Are you tired of wasting so much time writing content to publish on different platforms? After reading this guide, you’ll know how SEO experts save their time and energy yet yield results. This process not only reduces your workload but also improves your SEO. In this complete how-to guide, we’ll learn how to produce multiple pieces of content from a single piece. 

What Content Conversion Is

This is the process of producing multiple pieces of content from a single one –  not from any single type of content, however. Put simply; content conversion is the process of converting content from one form to another. This process is best done if the source content is in the form of a video.

“Why a video?”

 You might be asking yourself. We’ll answer that right here. For now, let’s get back to what SEO experts do (Oh, and they don’t want you knowing this). 

This is the art of taking one video (as short as a five minutes-long video or as long as a thirty minutes-long one) and producing more content from it. We’ll cover why we chose video as our “source” format here.

It is important to show your presence on different social media platforms. Except for creating brand awareness, this creates backlinks for your content which is the backbone of off-page SEO. Try this method instead of wasting time creating a new piece of content every time you post something.

Apart from being a time-saver, this has the added benefit of satisfying your audience. In a time when information is being bombarded from everywhere, people are no longer interested in anything which:

• Doesn’t teach them something new;
• Doesn’t give a unique opinion; or
• Is repetitive and already covered by someone else.

You get the point. In short, breaking down a video into multiple short clips and transcribing it to produce various articles from the same video is the art of producing multiple pieces of content from a single piece of content.

Effectiveness of Content Conversion

“How many different pieces of content can I produce from a five-minute-long video?”

Around 3-4. That’s how effective this is.

Imagine if you produced a thirty-minute-long video. You could easily produce about 3-4 in-depth articles from it. Oh, and don’t forget about the numerous short clips you could produce from the same clip covering something very specific. 

Why Should You Even Do Content Conversion (If at All)?

Put simply, because it’s much faster and gives you a better output.

“How fast?”

Let’s do some calculations. 41 wpm is just the typing speed. When it comes to producing written content, the following factors also come into play:

• Time spent doing research;
• Time spent thinking;
• Time spent editing;
• Time spent doing SEO; and
• Time spent creating other forms of data (charts, infographics).

When we take these hidden factors into account, the time taken for an average freelance content writer to write a thousand-word-long article turns out to be around 3-4 hours. 

If you were to record an audio file of your speaking 1,000 words, it would take about 6.66 minutes to do so (1000 words / 150 words per minute). Add some time to edit it; add some text and relevant data. It shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes, should it? Add some even more time to review it. 10 minutes should be more than enough. 

The total time to make this video is less than an hour. Yeah. That’s how fast this is. You still have three hours to do the rest of the work. So in 4 hours, instead of just a thousand-word-long article, you’ll have 3-4 five-hundred-word long articles along with a handful of 30-second clips.

“I’m convinced, but how do I do this exactly?”

Here’s how:

Transcribing: the Answer to “How do I do this?” 

This is the most important section of this article, as you’ll know how to produce multiple pieces of content from a single content in this section.

1. Record audio of yourself saying the content out loud.

You may create an outline for your content first if that makes you more comfortable. However, the best practice would be to jot down 2-3 points in each topic and read them whenever you need to. This will be your raw audio. 

2. Edit the audio.

Eliminate any pauses or breaks in your .mp3 file. Re-record anything which is ambiguous or wasn’t recorded properly. Audacity {link to be added} is one of the best software for recording and editing. 

3. Make it a video (optional).

You can either record yourself initially, or if you’re camera-shy, you could skip that part. Instead, try making a video relevant to your content. It could be anything from whiteboard videos to Adobe Effect-created vector animations – the sky’s the limit. Play with your creativity. 

4. Transcribe the audio.

You can do this yourself or get it done by someone else. Websites like TranscribeMe and Fiverr do it for you. It isn’t something really expensive. Plus, you’re going to produce so much more content from this single audio. In the end, it is worth it.

Do not forget to give the transcriber outlines of the content. The transcriber usually takes care of the indentation, punctuation, and grammar, but you still might want to go through the transcribed text.

5. Decide how much of what type of content you want.

This step is the crux of the whole process. You yourself will have to decide this. No tools or guides can help you with this as every content will be of a different type. For a rough estimate, refer to the table below.

Note: This is just meant for you to have a vague idea. There are no strict rules you must follow when it comes to deciding the number of pieces of content you want to make.

6. Wait for content conversion to do its thing.

Just wait and be patient now. Let social media do its thing. The statistics will speak for themselves.

Result

Where it would’ve taken you around 4 hours just to write a thousand-word-long article, it’ll take you much less than that to write the same article and a few more. Oh, did I forget the 30-second clips and the video you initially made as well?

Your content will also be more coherent and organized, thanks to this. This will greatly help with off-page SEO and help Google decide whether your content (not just one piece now) is of high quality.

Bottom Line

If you’re someone who spends a lot of time writing or producing content, content conversion is a must!  Once you see how to produce multiple pieces of content from a single piece of content can save your time and yield better results than not doing it, you’ll regret not knowing this technique before.

To summarize, you have to record yourself saying your content aloud and then transcribe it yourself or get it transcribed by someone else for you. Achieve better, faster, and quicker results with this. 

A few things to help you along the process:

• Pre-plan the content;
• Make outlines; and
• Have a rough sketch of your content in your mind.

One may argue that spending money to get content transcribed is a waste of money and not worth it. However, if you calculate the ratio of financial output to the input (either time or financial), you will find out that this technique has a much better yield than if you were to go and start typing your content simply.

So, content conversion does payout in the end (pun intended). What do you think about this technique?