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One of the most challenging activity you may face as a blogger is to maintain a constant flow of valuable article ideas. In April, I published an article titled 12 Effective Ways to Find New Article Ideas. This article was presenting concrete and applicable ways to find new idea. It was based on where to find it. I this article I’ll be focusing on 10 strategies that will allow you to create new content based on existing material. Thus, I will bring your attention on how to transform or revisit articles and data to create valuable content.

1. Update an existing review.

Things change over time. They may get better or they may get worst. They may become very popular or just disappear silently! The fact is that time influences everything and you can use that to create new and valuable content. If you did or read a review in the past, you may want to update it to make it accurate with the actual reality.

2. Develop another perspective.

We often base an article on a very precise perspective. For example, we may write on the most effective way to do X. This article will present a specific perspective about X, but what about the most common mistakes while doing X? This perspective is valuable as well. This strategy may be applied to almost every topic. In general, you just have to remember that there are always 2 sides on a medal. Having a good understanding of both sides is always something valuable for readers!

3. Create a resource list.

Creating a resource list is not something complicated on a technical point of view. In fact, it only requires time and time again! Writing this kind of article is very time consuming but this is precisely where the value is! People enjoy resource list because it gather together the best resources about a specific topic. No need to search, no need to spend time; your article provide all the best references about a specific topic. Note that this strategy generally performs well on social media networks and allows generating plenty of valuable backlinks!

4. Add new elements to an existing article.

Adding new elements may be related to a list but it may also be related to any kind of article. For example, one may create a list of 5 or 10 items about something and you may want to add some items to this list. So instead of commenting this list by adding additional elements directly on your comment, you may want to write a post that complement the initial list and put a link to your post on your comment!

5. Give your personal opinion.

If your opinion is based on concrete and pertinent arguments, it is valuable to everyone! Each day you probably read a lot of articles from bloggers in your niche. You may agree with some of them and disagree with others. It is a good strategy to react on articles you disagree with. Of course, this shall be done very carefully because the goal here is not to provoke, but to bring relevant arguments that may help your readers to understand a specific situation.

6. Create a poll based on an existing list.

Let’s say a blog on your niche is publishing an article titled 10 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging. It may be a good idea to create a poll with these 10 reasons and ask your readers or a community about why they start blogging and collect the data until you get a good sample – let’s say something around 100 people.

7. Publish poll results.

Creating a poll is not something difficult. You may find WordPress plugins that do the job or you may want to signup for free with PollDaddy.com. A poll with a significant sample is always a good post opportunity. In general, people like numbers and statistics that are well presented and interpreted. You may want to use this strategy with strategy #6.

8. Summarize an article series.

Reading an article series may be very interesting for a reader. In fact, everyone want to know what will be coming after! However, when the series is completed, some people may not be interested to go back in time and find every post related to this particular series. A good strategy would be to summarize that series in a single article. Thus, people that didn’t read the series may be happy to get the most important points gathered in a single post and people that read it may be happy to get a valuable summary to bookmark.

9. Presents the main ideas from an interview.

Interviews are generally very valuable posts because they present personal experiences that may help any reader to learn from somebody else. In fact, this kind of article is very enriching and educating. Presenting the main idea from an interview may be very valuable for lots of people. Note that the new content doesn’t replace the interview but complement it by creating a valuable guidelines presented in another form. As an example, I did that on my article 20 Remarkable Lessons For Blogging Success (A StrongLifts.com Case Study).

10. Create an article based on the comments of a popular post.

We often forget that comments are content just like any article. Comments sometimes raise new issues or new questions. What about creating new content based on these valuable comments? It sounds to me like a good strategy to build relevant content based on this kind of discussion. It may help some idea to get more visibility.

Of course, there is probably much more ways to transform existing material to create new content. The above list is far from being exhaustive. However, it is a starting point that aims to help you developing new content strategies. I would really appreciate getting your experiences about this content.

I’m waiting for your comments and feedback!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Blogging, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.