11 Amazing Ways to Repackage/ Repurpose Your Content to Drive Traffic

We have all heard of an old saying – “Old is Gold”, now it is time to put it into action. If your website has been around for a while with lots of old content, it is time to re-purpose the old content in a new way, churn it and reap benefits.

There is a 90/10 Rule you must follow, promote content 90% of the time and spend 10% of the time writing. It is difficult to come up with an idea to write new content all the time, so here are a few ways to rewrite them. Share and market the content in new ways on the social media and get the conversions you are looking for.

Why re-purpose old (evergreen) content?

1.    Helps you reach a new audience

2.    Great content must never be forgotten

3.    Each content deserves a second chance at promotion

4.    Content deserves a new life

Here is a list of 11 ways to drive website traffic to conversion.

1.   Video format

If your old post was mostly text create a video on the same topic. The video will enhance the quality of the blog post. Post and promote the video on YouTube, Facebook, Email newsletters, on other social media platforms.

2.   Listicle format

It is often easier to write everything in the form of lists as they are short and easy. Categorize your content and list all the article titles include a link and a synopsis of the original posts in your Listicle.

3.   Infographic format

People prefer infographics as they are an easy way to digest more information in a visual graphic format rather than text. You can take the help of various infographic tools like Canva Infographic Maker, Vizualize, Google Developers, Easel.ly, Piktochart, Infogr.am, InFoto Free. Make sure you brand your newly created infographic.

4.   SlideShare presentation

SlideShare Presentations are a great opportunity to educate people in the form of slide presentations. The slides are often backed with stats, images, and graphs and talk about only the most important things. Copy the embed code of the SlideShare presentation on your blog.

5.   Email format

Send emails to your followers and include your old blog posts. Make sure you add appropriate updates to your email so that all new and old followers are reminded of your valuable content. This will keep subscribers coming back for more engaging content.

6.   Podcast format

Read your blog post, record it and use it in a podcast. The podcast is easy and an inexpensive way to reach out to people who are occupied in a way like driving or cooking. You can reach out to voice-over artists to read the article if you do not have a good voice.

7.   E-book format

Find related content, interviews and compile it into an e-book where each post will be one chapter. Compile interviews to formulate an e-book on expert advice. Make it attractive and upload it to Amazon, give it away free or sell it.

8.   Social media posts

If you have evergreen content, repost the content on social media as often as two to three months. Do not let your content die out; refresh and re-share the content, it will sell like hotcakes.

9.   Guide format

If you have some topics you have written a lot about consider compiling it in the form of a newly updated guide. Present it to your audience as “A Complete Guide To…” and see the increase in traffic on your website.

10.  Webinar format

A great way to re-purpose content is in form of a webinar. Since you already have good content, promote the webinar effectively, so you’ll have a good number of attendees.

11.  Newsletter

Collate information from your best blog posts and promote them in a weekly newsletter since you already have a huge list of email subscribers. It is a great way to promote your blog posts and nudge users to your site to read cream content.

The basic idea is to present the same content in different ways as people have different preferences regarding the content they wish to read and the format in which they wish to receive it. These are great ways to drive traffic to the website consistently; build it into an impacting online strategy.
Is there any other way you have had better results, do leave me a comment.

Watch Out, For These Paint Color trends in 2017

It is the end of the year and a paint season for many, with occasions and festivals like the festival of lights ‘Deepawali’ (in India), Christmas and New Year all over the world, just round the corner. Here is a roundup of some colors selected bound to trend in the year 2017 and beyond.

When we select colors, they must make a connection with us. With a growing rainbow of choices, making a choice is difficult. There are several things we see in a color like nuances, touch, feel.

We tend to use colors that rescue our walls, share, allow us an escape into a different world, intensify, pop, blend or clash colors, features a wall.

Subtle nuances of shades and tones are now seen keenly, where Off-white has been replaced by Beige, Cream, Chalk.

