How to create more content without burning yourself out

Content creation is one of those tasks all online business owners need to do. Without content, you have nothing to share on your website and social media platforms. Content promotes what you do and showcases your expertise, so you know you need to create more content to keep up the visibility. But creating all of that content takes up valuable time. And if you’re looking to get visible, you’ll often fight the urge to be on every platform you can - leading to a risk of burning yourself out.

So how can you create more content, without burning yourself out? Read on to discover the five different ways you can easily do just that!

Create more content by repurposing what you create

There are so many different ways you can repurpose the content you create. You start with a main pillar piece of content, such as a blog or video, and then carve it up into smaller pieces. These smaller pieces can be used for your social media posts, graphics, memes and quotes.

You can also look to recreate the existing piece into a new format. A blog can be turned into slides or read out to create a video. A video can be transcribed and changed into a blog or podcast. 

If you’re looking for step-by-step instructions on how to repurpose your content, check out the 10-step process in this blog post: How to be seen everywhere at once as well as the info in this one: How to repurpose blog content for social media. 

Syndicate your content

Syndication is another way of expanding your reach, without having to create more content from scratch. Sites such as Medium and Thrive Global both take articles that have previously been published elsewhere. You’ll need to rework the ending of your piece though, if you have a direct call to action on it to your site, as they don’t like you promoting yourself directly within your article. If you’re looking to drive traffic to your site, you can always add a sentence that states ‘originally published on [your website].’

And let’s not forget your own LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a great place to republish your existing blog posts too! You can post as is, but it’s worth spending a few minutes rewriting the introduction and ending. That way, you have a new article to post on there, that covers the same content! You can also experiment with posting just the opening paragraph in a post, linking back to the original post on your website.

Think content curation as well as content creation

As mentioned in my earlier blog Why you should be using content curation in your business marketing, your business needs content. Content curation is simply the act of sharing content created by someone other than you. For example, sharing someone else’s blog post or discussing the merits of using a complementary service to yours, and then linking to their lead magnet.

Content curation helps you save time and energy, whilst minimising the need to create more content. You can use sites such as Feedly to gather together content that interests you, so you can go through and share at a later date. It’s also a great idea to use the inbuilt ‘save’ and ‘bookmark’ functions within the different social media platforms to do the same.

Reshare existing content

Don’t always think that you need to always be creating content either. If you want to avoid burning yourself out with all the content you need to create, start resharing your existing content. Blog and social media posts don’t have to be a one-time-done scenario. The popular posts will always have value in them, so they can be reshared.

Use a tool such as Missinglettr to turn your blogs into automated campaigns. It takes your blog’s RSS feed and creates a series of posts for you to approve and schedule, over the upcoming months. You can then schedule them to your different social media platforms, over a period of time that suits you.

Introduce a guest writer

A final suggestion is to introduce a guest writer. Many business owners are looking for additional places to guest publish their content and it’s a win-win for both of you. You get additional content onto your site, without creating it yourself, and they get a link back to their site and the potential of reaching a bigger audience.

Whilst we’re talking about guest writing, how about looking into being a guest yourself? You will gain the same benefits as previously mentioned, plus some sites are happy for you to use existing content. Of course, you’ll need to check they’re OK for repurposed content - but if they’re not, it’s a prime opportunity to raise your profile and either expand or rework a subject you’ve already covered on your own site.

Content creation is one of those tasks all online business owners need to do. Without content, you have nothing to share on your website and social media platforms. But constantly coming up with new ideas and creating content can eat into your time and lead to burnout. 

So use the ideas above to get into the routine of working smarter with your content creation. There’s no need to create more content if you already have lots of content available to you. Not only will the ideas above help free up your time a little more, but they also ensure you’re making your initial ideas last longer and work harder for you. And as an added bonus, they help get your business in front of a wider audience too.