It’s often said that online, content is king.  Certainly it’s central to social media, which often revolves around sharing that content, whether it be via blog posts, status updates, videos or countless other channels. Creating original content is what helps to get your name out online, build your credibility and drive traffic to your website.

For busy entrepreneurs, it can often feel like a struggle to consistently come up with new and varied content that we’re told is so crucial to building our Internet empires.  However, let me offer you some relief by letting you know that you probably don’t need to be quite as prolific as you think.  The good news is, re-purposing your content is perfectly acceptable—in fact, it’s vital to your online success.

One piece of content can live on in multiple formats, saving you time, energy and creative frustration.  For example, let’s say you begin with content you’ve prepared for an in-person talk or speaking gig or for a live teleseminar given over the phone.  Here are five ways that one piece can be recycled in order to leverage your effort:
1) Create a blog post

Whether the talk you have come up with is a basic outline or collection of bullet points or a full-blown script, you can easily craft what you’ve put together into an informative post for your blog.
2) Create an article

Taken one step further, that blog post can be fleshed out into article form and submitted to various online directories.
3) Create a free report

Why not use your existing content to put together a freebie that will entice your website visitors to sign up for your email list?  The report doesn’t need to be more than a few pages (if that) and can be a great way to introduce your expertise to someone who is looking to find out more about you and your business.
4) Create a podcast

We’ve concentrated on the written word, but people like to learn in different ways—audio being one of the most popular.  Create a recording of your content and either upload to your blog or website or submit it to various podcast directories including iTunes.
5) Create a video

It should be easy to extract 3-5 key points from what you’ve written and simply present them in a short, informational video.  Upload it to YouTube and don’t forget to mention your own site’s URL in the video so they can visit and find out more.

So now you know not to be daunted by those business owners on the web who appear to be cranking out an endless stream of content.  Luckily, you don’t have to be in creation mode twenty-four hours a day—just work smart, not hard by taking one piece of your content and using it in multiple ways.