Colors have become more than just visual, wherein we now want to touch and feel the colors warming our souls, enveloping our senses. The texture of the paints is now glossy or matte.

Browns have emerged as more earthy, rich bronzed hues. Washed blues and dusky nudes are nostalgic, while nature has a great impact on color choices.

We want nature to beautify the inside of our houses since we spend more time indoors; greens and blues from the color palette are growing. The other colors inspired by nature are the sunsets and sunrise, flowers blooming in the garden; colors that fill us with hope and ecstasy.

If you love grey, add a touch of blue for a timeless look, or silver or slate shades. Add intense colors to feature a wall, ceiling or an area striking, strong, bold colors with freehand paint design or color block effect, or bold saturated colors.

Painting colors on walls are old; paint table legs, ceilings, blocks in the cupboard, take a step towards creativity. Colors never seen together will now feature as partners, time to break all color partnering rules.

If you are afraid of getting it wrong, simply choose to repeat color schemes as they assist in narrowing down the options. Take time to choose your colors, fashion a new color and add some freshness to your home.

20 Freelance Skills Still In Demand - 2016

The work culture is changing rapidly with a lot of uncertainties; a large number of people are taking on freelancing, part-time or full-time, mostly to diversify their skill set, fill their time, earn additional cash or venture in as an entrepreneur.

By 2020, freelancing will represent 40% of the workforce. Here is a list of skills you can jump start a freelance career and become part of the 40%. 
Upwork, the world’s largest freelancing website, released its quarterly skills index in the US recently. This is the list of skill sets growing in demand in 2016 and contains a few of the skills mentioned in the post 6 Freelance Skills In Demand.

7.   Voice-over Artist

A good voice and communication skills are all you need to be a voice-over artist for radio advertisements or corporate videos. The pay is decent with amazing opportunities for youngsters.

8.   Translation

There are immense opportunities for people who can read, write and speak more languages than one. Begin working on freelance translation assignments with strong regional and foreign language skills.

9.   App development

A skill that can churn a huge income, the skills required are back-end computing, mobile UI designing, programming amongst others. The future is bright since people are using their smartphones to browse the internet.

10.   Executive Search Specialist

The sky is the limit when we talk about income in this field, by helping companies find suitable candidates for specialized roles. This lightens the HR work in the corporate while you earn, for all the tedious work put in.

A few more skills:

1.               User experience design

2.               ASP development

3.               Shopify development

4.               English proofreading

5.               SEO writing

6.               Animation

7.               Virtual assistant

8.               Lead generation

9.               Data mining

10.            Video editing

11.            WordPress development

12.            AngularJS development

13.            Java development

14.            Accounting & Bookeeping

15.            Android development

16.            iOS development

17.            Zendesk

18.            MongoDB

19.            Data visualization

20.            AutoCAD

This skill set lists skills in demand in the US, it is growing in many other parts of the world. Opportunities are huge for freelancers who want to earn higher paychecks each month. 
Just take the time to know yourself and find at least 5 skills you are good at and then narrow down to one or two, to begin with. Good Luck! 

Your SEO Samurai

Once your website is developed use the Googlebot tools to see if Google loves your webpage. This warrior crawls through your page to see if everything is 'A-OK' and visitors will be able to view your website the way you want them to. The tools are Fetch and Fetch & Render. 

They are the same with a difference in approach. Google release Fetch and realized that people need more. So they added the Fetch & Render tool which gives you a visual representation of everything.

Difference Between 'Fetch' and 'Fetch & Render'


Fetch will test and simulate the way Google search engine crawls through your site. It is a simulator which will access your page just as Google does, the way it will show the page to visitors. This way you will know if Google ‘loves’ your website/ webpage.

Fetch & Render will crawl through the website and tell you about issues in the elements that are inaccessible, blocked (or cannot see) resources like connectivity, security, images or scripts. Use it to debug any website crawl issues.

Consider Fetch as the first version of Google’s help and Fetch & Render as its updated version to help you see how it will crawl through your website.

