Scaling content adds a new way to use content in all the information you gather in your business. You may already be doing a lot of this without realizing it is content scaling. Ideas such as repurposing, sharing, and curating have been around for a while. But, often it’s not done with much intent. Content scaling allows you to start thinking of your content strategy in a new light and affects content creation positively.

Improved Idea Generation

Scaling content forces you to give each piece of content a lot more thought and consideration and planning ahead. With the additional planning and reimaging of the content, you will come up with more ideas because you aren’t thinking of each piece of content as one thing anymore.

Instead, each piece of content becomes not just a blog post, but research for future pieces of content such as an eCourse, or a video education series, or a podcast. Now that you can look at content differently you’ll be able to bring more creativity to all the content ideas that you generate.

Get More Bang for Your Buck

By strategic rewriting, reformatting, and reusing the content that you have spent a lot of time, money and effort creating, you’ll actually get a lot more bang for your buck.

If you can pay a content creator for 40 or 50 pieces of content each month, based off your product funnel and the information you want to impart on your audience, and then each of these pieces of content are recreated into other formats, and each new creation is shared multiple times on social media, via email marketing and via your affiliates, how much more will you earn off each piece of content?

Get Your Ideas to More People

When you spend time reproducing your content into many different forms, and even languages, and sharing it often through social media, email marketing, and other means, you’re going to get your ideas to more people than you did before.

The more people who see your information, the more leads you’re going to get, and the more creditability you will get for the work that you do. Strategic content creation, curation, and sharing across multiple networks will work in concert with your overall marketing plan.

Develop Thought Leadership

One of the ways in which you become a sought-after person in business is to become a thought leader. Scaled content allows you to become a thought leader by helping you make the most of the content you are creating, plus the content other people have created through curation.

By showing others your expertise through sharing your thoughts on other people’s content, and choosing the right content to share with your audience from other authors, you will become known as a thought leader within your community. This can boost your credibility exponentially among your audience members.

Make Competitors Allies

A great way to bring competitors to your side of the road is to start curating their content. Share their content with your audience with your commentary and thoughts. You can use as much as 50 percent of your content as curated content as long as you add in your own thoughts, link to and provide attribution to the original creators of the content.

Now competitors will see what you’ve done and they may feel a need to comment on what you said, or bring you into a cross-blog conversation that can bring you brand new traffic from their audience. Plus it turns your website or blog into a hub for information revolving around your niche, a one-stop shop for your audience to find the information of the day about your topic.

Multiply Your Message

Once you’ve developed a piece of content in any format, you can immediately multiply the message by reproducing it into new formats. You don’t want to copy and paste the information into a new format; you want instead to use the work as research, and reimagine it into a new format.

The blog post becomes a slide share, and the slide share becomes a YouTube video, and so forth. Use some creativity when moving content to a new format. You want to consider the personality of the network that your content will be pushed out to when crafting the new format. Also, give the new format some of its own personality and creative changes to ensure that it’s not cookie cutter.

Become a Global Brand

Most people read content or use content only in their own language. If you want to reach other audiences in other languages, you can duplicate your content into new languages by having it translated into entirely new websites. This will attract the audience you want to promote your products and services to.

Don’t just use the same content in a different language, but also be sure to consider the values and personalities of the audience that speaks that language. You may need to change more than just the words to make it work. However, adding more languages can boost your selling potential and your reach. Consider English, Spanish, French, German, and any language that has freedom of use and purchasing power on the internet.

Empower Brand Ambassadors

Affiliates, employees, contractors, friends, colleagues…they all need to feel as if they can share the work that you do without concern. Make it easy for them to share your content in their own words on their social media accounts, blogs, and among their contacts.

Push out content that can be edited by your affiliates, employees and contractors to make it original yet still carry the message you want to get out. Teach them how to use the information to make the most of it.

When you are trying to come up with content ideas for your niche, you can use a few basic starters for the content that will work for literally any niche. Once you have these nine ideas, you can break them down into individual points for blog posts, podcasts, videos, eBooks and more.

