Today we’re sharing with you a recent post that was written by Paula Gardner of  Do your own PR. The recycling bit certainly caught  my eye.  As a wedding planner in absolute peak season I’m all for re-using and recycling the huge amount of work that I’ve already done over the years. I thought that many of you might like to consider her tips too; after all we should make the most of the efforts already made.

Over to Paula:

I am big believer in recycling, and encourage all my clients to create a system where they write one piece and then tweak it for a press release, tip sheet, newsletter, and blog and then place the original article on an article syndication site, or at least another site with a high page ranking.

Personally, I think the key to writing good articles is variety…having a good mixture of how-to pieces along with motivational features, and maybe interviews and background stories, such as a look at the people behind the products.

 

This keeps things fresh not only for the press and your customers, but also for you, as any routine has to keep you stimulated or you just won’t keep to it.

 

Clients usually like this idea and can see the sense behind writing one piece that can have so many uses, but they ask me how they can keep coming up with ideas. Here are some suggestions that have worked for me and my clients.

 

1.       Reading a newspaper (and I mean reading a physical newspaper rather than just scanning the headlines on the Internet) and looking for pieces that inspire.

 

2.       Planning six months of topics ahead and letting the brain subconsciously assimilate all the material it needs so that when you sit down to write your article it flows with hardly any effort.

 

3.       Running a survey on www.surveymonkey.com and using the results as a base for an article.

 

4.       Interviewing a past client or customer.

 

5.       Interviewing someone who could offer interesting advice or a viewpoint to their readers.

 

6.       Taking someone else’s article (and link to it) and then offer their own, very different angle on the theme.

 

7.       Keeping a small notebook with them at all times to note down ideas and inspiration.

 

8.       Asking newsletter readers what they would like to know about.

 

9.       Linking to something topical that going on, like Mother’s Day, or even a film or book that’s popular at the moment.

 

10.   Finally, if you are really stuck, looking back at an old article and rewriting it to bring it up to date. Of course, this works best if you’ve been doing it for a while. You probably need to choose an article that’s at least three or four years old!

 

When you’ve written your core piece, tweaking shouldn’t take too much time. Indeed, this could be a job that you give to someone else; as a fresh pair of eyes can often bring out an angle you’ve only just touched on.

 If this is appealing to you as a low-effort way of reaching new customers, press and building up great SEO then you might be interested my Promote Your Business Through Writing and Selling Articles course, which also tackles the rather attractive subject of getting paid for your writing too. You can read more about the course here