When you use ‘Fetch’ it will announce the status as Complete or ‘Partial’. When there are parts of the webpage not accessible by Google during crawl it will indicate with Partial status.

Here are some of the errors you will find:

• Redirected: Your robots.txt or javascript has sent Googlebot to a different page.

• Not found: Google can contact your site, however, can’t find a particular page you stated in the URL.

• Not authorized: Google can contact your site, however, there are pages that are inaccessible by the Crawler and cannot be crawled.

•  DNS not found: The domain name is not registered or reachable.

•  Blocked: The robots.txt file is blocked and inaccessible/ unreachable by Google.

•  Unreachable robots.txt: The file robots.txt is misplaced.

• Unreachable: Google was not able to the page after reaching your server. Probably timed out (slow, check load time).

• Temporarily unreachable: Google was not able to reach the page temporarily, may be due to the network or server issue. Try again.

• Error: Google was disallowed from fetching the web page.

Your Blog is Your Business

Mind your business, however, big or small it may be. If you are a serious blogger and want to make money, treat it like a Business. Are you wondering how to drive your business to success? What kind of blogs is guaranteed to grow?

If you have been writing a few blogs every day, however, your blog is not popular enough to generate revenue, thousands of visitors do not visit your blog, every day. Mind your business, else it will not mind you.

Everyone may find a technique or an idea that works well for them while it may not suit someone else. You can benefit from different strategies, it’s trial and error till you find yours. Do something different and beat competition.

My Blog Test

I write a blog, post it on social media to spread the word around and check the number of visitors on my post. This helps me understand my audience well. You will know when they were attracted to your posts.

The number of visitors on my blog grew when:

·        I write something passionate and inspirational

·        My blogs are useful, informational and unique (read my post on ‘I hustle every day’)

It is important to focus on building an audience, wrote a few articles for new freelancers, about things that save time, helps people achieve or solves a problem (read my post on Time Management for Freelancers).

Design Your Blog

If you need more ideas, you can write something:

1.           Newsworthy

2.           First (something you know and no one has written)

3.           Make someone keen

4.           Controversial

5.           Insightful

6.           Fear factor

7.           Prompts the audience response

8.           Makes audience emote

9.           Save money

10.        Opinions

11.        Talk about Resources

12.        Casual or a Story

13.        Interpret NEWS

14.        Create a feeling of belongingness

Rules of Blogging

Rule #1: Once you start blogging, do it regularly

Write at least two blogs every day. Do not think of it as a pastime activity. Before you write your blog, research well. Take action, even if it is imperfect.

Rule #2: Create a Structure for your Blog

Write your blog in a way that teaches people, like a lesson plan. You should structure your articles; the audience will connect and stay connected. If you write something that is not structured well, your audience will lose interest.

If you are writing a longer piece, more than 300 words) add subtitles, outline prerequisites, and deliverables.

Write your blog in short paragraphs and not write large blocks, break them up into smaller paragraphs as they are easy to read, and indicate the beginning and end of an idea.

Rule #3: AIDA Communication model

Yes, this model works.

A – grab your audience’s Attention

I – create Interest

D – build Desire

A – call to Action

Rule #4: Promote your blog

Is it better to own a business and not tell anyone about it? Think! How your business will grow when you do not tell anyone about it? How will you earn money when no one knows about the products you are selling? Your blog is your business.

It is important to promote your blog 90% of the time while investing 10% writing it. If you know your product’s worth and assume it will attract buyers, that is not going to happen on its own. You must advertise and talk about your blog (business).

Rule #5: Write for yourself

I wrote blogs for various companies and products, however, I began thinking why I cannot work for myself instead of someone else?

If you write on popular social media platforms today, they may cease to exist tomorrow. Your website and blogs will vanish too. All your hard work down the drain. I am not saying that social media platforms are not useful, promote your blog on social media.

Rule #6: Grow your email list and market content

To promote your business further, collect email addresses to send out a short email announcing your new post or some information your audience requires. Grow your list of emails so that it delivers a decent ROI (return on investment).

