Creating content takes time – whether it’s for an email newsletter, a website, a forum or Facebook post or anywhere else.

There’s no magic wand that you can wave to instantly create content.

Well, OK, there are plugins out there that will claim they can automatically add content to your website but the reality of those is that they’ll probably produce things that are only ever likely to be “read” by robots and the search engine spam algorithm. So whilst we could split hairs and say that it’s do-able, it’s not do-able in any real world sense. And if you get a sales letter that claims otherwise (the more recent ones I’ve seen try to claim that you can re-use YouTube videos instantly) it’s best to run a mile from the sales letter and the person who sent you the link.

Real content takes time.

For instance, this message will take me about 20 to 30 minutes to write, proof read and then mail out.

Most internet marketers leave it at that – an email to their list gets filed in the “that’s an email” box in their mind.

But recently I’ve re-remembered that isn’t a particularly efficient way of doing things: the email gets sent out into the ether, is maybe (or maybe not) part of a follow up campaign, and that’s it.

Except it doesn’t have to be that way.

In fact, I’d strongly suggest that it shouldn’t be that way.

If the content stays as an email, it probably won’t reach beyond your list. Unless you’re superb at writing viral content, you could probably count on the fingers of one hand how many times emails to your list get forwarded to other people.

And if the email was just a reply to one person or a note on a Facebook group, the reach and lifespan is even lower.

But it doesn’t have to be that way…

Recently, I’ve been heeding some of my own advice and making my content work harder and you can do the same.

At the back of my mind when I write an email to my list is the wording because I’ll copy and paste it into a post on my website.

That’s quick and easy to do.

Some of the time I’ll extend the content – in common with the search engines, I tend to like long blog posts. It depends on the word count and various time constraints.

And if the wording is a bit too email specific I’ll amend that when I read the post through before pressing the publish button.

But whether or not that needs to happen, it’s making the content work harder and getting more potential return for the time spent.

You could do the same for your niche and list. It’s also great if you’re just starting out in a niche and need the extra push to write the content for your emails that you know are being read by no-one apart from yourself and maybe one or two others. That goes back to getting in the habit of doing things and if the content isn’t being “wasted” that’s a good incentive to create it.

At the moment, that’s where I’ve been stopping.

But I know I should (and could easily) do more.

As I said, it’s re-remembering things.

I even created a product a while ago that shows what to do in more detail than I can explain in an email – here’s the link if you want to find out more.

(If you’re in my weekly tutor group you’ve got access to that video as part of your membership)

The executive summary is this:

* Once the article has been created, put in your email campaign and on your website, copy and paste it into a slide presentation. I’ve been lax on this because the presentation software I use (part of Libre Office) has an intermittent bug whereby copy and paste sometimes doesn’t work. The developers are regularly told about the fault but are in denial about fixing it. Much the same as the Firefox developers are in denial about the memory leak it suffers from. So I tend to put off using it in that way because sometimes things don’t work and I get frustrated. Whereas in reality I need to find a similar program that doesn’t have that “feature” and use it. The slide presentation should then be put on a site like SlideShare.
* Record the presentation as a screen capture video using Screencast-o-matic or any similar screen grab software, then upload it to YouTube.
* Strip out the audio from the video (it will still make sense because you’ve just been reading out the slides anyway) and upload it as a podcast.
* Pay someone a few dollars on Fiverr to turn it into an infographic – I admit that not every article will lend itself to that option but some will.
* Tweet/Facebook/LinkedIn/Google+ about it

Hey presto!

Your content is breaking a sweat and working harder for you with minimal extra effort on your part.

Go on!

Get in the habit of taking a bit of extra time and effort with your content and making it work an order of magnitude harder for you.