcripts from my podcast that I did on book launches. They were really, really good. Content training podcast. If you guys know, my trainings are always jam packed. We're using that as the base on book launches now we'll add information. Actually, my author audience academy members are able to add in their tips so they can get exposure by sharing what's worked for them. But also I'm able to share what's working for other authors and I love that. So we're going to add some of that in. But the base of the book came from transcripts of my podcast. All right, so transcripts number three is PowerPoint presentations. So when my husband and I were first publishing books, I published my book Mirror Mirror My Beautiful. I published a couple other books for teen girls. And we had some presentations we gave on forgiveness. They were so well received. People always got a ton of great content from them and were, you know, God used them in powerful ways. Ways to bring breakthroughs and transformations. And one day, I think it was in the shower. I don't really remember exactly, but you know how you get those ideas in the shower. I now have aqua notes in my shower. If you guys don't have Those, they're like $7 on Amazon. Go get them. Because sometimes your best ideas happen in the shower. You want to write them down. And I have gotten some amazing ideas that I was able to capture. They say now your ideas don't have to go down the drain. I love that. But anyways, I think I got the idea for our book forgiveness formula in the shower. And I was thinking, wow, those presentations have been so well received. What if we created a book? So what I did was my husband and I co authored it. The base of the book came from our PowerPoint presentations. Those PowerPoint slides became like our outline. It became like the chapter titles. And then we were able to go from there. Now, what you also could do is you could combine some step two and three, so you could use the PowerPoint slides as your outline, and then you could actually have an audio from one of your presentations transcribed, and that could become your first draft. Are you guys getting excited about this? Like, this is stuff that works, this is stuff I've done, and this is stuff you can do to get your first draft done fast. I like to say I'm a get it done author coach. That helps you get the first draft out of your head onto paper in record time. Because I really am a about, let's work smarter, not harder. And there are so many ways that you can do this. Okay, I have two more ideas for you. Let me keep going. The fourth one is your journals. Now, I am not a journal type of girl. I have never been that way. Although I'm an author now of over 40 books and the list keeps growing. I'm prolific communicator. You would think I would be really good at journaling. I'm just not. But when I journal, I journal during the intense seasons of my life. The times when God's really teaching me a lot or where I'm really growing, I'm really learning. And I'm so glad I have those journals because those journals have become parts of my books that I have published. There is a book that came primarily from my journals, and it's a book I wrote about my dad's assault. He had assault and then had a brain injury. And that book is primarily my journal entries. And then I added from my heart to yours. And you know, it was application and things that you can apply to your life. But journals can be so powerful. Not only does it help you have content, but it also helps you with accuracy, being able to remember what you're sharing. All right, the fifth and final thing I'm going to share Today, because I could go on and on. I love to teach you guys and I have so much information I can teach you, but I never want to overwhelm you. So the last one is your emails or social media. And you know, you are writing things every day people say, shelley, I'm not a writer, I'm not an author, but do you write emails? Do you write text messages? Do you write social media posts? Yes, of course you do. And so what you can do is you can go back and take some of those best social media posts. Like some of my social media posts. Like, I'm a Facebook girl, I post a lot to my Facebook profile. And if you're not friends with me yet, you can connect with me@facebook.com shellyhits make sure you message me or something and tell me how you know me, because I don't always accept people that I don't know. But if you follow me and you're an author, just let me know, Private message me. And I would love to connect with you personal, because I post my best content and most frequently on my profile. So I'm on Facebook a lot and I will post sometimes some really long posts. I've even repurposed some of those Facebook posts into blog posts. That's something you can definitely do. The ones that people respond to, they really react to, they comment on. But you can also repurpose some of that content into your book. I remember actually, for one of my books going back and I had remembered I had sent personal emails to some of my friends about some of the things God was teaching me, some of the things I was going through, and it was very applicable to the book I was writing at the time. I went back and you can just search your emails and any kind of email provider should be able to do a Gmail or whatever you use. And I just searched in Gmail and then I found those emails. And that email was so in