Ever wonder what it actually looks like to create and launch a course from step 1 to step done?
If so, then stick around, cause that’s why I’m writing The Fire Path Project series: to give you an inside look at how I went from answering an email to creating an online course – step by step.
In my intro post to The Fire Path Project, I outlined the 9 steps that I took in order to go from no idea to launching a course.
Step 1 was: Listen to your audience.
Step 2 was: Create content.
Step 3 is: Repurpose your content.
So what does that mean exactly, how can you do it in your business, and why is it important? We’re going to take a look in just a second, but first…
A common theme
You’ll start to notice a common theme as we walk through these 9 steps, and that theme is: each step is a lot easier if you’ve achieved each of the steps that come before it.
This series is not about a quick and sneaky way of coming up with a course idea and launching it in 1 day – or even in 1 week, or 1 month – it’s about sharing a proven process (key words) that contains a series of steps that, when done in order (and with success), will net you a course idea.
I bring this up because step 3: repurposing your content, of course, requires that you’ve already listened to your audience, and created content that they’ve given you feedback on so you know they want and need it. Otherwise, you’ll have nothing to repurpose.
Okay, now let’s take a look…
How to repurpose your content
Once you have a piece of content (or a series, like I had with The Fire Path email campaign), then you can start to repurpose that content on different channels or mediums.
You can think of these multiple channels or mediums as platforms that will allow you to distribute the same content, but in a different format.
For example, once I had created The Fire Path email campaign and people were actually opting in and giving me positive feedback about the content, I decided to create blog posts out of each of the chapters.
The first “repurposing” I did was from email campaign to blog post.
Then, I came up with the idea to launch Kate’s Take, which is my podcast, and for the first 16 episodes, I read each of the chapters of The Fire Path.
The second “repurposing” I did was from blog post to podcast episode.
My next step?
Well, remember when I talked about receiving emails from those who were going through The Fire Path campaign – those who were giving me feedback and saying it would be great to have all of the emails put together in a single document?
I not only took their advice and repurposed the campaign content by putting it together in a PDF download (when your audience is asking for something reasonable, it’s integral that you listen and take action), I also thought, “Why not publish this on the Amazon platform as yet another medium to reach people with this content?”
The third and forth “repurposing” I did was from email series to PDF and then to book.
Okay, so that all came on pretty quick, right?…
In my last post, I’m simply writing out an email sequence for The Fire Path, and now all of the sudden it’s on the blog, a podcast, in a PDF and on Amazon as a book?
I didn’t stop there.
I also created The Fire Path Guide and used that as my opt in giveaway in order to bring all of these different, separate mediums together.
So in the campaign; on the blog and the podcast; and throughout the entire book, my call to action was to visit TheFirePath.com in order to download the free guide. The reason I did this was in order to start collecting email addresses of those who were expressing interest in The Fire Path as a whole.
This will play an important role in later steps in The Fire Path Project when we start talking about marketing.
*Bonus tip: Start building your interest or email list as soon as possible.
The fifth “repurposing” I did was from book to guide.
Of all of these examples, you’ll notice there are multiple mediums you can leverage to repurpose your content, and there are several that I’ve yet to even mention, like:
- YouTube (creating some type of video content);
- Social Media (creating posts and images to get the word out about your content);
- Infographics (a visual look at the content you’re describing);
- Slideshare (another way of showing visually the process or content you’re sharing);
- Guest posting (sharing the same outline of content on someone else’s blog);
- Guest podcasting (sharing the same outline of content on someone else’s podcast)…
Again, once you have a piece of content you’ve created as a direct result of listening to your audience (for feedback to confirm it’s something they want and need) – or it could be a series, like I had with The Fire Path email campaign – THEN you can start to repurpose that content on different channels or mediums.
A timeline
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the time that it took to repurpose all of this content. It sounds like it happened fast when I talk about it here in rapid succession, but it took me well over 1 year to create all of the content I mentioned above.
When I first started The Fire Path campaign series, I was still very new to the entrepreneurial world, and so I was also focusing on multiple other projects and getting comfortable in my role at EntrepreneurOnFire.
So here’s a snapshot of what my timeline for all of this content looked like:
Why it’s important to repurpose your content
Repurposing content is important (and awesome) for several reasons.
1. You’re able to leverage a single piece of content on multiple mediums
This not only saves you a lot of time, but it also helps you establish yourself as an expert in a particular area because you’re spreading a single message through your content across multiple mediums. That focus can go a long way in terms of how others are seeing and receiving you.
2. You’re expanding your reach
Not everyone likes to read blogs, or listen to podcasts, or watch videos. Expanding your reach through different mediums allows you to put yourself – and your content – in front of a much wider audience than you would be able to otherwise. Make your content available so your potential audience can consume it the way they want to consume it.
3. You’re improving your skills in multiple areas
The 2 things I had considerable experience doing when I joined the team at EntrepreneurOnFire were writing and marketing, and so writing the emails and sending out the campaign weren’t foreign to me.
However, learning about entrepreneurship, how to create a solid foundation for your business, bringing a lot of moving pieces together and making sense out of it all, getting used to Infusionsoft, launching a podcast, continuing to listen to my audience, interact with and engage our community on social media, create opt in pages and thank you pages, publishing a book – these were all brand new things to me. I’d never, ever done any of these things before – ever.
If you’re seriously about going from no idea to launching an online course, then I strongly encourage you to start getting out of your comfort zone as soon as possible, because this process takes learning a lot of new things, failing several times, and pivoting when needed. Don’t let it scare you, embrace it.
4. You’re connecting and building relationships with people in other niches
Launching the podcast, writing the book and publishing on Amazon, doing guest posts and guest interviews on others’ podcasts – all of these things helped me connect and build relationships with people in other niches (like podcasting, like publishing, etc).
Repurposing your content is such a HUGE opportunity that can help you maximize your time, expand your reach, grow your audience, learn and improve upon new skills, and connect with others who may or may not be within your industry or niche.
Now, over to you! What channels or mediums will you use to repurpose your content?
In the next post we’re moving on to step 4: Test your idea (listen to your audience again).