1. Make a List of Good Points – Every niche has some good points about it that make people feel good. You can write Seven Awesome Things about XYZ and it always fits. Seven Awesome Things about Eating Veggies works, so that means any type of idea will work.

2. Make a List of Bad Points – Just like the good points will work, you can twist it and write the opposite. Using our veggie idea from above, assuming your niche is a vegan blog, you can turn it into Seven Reasons You Don’t Want to Eat Veggies – then make it a funny article saying things like “You hate being healthy” or something like that.

3. Ask (and Answer) a Question – This is a great way to come up with ideas to create content. You can use questions actually asked directly of you, or you can search for questions on any website, blog, forum or social media network that you’ve seen within your niche.

4. Make a List of Facts – This can work really great for content ideas since in reality there are going to be far more than seven or ten facts about your niche. You can literally do this trick as often as you can come up with a list of facts in relation to your niche.

5. Make a List of Misconceptions – Just like there are facts, there are almost always misconceptions about your niche. Perhaps you host a niche website or blog about the subject of bird watching. You can write many articles or create many YouTube videos addressing misconceptions about various breeds of birds or even misconceptions about equipment used in bird watching.

6. Give the Best Advice for Solutions – For each niche there are various problems with corresponding solutions that you are likely offering to the audience. You can use this fact to help create content focused on the best solutions and the best advice for using the solutions properly.

7. Give the Worst Advice for Solutions – Conversely, there are always some solutions that don’t work or that are a bad idea. Why not write about the bad ideas, the bad solutions, and the answers that don’t work, and then turn it around to offer your own solution after talking about what’s wrong with the other ideas.

8. Tell the Top Three Beginning Ideas – In any niche there is a very basic beginning to consider. Starting at the very beginning is often forgotten because it seems so elementary to you, but to someone who is new to the niche it will not seem like minutia, it will seem super interesting and important.

9. Be Controversial – Sometimes, being controversial is a great way to get more ideas for content. You can find a blog post that a mover and shaker talked about and tell why you agree or disagree. You can connect some content with current events. For example, if you run a dieting website or blog, you can discuss a famous person’s weight issues, and give them advice even though you don’t even know them.

These content ideas can work for any niche. Just plug in your niche to the ideas and see for yourself. You’ll soon have a plethora of ideas and will never run out of them, so that you can generate content on a regular basis for your niche.

Guest blogging on popular blogs can help you spread awareness as well as help you build up your reputation as someone with knowledge and authority. But first you need to know the best way to approach a blog owner with your pitch. There are some pitfalls to avoid and some ways to frame your offer so that they can’t refuse.

The first thing you want to do is send a personal email. The personal email needs to cover the following points of fact.

1. Have a Proper Salutation to the Owner of the Blog – You want them to know that you know who they are. Do not write to dear blog owner or some other generic term. Do enough homework that you know who you’re writing to. In fact, if you know you will have to email a gatekeeper first, address the gatekeeper directly.

2. Introduce Yourself – Let them know who you are and what your expertise is and how it relates to their audience. They will want to understand how you can help them, not how they can help you.

3. Educate Them – Not just about you, but about what you know about them and their visitors. If they realize you know a lot about their audience, it will impress upon them how much you can probably teach their audience.

4. Promise Originality – The days of writing one guest post and sending the same post to everyone is over. Therefore, you should tell them that you’ll write each post for them and only them.

5. Fill the Gaps – Every blog owner has a gap of content to fill. If you can identify that for the blogger, you’ll be able to break in to blogging for them. If you’re not sure, offer to guest blog within a certain topic where your expertise lies, but to their specific order.

6. Explain How You’ll Promote the Blog Post – Don’t stop there; explain to the owner of the blog how you’ll promote the blog post that you write to your audience too. That will bring more visitors to their site since you share a common target audience.

7. Supply Images – In addition to a blog post, tell them you’ll supply original images; not just stock photos that may or may not be legal to use, but images that you have made or make yourself just for the post.

