Re-Using Content

Repurposing content is not a terribly new concept. Webmasters that picked up on the trend have benefited from traffic surges for a while now. Repurposing content is all about presenting the same content in a variety of different ways, or using different mediums to present the same content. Webmasters can manipulate content in order to provide the same content in any number of different formats.

Why would publishers want to do this? There are a number of benefits to repurposing content, not the least of which is that it allows customers to select the format they wish to access your information. Additionally, repurposing content often does not require a lot of extra time, expense, or additional effort. The content itself already exists -- the format is just different. Additionally, there are a number of software tools available that can assist users in easily repurposing the content.

The following are different ways to repackage existing content or to present content in a different format...

RSS Filtering & Merging

Publishers can apply filters to existing RSS feeds, and then merge the feeds into a single filtered feed that contains themed content. This allows webmasters to present content from existing RSS feeds in a different way. There are a number of automated tools for RSS filtering and merging, such as Yahoo Pipes, RSSfilter, and RSSmesh.

Text to Audio

Publishers can convert existing text articles into audio files, just like book publishers convert printed and bound books into AudioBooks. Podcasts are the current rage, and many people use their driving commutes to listen. Capture the interest and attention of web visitors by providing audio versions of text documents. This allows visitors a choice of either reading the content, or listening to it.

Details on converting text to audio - http://www.podcasting-tools.com/instant-podcasts.htm

PDFs

Provide product manuals and other documentation as both web content and downloadable PDF files. Give web visitors a choice by providing a variety of file formats for tutorials, documentation, and articles, and make sure that one of these formats is a PDF file. Many computer users are suspicious of MS-Word Doc files because of the inherent risks of computer viruses associated with Word documents and similar files. PDFs have become a stable format for public documents. Publishing any text-based content in PDF format is very easy to do, and there are a variety of tools, such as PDF995, that allow you to convert documents or images into PDF format quickly and easily.

Localize

If you target an international market, consider localizing your website and it's content into other languages. Offer foreign language versions of your website content and documentation. The world is becoming smaller and smaller, and the international markets now open to small businesses have expanded. Breakdown the language barriers to capitalize in new markets.

Repurposing content is not overly complicated. It simply gives your customers more options, and allows you to further leverage existing content, possibly benefiting from additional mediums.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.