Rewriting Existing Content
In our last section we looked at the A.I.D.A. principle (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). Have you begun to see how much A.I.D.A is used around the web, on articles, blog posts, video scripts, etc.?
Knowing about A.I.D.A is not only great if you plan to write your own web content, but it is also useful to know if you decide to outsource your content writing to others, as it will help you to evaluate the quality of the content you get back from your writers.
Now ... what if you don't want to write your own web content? What other options are available and how do you go about exploring these?
Let's start by looking at a compromise between writing your own web content and outsourcing the work to others.
REWRITE EXISTING CONTENT
If you find that creating new content from scratch is too difficult or time-consuming and you don't have the budget to hire quality content writers to do the work for you, the next best option is to rewrite existing content and make it 100% unique. There are several ways that you can do this:
Research, Copy, Paste & Rewrite
Search online for content about the topic you want to write about, and spend a few minutes going through the sites that come up on your search results.
As you find good information that would be relevant to your article, copy and paste these as snippets into a text file or Word document. You can source material this way from a whole range of different places, such as government sites, Wikipedia, other business websites and blogs, forums, product review sites (e.g. Amazon), audio podcasts, videos, etc.
Once you have gathered enough information for your article or blog post, don't just plagiarize the content or assemble it together as a straight out "collage" of other people's work - use it as a template to provide you with a fresh angle on the topic you plan to write about and then use this template as a starting point to create your own unique content.
Organize your snippets into a logical structure, then begin rewriting content in those snippets that contain facts or interesting aspects of the topic you want to cover in your article.
There are many different ways to say exactly the same thing.
For example, take a look at the short passage below, taken from a government site on the topic of "Green Living":
Discovering A Sustainable Lifestyle
Green living means making sustainable choices about what we eat, how we travel, what we buy, and how we use and dispose of it. We can implement sustainability in our workplace practices, and by greening the buildings we inhabit. Our everyday choices can create a sustainable lifestyle.
Source: http://www.epa.gov/region2/sustainability/greenliving.html
Here's one way to rewrite the above text and use it as an introduction to an article on sustainable living:
Green Living: 10 Baby Steps You Can Take To Discover A Sustainable Lifestyle
Every day we make choices about the food we eat, the modes of transportation we employ to travel around, the products and services we buy and how we dispose of the things we use or consume. Every one of these choices can affect our environment and impact not only the way we live, but the way others live too, and ultimately the very health and well-being of our planet. By learning to implement sustainable practices into our workplace and greening the buildings we live, work and play in, we can begin to transform our everyday choices into a sustainable lifestyle.
This is the essence of "green living" and in this article, I want to share with you ten very simple "baby steps" you can take starting today to start living green and discover a sustainable lifestyle that will fit in with your existing income, work and family life ...
The original text shown above took very little time and effort to rewrite. It would probably take you less than 30 minutes to create a unique piece of content containing about 4-5 paragraphs of text using the above method. All that is required to create content this way is a simple strategy like the one shown below:
1: Decide on the main topic (see your "ideas folder")
2: Plan Your Article: Make a list of the points you want to cover in your article (e.g. what 10 categories are we going to explore for the 10 "baby steps"/ this could be going green in the office, composting, recycling, etc.)
3: Research The Topic: Search Google for specific keywords (e.g. "green living", "sustainable work practices" "greening the home", "composting", "recycling" etc.), then copy and paste one or two useful snippets of content from each of the sites that you liked visiting.
4: Rearrange And Organize: Rearrange and organize your content snippets into the structure you want your article to look like (e.g. place the snippet containing the introduction content at the top, then create subheadings for each of the 10 "baby steps" and paste the content snippets for each of those topics below each subheading, then paste the snippets containing the end content, call to action, etc. at the bottom. Once you have done, this, begin rewriting each of the paragraphs and adding your own information.)
5: Edit, Review and Publish: Go through the content you have drafted. Apply the A.I.D.A principles to your content. When you are happy with the result, schedule it for publishing on your site or blog.
Tip: If some of the content you like contains facts or information that would be best presented s is and without rewriting the content, then just quote it in your article and credit the source.
For example:
Measuring Our Environmental Footprint
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ...
"Every person consumes a portion of Earth's total resources. We can calculate an individual's consumption or Ecological Footprint each year by the land required to grow our food, landfill our trash and generate natural resources. For the average American, the land required to sustain each of us is over 22 acres. If the entire population of the world consumed this many resources, the current population would require more than one Earth. "
Source: http://www.epa.gov/region2/sustainability/greenliving.html
In this article we review some of the steps you can take immediately to start reducing our environmental footprint on the planet ...
Hopefully, the above information has helped you see that you can still create your own unique content using effective "shortcuts" like rewriting existing content found on the web.
IN SUMMARY
You don't have to create content from scratch. You can still create unique articles and blog posts simply by rewriting existing content.
ACTION STEP
Pick a topic from your "ideas folder" and use today's lesson to create an article or blog post based on rewriting existing content sourced from various sites around the web. Note how long it takes you to complete each of the main phases of this process (Researching, Planning, Writing & Editing). If you can, repeat this process another 2-3 times. This will not only teach you an effective "shortcut" for creating content for your website or blog quickly (and give you actual content you can publish on your site), but it will also give you "benchmarks" you can use later when outsourcing your content writing to others. We will cover this in more detail later in the course.
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