8. Offer an Affiliate Program to Them – Most bloggers who take guest blog posts also offer a biographical box at the end of the blog post where you can post a link to your website or sales page. Offer that the link can be an affiliate link where appropriate.

Finally, let them know that you will follow up with every comment on the blog post, and continue to promote it for a specific period of time. If you follow through with everything you say, it’s more than likely they’ll ask you to guest blog again and again. Becoming a regular guest blogger on a popular blog can expand your credentials and ramp up your authority exponentially.

It can seem daunting to write an entire eBook. But, the truth is that writing an eBook is no harder than writing a blog post. Just learn to take it one page at time and not worry about or think about the entire thing at once. These tips can help you create your first eBook without breaking a sweat.

1. Come Up With an Idea – Before you even begin with writing a book, you need to know what the idea is. Come up with an idea for your book that fits your target audience’s needs and solves problems for them.

2. Brainstorm Your Idea – Once you come up with an idea, brainstorm the idea in order to come up with enough content ideas for an eBook. Some people like writing outlines; other people like using mind maps. You can brainstorm however you want, but give yourself a time limit to cut down on procrastination.

3. Write Down Main Points to Cover – One you’ve fleshed out your idea, write down some main points to cover. The main points should become different chapters for your eBook.

4. Name the Chapters – Once you know the main points you want to cover, turn them into compelling chapter titles.

5. Write a Summary for Each Chapter – As you write the chapter titles, ensure that you can write a short summary of what will be included in each chapter.

6. Flesh Out Each Chapter – Make a list or small outline for each chapter with the points you wanted to cover in the summary.

7. Write an Intro and Conclusion for Each Chapter – It might seem odd but writing your intro and conclusion first can help you stay focused on what you are supposed to cover within each chapter.

8. Format the Book – Make your book look pretty now so that the formatting flows from one page to the next without worry. Remember to use headers and subheads so that you can easily insert the page of contents.

9. One Day at a Time – Remember to take your book writing one day at a time. If you’re writing a 10,000 word eBook, and you only write 500 words a day (about the length of an average blog post), you will only take 20 days to finish your eBook. Not bad.

Creating an eBook isn’t really any different than writing many different blog posts about the same topic. In fact, you could technically take old blog posts, organize them in a cohesive manner, update them for the new format and publish that as your book. If you take it one day at a time and break it up into small pieces, you’ll have your book ready for publishing in no time.

You are blogging and creating content but you feel like nothing is working like you want it to. Your sales aren’t increasing, your newsletter isn’t getting new subscribers, and it just feels like you’re wasting your time. If that is the case with your content marketing, take heart that you can access where you are and start over anytime.

1. Determine Your Why – When you are creating any one piece of content, do you know what the purpose of it is? Each content choice must have a reason for being in order to be successful. Is the content there to inform your audience about a problem? Is the point of the content to get more subscribers? Perhaps the point is to sell a new product or service? If you don’t know what the point is, it’ll be hard to get anyone to take action.

2. Understand Your Audience – When you produce any content it’s imperative that you know who you’re creating it for. Try developing buyer personas and write the content to the “customer of one” instead of creating it for a nameless person that you don’t know. This can help you develop very personalized content that gets results.

3. Know Your Niche – You may think that you know your area of expertise but the fact is, a niche might change a bit over time as technology improves. Keep up to date in your industry so that you’re ready for changes and trends that may develop.

4. Follow Your Competition – The best way to differentiate your content marketing from your competition is to watch what they’re doing. Join your competition’s lists, and look at the content they’re sending out. Can you determine if it’s working well for them or not? Can you decide how to do it a little bit better?

5. Know the Buying Process – There is a set buying process that your audience will take part in, even if they don’t realize it, and it’s important to realize where people are in the buying process. Typically it works something like this: Awareness, information search, evaluation, decision and purchase. Plus, after purchase your customer will evaluate again on whether or not to buy from you again.

6. Refine Your Strategy – If you have no strategy, or you feel as if what you’re doing isn’t working, take the time to work on refining your strategy to work better. Base this on the information you’ve gathered about your customers, the niche, your produce and/or services as well as the buying process.