Rule #7: Work in progress

Add information to your blog posts regularly and update your articles from time to time.

A Disclaimer: My post does not guarantee/ warranty your blog will bring visitors 100%. This is not a one-size-fits-all.

4 Reasons Make Freelancing an Attractive Choice for Many

                    

Many professionals today are choosing a freelance career as it is more attractive and doable, hence, they are opting out of the 9 - 5 office job.

Freelancing entails freedom and offers a huge choice of clients to work with remotely and offer services on a schedule that suits them. Here are the various reasons that make freelancing attractive.

1.   The Internet has changed the way we think, learn, communicate and express ourselves. There is an app for everything and social media platforms have enabled freelancers to communicate and offer their services remotely. Some of the most attractive freelance careers in the market are designing, coding, writing, marketing. Freelancers charge a significantly higher rate for specialized tasks. The internet allows freelancers to connect with clients directly for various freelance skills in demand.

2.   Flexibility, freelance offers to the 9 to 5 jobs is significant. There is no place for office politics, distraction, uncomfortable workspace, uninspiring environment, and time wasted. Freelancers work fast and smart, not hard. Everyone has the flexibility to work the way they want and utilize their time in the best possible way. Freelancers are traveling the world while working remotely. It gives them the flexibility to run errands, exercise, socializing and at the same time working remotely.

3.   Work security and fearlessness has allowed freelancers to connect with several clients at the same time and generate income constantly from different sources rather than one. This reduces their chances of complete and immediate loss of income. They hustle every day only because of the flexibility it offers over the pay.

4.   Confidence makes freelancers choose to freelance as they are in-tune with their core strength and in their ability to create a meaningful career. Most freelancers have quit their 9 to 5 jobs because of the way it aligned with their career goal. They are confident that they can make it happen. There are many freelancers who are helping others pursue their independent careers.

The driving force behind freelancers is the work-flexibility, growth, and self-agency it offers while doing what they absolutely love doing.

6 Freelance Skills In Demand - 2017

Are you looking for additional income? Do you wish to quit your 9-5 job for a better control over your career and work experience?

Freelancing is the best option for most businesses are looking at Freelancers as an answer to the rising competition. Moreover, Freelancers are a minimal business risk, as no training cost is involved and saves a lot of time.

According to a survey conducted by Payoneer, a freelancer on an average works 36 hours at $21 per hour with pretax earnings of $39,000 or more.

Brand yourself, promote your work by blogging as well as on social media platforms. This will help you gain trustworthiness, exposure, and business growth.

Here are the top 10 skills you can learn and earn as a freelancer.

1.  Content writing

This is a huge opportunity if you can write well, know your way with words and good at grammar. All you need is to master a few styles of writing, understand your audience, competition, can perform keyword research and write a catchy title.

If you understand the basics of CSS, SEO, HTML, WordPress, social media specialist then you are bound to succeed. You will see your career soaring high.

2.  Blogging

Start your own blog in any niche, like technology, internet marketing, fashion, travel, entertainment, personal finance or anything that interests you and make more than $100,000 every month.

3.  Web development

Since, there are millions of websites, handling the back-end process and maintenance by working a few hours daily, you can earn a significant amount.

4.  Graphic designing

If you are creative and can design graphics on Photoshop and other software you can certainly make a good career.

5.  Social Media Marketing

If you love interacting with people, make a career in social media marketing. All you need is an understanding of the various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, and Instagram.

You need to help businesses interact with their potential customers online and help the brand increase user engagement. You can earn a significant amount in return.

6.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert

If you know SEO; all businesses need traffic on their website, and they hire SEO experts to consistently rank on page one of the search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing as well as social media sites.

If you have some of these skills, sharpen a few and test the waters. You do not need to quit your 9 – 5 job, freelance during your free hours and create additional sources of income. 

There are a few 'more freelance skills on demand', more about them in my next post.