Surprising Content Creation Hacks That Work

The thing that stops a lot of people from trying to monetize content is that content creation takes time, and time is our most valuable commodity.

But I don’t think you should let that stop you.

The bottom line is that there are ways to streamline content creation, so that you create multiple products and product lines in the time it might normally take to create a single product. The key is understanding and using content creation hacks. Here are some of my favorites for you to try.

Break Down a Large Piece of Content

The first hack I want to share involves taking long-form and breaking it down into bite-size pieces. Here are a few examples:

1. Take a presentation and write a short blog post about each slide.
2. Pull content from a public domain book and use it to create a blog post, printable, or social media post.
3. Take a chapter from an eBook you’ve written and turn it into a white board video.
4. Break a single piece of PLR content into several pieces and post them separately.

These are just a few ideas. But taking an existing piece of content and putting a microscope on a small piece of it is a great way to create content quickly.

Repurpose Old Content

Not all content you repurpose needs to be long-form content. Do you have an old blog post that’s performed well? Consider putting it into a new format to find a new audience for it. Here are some suggestions:

1. Turn the data in a blog post into an infographic using Canva or Visme.
2. Take list items from a post and turn them into a slideshow to post on SlideShare.
3. Take quotes from a blog post and turn them into images to share on social media.

Any piece of content you create can find a new life if you take a few minutes to reformat and reconceptualize it. Considering how many online tools there are to help you repurpose content quickly, this is a hack that anybody can use.

Create Templates for Your Content

Of all the content creation hacks out there, templates are my favorites. A template is a blank slate you can use to create content very quickly.

There are tons of free and premium templates online, plus tools you can use to create your own templates. I love Canva and Microsoft Sway for creating templates, but you can also do it in PowerPoint.

Once you have made and saved a template, you can use it to create multiple products quickly. For example, if you create a single template for a bullet journal, you can make minor changes to it and create printable products and journals in just minutes.

Start with Something Easy

Not all hacks are about duplicating or repurposing content. Sometimes, when I write a blog post, I get stuck. Maybe I’m just having an off day or I’m tired – but the prospect of writing it seems daunting. That’s when I take a shortcut.

This trick is an easy one. I give myself permission to write out of order. If writing the introduction to a post is tripping you up, skip it and write the body of the post first. Or pick a section that you know you can write quickly and do that first. I find that the sense of accomplishment I get from making progress often frees me up to tackle the content that feels more difficult to do.

Piggyback on Trending Topics

What happens when you’re stuck and can’t come up with any ideas for new content? One of my favorite hacks is to piggyback on what other content creators are doing.

It’s important to note here that I’m not talking about borrowing content or using somebody else’s work. I’m only talking about inspiration.

One of the ways to do it is to head over to BuzzSumo and type in a keyword. Here’s an example of what I found when I typed in “content creation hacks”:

As you can see, you get information about which posts are getting the most engagement. This hack can help you identify popular topics and give you some ideas about what to write about.

Update Old Content to be Evergreen

If you don’t know about evergreen content, now is the time to learn. Evergreen content is content that never goes out of date. Some topics lend themselves better to evergreen content than others. But let me give you an example from my own printables experience.

When you create planner pages, you have two basic options:

1. Create a dated planner where each page has a date on it.
2. Create a fill-in-the-blank planner where the customer fills in the date.

The first option is not evergreen and the second one is. Evergreen content can be sold indefinitely because it doesn’t lose its usefulness or expire.

If you have old content or old products that are not evergreen, I highly recommend making them evergreen if you can. It’s a quick and easy way to update content and turn it into something that earns a steady stream of passive income.

Roundup Posts and Listicles

When you’re creating content for your audience, the main thing to keep in mind is that you want to provide value to them. That doesn’t always need to mean that you create something from scratch. Sometimes, just doing a bit of research and commentary is enough.

Roundup posts and listicles are two examples. If you read a lot about a topic or you have some favorite things – for example, I recently wrote a post about my favorite content marketing books – you can turn them into original content to share with your users.

The key with this content hack is to make sure that you add something of your own. It can be simple. Just a couple of sentences of commentary about why you think an article or book is worth reading, or a tool is worth using, can be enough to keep your audience happy.

Conclusion

Content creation doesn’t need to be a time-consuming endeavor. Using the content creation hacks I’ve listed here will help you continuously generate the content that your audience craves – and grow your business as a result!