7. Make Content Marketing a Priority – To ensure that content marketing will work, it’s important to do it on a consistent basis as a priority in your marketing efforts. Hire the right people to help you, and place it at the right level of importance in your overall marketing strategy.

8. Promote the Content You Create – Content cannot just be created and that’s the end. Use promotion strategies such as on and off page SEO, social media sharing, and other means to promote the content so that it is seen.

9. Create Compelling Content – No one wants to consume boring cookie cutter content. Ensure that the content matches the needs of your audience, speaks to them on their terms and provides value in and of itself to your audience.

Finally, content marketing is about the long haul. Results aren’t going to happen overnight. Continue to produce high quality, relevant, consistent content that has a purpose and provides value and you will see the results you desire.

Coming up with blog topics is often the bane of any blogger’s existence. Coming up with content for a blog for the same niche day after day and year after year can seem impossible. But, the truth is, it’s not really that difficult if you plan ahead. You need to focus on your niche and your audience with each piece of content, as well as understand the purpose of the blogging content.

* Read about Your Industry – Keeping up to date about your industry will go far in helping you have ideas about what to write about. Information that experts talk about in magazines and in the news is wonderful fodder for future blog posts.

* Read Competitors’ Blog Posts – Choose a few high-powered competitors in your niche to read what they have to say. Sign up for their newsletters, and read on a regular basis what they have to say about your niche. You will come up with ideas from reading.

* Brainstorm Each Day – Take a few minutes each day to put pen to paper (or keyboard to document) to write down any idea that comes to mind. Just make a list as fast as you can about different topics to write about on your blog.

* Ask for Guest Bloggers – Keep your blog open for guest blog posts. If you bring in other experts, people will actually view you as even more of an expert. Establish rules or originality and uniqueness for guest bloggers.

* Come Up with a New View – As you read what others are saying, or even what you’ve said in the past, try to come at the subject matter from a new angle. Perhaps if you wrote “10 reasons to Blog Daily”, you might pick just one of the reasons to expand on.

* Repurpose Older Content – Older content likely needs to be updated, but instead of updating it where it stands, why not write a new post about it, link to the old post from the new post and vice versa. Explain how the posts differ today and why.

* Ask Readers for Questions – Readers and your audience are the perfect people to get content ideas from. Blog posts are the perfect place to highlight a reader’s question and answer them. You can then also add them to your FAQ.

* Keep a Notebook Ready for Inspiration – You’re going to think of things to blog post about during the day when you’re not able to write. Find a way to keep track, either on paper or via a recording device on your smartphone or both. Don’t think you’ll remember later. You won’t. Even if it’s just a small inkling of an idea, keep track of it.

* Consider the Minutia – Sometimes bloggers get carried away with the big picture. However, you can take it down smaller than that and focus on the minutia, the things beginners want to know, in order to come up with more blogging topics.

* Change Formats – If something is a textual piece, you can change it to a podcast or a video. If it’s a “how to” piece then you can change it to a more informational piece instead of a how to. Switching up the format of a past blog post can help you create a new way to tell your audience about something important.

* Curate Other People’s Content – This is mining for content that your audience would enjoy that is relevant to your niche, and then sharing it with your audience via a link on your blog. But, there is a little more to it than that. Be sure to add your own thoughts in your introduction to the information you are sharing.

When it comes to coming up with content on a regular basis for your blog, you cannot wait for or rely on inspiration. You need to keep records of ideas, develop a publication calendar based on the products and services that you want to promote and create a regular writing schedule. Believe it or not, a regular planned writing schedule will produce better work than just waiting around for motivation. Using these suggestions should give you endless content ideas.

You’ve likely heard the rumor. Guest blogging is out; it’s dead. Reading that out loud is a little jarring, but don’t worry – it’s not true. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

What is out is republishing the same work in multiple places. What is out is generic keyword-rich blog posts that have nothing to do with the website, being posted by people just trying to get backlinks. What’s out is lame and boring articles and blogs that don’t put the audience first. What’s out is blanketing the web with short blog posts that are either identical or almost identical, and never following up.

