How To Turn A Blog Post Into A Free Reprint Article

Inspiration 12
Originally uploaded by liquidskyarts

"What should I write my articles about?"

I get all excited when someone with a blog asks me this question, because the answer is easy!

If you have well-tended blog you probably already have a storehouse of article topic inspiration.

Now, notice that I said article inspiration, as we don't advise using content that is already on your site verbatim in an article submission. There is some tweaking and consideration that needs to take place before converting a blog post into an article, but it's really not that hard, and from my viewpoint it is a very efficient way to get the most bang for my writing time and effort. 

I don't submit blog posts as articles verbatim, but sometimes I'll write a blog post that I think would be article-worthy with some re-working. If you have a blog, here are some things to keep in mind as you transform a post into an article suitable for submission.

Make it more formal. First of all, not all blog posts are appropriate for article submissions. Your articles need to be written in a relatively formal, professional way, and because blog posts are written much more frequently and to an in-house audience, they can tend to be more casual. So if you have a post that you think is article-worthy, you will probably need to re-work it keeping in mind that you are speaking to a different audience.

With your blog, you're talking to an in-house group of folks, and you can be as casual as if you were at a back-yard barbecue. But with your article you're venturing out into parts of the internet where folks are not familiar with you, so you'll want to be a little more formal and put your best face forward. It's the difference between hanging out in shorts and a t-shirt at a backyard barbecue with your colleagues, and putting on a business suit to go out to have lunch with a potential client.

Be super-duper careful on your quality of writing. As always, your article must have correct grammar and punctuation. If you make a spelling error on your blog all you have to do is make the correction and re-publish it, but if you spot an error after your article has already been distributed, there's no turning back. Your article is being distributed to websites over which you have no control, and it will potentially be published on those sites for years and years, so it's worth it to review your blog post-turned-article very carefully before submitting it. 

Choose a topic that is ever-green. Yes, on a blog lots of times you'll post timely information, but ideally the articles you submit will be timeless. This means that your article will be of value to your target readers today and years from today.

Limit your outbound links in the article body. Many times blog posts link out a lot as a way to reference other material, but when you submit an article for distribution limit your outbound links as much as possible, as many publishers prefer that links within the article article body are few to none. I would advise that as much as you can, try to include pertinent parts of the information you're referring to within the article body itself rather than having lots of outbound links in your article. 

Rework the article to maintain original, unique content on your own site. Now, let's say that you have a perfectly timeless post with appropriate formality with minimal outbound links–can you submit it as an article exactly as it is?

Technically there is nothing preventing you from doing so, but for the best results we really advise that you rewrite the article so that it is different from the original content. This will keep the content on your own site completely unique, which is a plus in Google's eyes, and it will also let you use your post as a springboard for a re-written article on the same topic. 

If you choose not to re-work your post and instead want to submit it exactly as it appears on your blog, be sure to wait for Google to register that content on your site before submitting it as an article. We do advise that you re-write the post that'll be submitted as an article, but if you don't you at least want to be credited for being the first site to publish the content. 

If you do re-write your post to form a new article, then there is no need to wait for Google to register your content on your site, because the article you're creating will be unique.

Use the blog post as an outline for your article. This is what I do and what saves me bunches of time. The perk of having a blog post to bounce off of is that in the post you have an idea that you've already explored and thought through. I always change everything–the title, the introductory and closing paragraphs, the way the information in the article is phrased, but the blog post is a definite launching pad for the article. 

What types of blog posts have free-reprint article potential? In general, 'how to' posts, 'Top 10 tips' posts, and any type of post that is instructing the reader on how to do something or educating them about something would probably convert well into an article.

Create multiple articles from one post. This is one of the ways that using your blog content as a springboard for your article writing can save you bunches of time. Now, usually an educational blog post will have many opportunities for elaboration, but since it's a post and not a book you streamline your content so that it is of an easily digestible blog post length.

But what I do lots of times is I take one aspect of a post and elaborate on it in an article. For example, let's say my post is about how to do a successful article marketing campaign, and I have listed several brief steps. I can take each one of those steps and turn them into a stand-alone article by elaborating on them. I can have one article about how to craft a strong resource box, another about how to craft a great article title, and another about how to locate a great article submission service (you know that there's one that I highly recommend! ) 

You get the idea–you can elaborate on ideas that you first broach in a blog post, fleshing them out so that they are article-worthy. Depending on the post, you may get several articles out of one post. I would also look for blog posts that are 'how to' or educational posts, because those are the best to convert.

What about you guys? Do any of you glean ideas for articles from your blog or bounce your articles off of your blog posts?