depth and it was something I was sharing with them. And initially it was meant only for them. But I was able to take that email content, edit it and change it up, you know, delete the stuff I didn't want to share with the world. And I have tons of content for my book. We are writing stuff every single day. And I want you to start capturing some of that. I want you to start reusing that. I want you to be more of a prolific publisher. I want you to be able to publish your books without waiting years and years and years. You guys have the content. I really believe that most of you do you've already created the content in many, many places and maybe there's a book that you, you didn't even think you were going to write. Like for me, I wasn't planning on writing the book prolific publisher, but I was going to the writing retreat and I was leading and I was like, well, what am I going to work on when they're writing their stuff? And I thought, oh, I have that transcript and I could work on that for a book. And within a few weeks it's going to become a book. From idea to book, you know, and so you may already have content out there that you could publish. And it's good content. It solves a problem, it's helpful for your target audience. It's going to help someone and it's not going to take forever and ever to publish it. It doesn't have to be hard, Let it be easy. So Facebook has all sorts of ways to search. I haven't really gone through all of that, but if you go to your profile, you can search certain topics. Like, I'll go to my profile when I know I'm looking for something and I've done this recently where I know I'm looking for something specific and I go to my profile. And then once you're on your profile in the search bar, make sure you keep your name in there and then put whatever, you know, phrase or whatever you remember writing about in there and you can find it. You may be able to do that on other pages and stuff too. Go to that page and then search for that content on that page. But make sure that from this point on that you're thinking about that and if you have a really in depth response, copy, paste it and save it. You know, if you're using Google Docs or if you're using Dropbox or whatever you're using, save it and capture it for later. So what do you think? Did you learn one new thing today that you could, you could implement if you want to go deeper? I have a full training. It's a full, I think one hour training. It's a 90 minute webinar. Three proven book writing formulas every nonfiction author needs to know. You can sign up for it for free@shelly hits.com formulas and that way we can go deeper. I can help you pick your topic, I can help you outline your book and help you again, like go through this process of how can you get this book done and work smarter, not harder. The other thing I want to tell you about, I have another free training. It's writingweek.com and it is my free seven day nonfiction writing challenge. So if you are wanting to get some writing done, whether it's blog post, your next book, whatever it is, I teach you some very specific strategies that can help you get that first draft out of your head onto paper in record time. And it's self paced so you don't have to do it in a week. You can do it in whatever timeframe works out for you. But that's another great resource I have for you. And my book, Prolific Publisher will be coming out soon. So make sure you're signed up to one of my lists. If you get either of those free trainings, you'll be on my list and you'll get to know the moment that book is ready. And I have a really, really good bonus for the launch that I don't want you guys to miss. And one thing that I always, always recommend is to create your own systems. I share all my systems that I use for publishing and marketing inside Author Audience Academy. And I, after publishing so many books, systems, and that's one way I'm able to get things done so fast is because system is basically a checklist. It's basically this. I do this, then I do this, then I do this, then I do this. And so when you have that system and you have your team together and you know exactly what you're going to do and you're able to do it on a small budget, you know, so that you can be able to publish more books, you're able to publish a lot more in a shorter amount of time. Now I still have all my books professionally edited and you know, and I go through that whole process and so some of them take longer than others. But there are definitely ways you can not only save time but save money so that you can have more books that create more impact and bring you more income. Because one of the ways to really earn money as an author is to have multiple books, books and products. And again, I teach all of that inside authoraudienceacademy.com all right, well, I'm going to head off. This has been a longer training than I intended. I hope that you really got a lot of value from it, that you learned something new you can implement today. What are you going to repurpose? If you're listening to this training on Facebook or on YouTube or on my blog, leave me a comment and tell me how are you going to implement this? What is one way and one piece of content you could repurpose so that you can have a super fast way to get your first draft of your next book done, let me know and I will see you next time. Bye Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.