Making the Most of your Content

Having to constantly come up with content for a blog as well as several social media platforms is one of the main complaints of authors, business owners and every other person who hates marketing. One answer is to re-use your created content.

Just repeating the same content will bore and aggravate your readers, but it’s possible to re-purpose your content in a natural way. Take a look at the examples below and remember, you can always modify your approach if your followers find it too repetitive. Measure their response by checking the analytics on your blog, at Twitter and on Facebook.

The audience is often different on Facebook than at Twitter, so go ahead and post on both platforms. Also, since people tend to only read real-time Tweets, your posts on Twitter at different times of the day will be usually read by different audiences. 

Don’t let all these posts scare you off! By using a scheduling tool like Hootsuite, you can write everything up at one time for automatic posting throughout the week. The free Hootsuite account is sufficient for most people.

So, assuming you have a blog on your website and profiles at Facebook and Twitter, here is a hypothetical schedule for reusing your content in a steady stream to promote your books:

Sunday

Morning Facebook post:  “The perfect cup of coffee for writing my blog!” with photo.

Lunchtime Tweet:  “Working on a new blog post today!”

Evening Tweet:  “Finished my new blog post. Hooray!”

Monday

Blog post:  “No, I Didn’t Put You in my Book.”

Morning Facebook post:  “New post on my blog! ‘No, I Didn’t Put You in by Book’” with link to blog post.

Lunchtime Tweet:  “No, I Didn’t Put You in my Book – Latest blog post” with link to blog post.

Evening Tweet:  “Today’s blog post:  ‘No, I Didn’t Put You in my Book” with link to blog post.

Tuesday

Morning Facebook post:  “People always ask me if I ‘put them in my book,’ and I hate to tell them that they’re just not interesting enough!” with link to blog post.

Lunchtime Tweet:  “Why you’re just not interesting enough to be in my book.” with link to blog post.

Evening Tweet:  “Real people just aren’t interesting enough to be book characters.” with link to blog post.

Wednesday

Morning Facebook post:  “Once, a lady almost hit me with her purse because she was sure I had based a not-very-nice character in my book on her!” (This is a quote from the blog post)

Lunchtime Tweet:  “A lady once wanted to slug me for ‘putting her in my book.’ #AuthorQuotes”

Evening Tweet:  “Being an author can be dangerous to your health!” with link to blog post.

Thursday

Morning Facebook post:  “It’s Throwback Thursday! Last year I blogged about how LONG it was taking to edit my book. And now it’s actually on book shelves! Yay!”

Lunchtime Tweet:  “Adventures in manuscript editing. #tbt” with link to old “Editing” blog post.

Evening Tweet:  “For #tbt, I’m reliving how painful editing my last book was!” with link to blog post.

Friday

Morning Facebook post:  “Hey, author peeps! Do you base the characters in your books on people you know? I never do because reality is never as cool as fiction.” (Based on a quote from the blog post.)

Lunchtime Tweet:  “Real people are never as cool as the people I make up in my head. #AuthorQuotes”

Evening Tweet:  “I wonder how many authors use real people as characters in their books?”

Saturday

Morning Facebook post:  “Did you miss Monday’s blog post? New one coming next Monday!” with link to blog post.

Lunchtime Tweet:  “In case you missed it: ‘No, I Didn’t Put You in my Book.’” with link to blog post.

Evening Tweet:  “No, I didn’t put you in my book – Making up characters. #fiction” with link to blog post.

That’s an entire week of posts on three platforms from a single blog entry! You can learn even more about sharing content, if you’re interested, but this is plenty to get started. Use your creativity and the tools available to reach out to your readers and build both traffic and relationships. 

Photo by Jess Bailey Designs