If you really want to guest blog, this is how you do it.

* Know the Audience You’re Writing For – There is no point posting a blog post just anywhere, or writing it for an audience you don’t know about. Know the audience and write directly for that particular audience. They should know that they’re still on the blog they went to when reading your guest post. Try to match the style that the blogger uses to make your blog fit in.

* Write Only Original Blog Posts for That Particular Blog – Don’t regurgitate anything for a guest blog post. Write something new and original for that particular blog. The readers of that blog are used to a certain personality. While you want to be yourself, you should do things the way the owner of that blog wants them done.

* Publish a Blog Post Only Once – Don’t reuse the content elsewhere. It now belongs to that blog, forever. If you want to write about that topic again, of course you can, but you need to keep that blog unique to avoid duplicate content issues for you and the blog owner.

* Guest Blog Only Where Your Audience Reads – Don’t put guest blog posts anyplace just to get backlinks to your website. Put guest blog posts in places that your audience reads. Make sure there is a real reason for the guest blog post.

* Write Posts That Are Not Sales Pages – A guest blog post is not the place to pitch your offerings and make a sales page. It should be an informative, educational and engaging blog post that provides value to the reader and the blog owner.

* Promote the Blog Post – Once you’ve written it you must also promote it. You should inform your list, inform your blog about the post, and also promote it via social media as hard as you would anything else you have written.

* Answer Comments on the Blog Posts – When someone comments on your blog post, you should respond to them. The more you respond, the more the viewers will appreciate your post and you.

* Follow Up with the Owner of the Blog – Give it a week or two and then follow up with the blog owner to find out if they were satisfied with the results of the blog post. If they are satisfied, would they like you to contribute regularly? If not, why not, so that you can do better?

If you really want to guest blog, do it strategically. Find blogs that have a rating higher than or equal to yours, which cater to your audience but which are not direct competition to you. Offer the blog owner an opportunity to join your affiliate program, or make one, so that they can get credit for traffic sent by their blog from your post.

When it comes to building traffic to your website, the thing to remember the most is that quality matters more than quantity. You’ve likely heard before that “less is more,” and that’s definitely true when it comes to building traffic to your website using methods like blogging, social media marketing and more. But, in some ways the idea of quality over quantity is not even a real choice.

The Importance of Quality

The real questions you should answer are:

* What is your purpose? – Explain the reasons behind doing what you’re doing in one to three sentences.

* Who is your audience? – Explain who you’re doing it for by creating a persona of your ideal client or customer.

* How fast do you want to succeed? – What is the timeline of your success story?

The thing is, high quality should be a given. The next question is how much time you have to devote to producing the type of quality that you want to produce, and how quickly you want to experience success. It’s all a numbers game and easy to break down if you understand your niche and industry.

A Plan of Action

When you determine the type of traffic you want, it will dictate the type of content you create for your audience. Then, figure out how many visitors you need to get to your website to convert to a certain number of sales. Work out how each piece of content you use, and each pay per click you add, affects those goals, and from this you can create a plan of action.

That plan needs to include both quality and quantity, at least up to the point where you are generating the amount of traffic you need to generate in order to earn the amount of money you’ve planned to earn.

For example, suppose in your niche an average daily visitor total is 200 a day, your product costs 20 dollars and your conversion rate is 5%. This means that for every 200 visitors, you’ll make 10 sales. That would be, in this case, $200 dollars per day gross earnings for your efforts. If you want to have more results, you’ll need to produce above average traffic or increase the price of your product.

The best way to increase traffic is to increase the amount of activity on your website through blog posts and various other types of content that you offer your audience, but to keep the quality high. So, that’s why the idea of a choice between quality and quantity is really not a real choice. Depending on your goals, you may have to do both. You’re always going to need to produce high quality information or products – that’s expected. But, you may bring the quantity of the content you add to your website or the development of new products up faster or slower depending on your goals.