So, you’ve just spent hours (or days) writing an awesome blog post…

But if you want people to actually read it, you can’t stop there.

You need to promote the crap out of it.

Most people hate promotion because they think it takes too long.

Well, I call BS. And I’m gonna prove it to you.

Today I’ll show you how to create 10 social posts in 10 minutes using the “Recycling Technique”.

That’s 1 post per minute for all you math whizzes out there.

To do this, we need to keep extra writing to a minimum. We’re gonna take what we already wrote, break it up into chunks, and tweak it for social media.

Start the stopwatch. Ready. Set. GO!

How to Find Social Media Snippets Inside Your Blog Post

For this experiment, we’re going to use Neville’s How to Stay Sane With Work blog post.

Here’s the game plan:

Step 1.) Read through the post

Step 2.) Circle all the “snippet ingredients” (see list below)

Step 3.) Make the ingredients into 10 different social posts

Here’s where I found some juicy ingredients in our example blog post:

Time to skim the article and find snippet ingredients: 3 minutes

Now that we’ve got all the ingredients, let’s start cooking.

Post #1.) Create a “cheat sheet” of main points

Neville includes a cheatsheet in almost every blog post. It’s basically the TL;DR version of his post that recaps his main points.

Cheat sheets can be copied almost word-for-word to create instant social posts.

Time to write: 15 seconds

Post #2.) Share your first main point

The “cheat sheet snippet” gives a recap of the entire post. Now, let’s zoom in on each individual main point. This article only has three main ideas, but if you have a longer article, you’ll have tons of social ammo.

These first two paragraphs would make a great tweet. Just copy, paste, and add a call to action.

For these ones, you can also add any images you made (this would be a good idea if you’re sharing on Facebook). In this case, we’re going to save our to-do list image for an entirely separate social post.

Time to write: 15 seconds

Post #3.) Share your second main point

Now, we’ll do the same thing for our second main point:

Up until now, we haven’t had to write a single extra word.

This one might need a few tweaks though…

To drive more eyeballs back to our post, we could also add in a call to action to the end (this goes for all the posts on this list).

It could be something as simple as:

“Check out the rest of my to-do list tips here ➡ [LINK]”

Time to write: 40 seconds

Post #4.) Share your third main point

For our last main point snippet, we’re back to copying and pasting:

We’ll use the bottom paragraph as our social post text. Then we’ll screenshot the uniquely formatted top part and use that as our social post image (if we wrote it all out, it wouldn’t fit in the tweet).

This is a great example of how to create “text art” by playing around with formatting. Text art is great for social snippets!

Time to write: 20 seconds

Post #5.) Recycle your images

Now that we have our main points covered, let’s take a look at our images.

We have some great shots of Neville’s to-do list, so let’s recycle those into social posts.

In this case, a before-and-after image makes the most sense. With Google Drawings, you can create simple images like this in seconds.

For the text, we just write one sentence describing the image.

Time to write (and make image): 90 seconds

Post #6.) Use interesting quotes

While scanning through the article, this quote stuck out to me as a nice little wisdom nugget.

Let’s use it as a social post.

You know the drill….copy and paste!

Time to write: 15 seconds

Post #7.) Share an interesting statistic

Interesting facts and stats are perfect for tweets. Here’s one I found in Nev’s article:

Here’s how I’d quickly transform this in to a social post:

If you don’t have any stats in your article, go back and add some in. This will make your article stronger as well.

Time to write: 20 seconds

Post #8.) Pick out specific examples

While you’re adding in stats to your blog post, make sure you also include plenty of examples of the concepts your post covers.

Not only does this make your article more useful, but it also gives you tons of social ammo.

For example, here is a spot where Neville gives examples of different ways you can respond when a client/boss asks you to do something:

To make this into a social post, we just need to write a quick sentence that introduces the examples, like this:

Time to write: 30 seconds

Post #9.) Tell a personal story

Adding in personal experiences to your blog post makes it special. Readers can find general information repeated all over the internet. Personal stories make your content unique.

They’re also great for social posts.

Lengthy stories might be too much for Twitter, but they’re perfect for a Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn post (especially if you have an eye-catching image to go along with it).

Here’s the foundation of a story I found in our post:

This isn’t quite a complete story, so we’ll make some tweaks and add detail for our social post. And since this one is gonna go on Facebook, let’s throw in one of our (already-made) images as well:

The more relatable and vulnerable you are in the story, the better!

Time to write: 2 minutes

Post #10.) Ask a question

At the end of the post, Neville asks his readers to share their own tips for staying sane with work:

Hmm...I smell a social post here.

If you don’t currently have any questions or polls in your post, just make some up. Look at each of your main points, and ask for your readers’ opinion about those ideas.

Time to write: 20 seconds

HOT DANG! Would you look at that...we just wrote 10 social media posts in 565 seconds (~9.5 minutes)!

For this exercise, we only made one social post for each type of “snippet ingredient”. But if you want even more ammo, you can use multiple images, quotes, examples, stats, questions, etc.

Armed with this “recycling strategy”, you’ll now be able to whip up loads of social posts lickety split.

Blog Post Recycling Cheat Sheet

Hope this helps!

Sincerely,

Neville Medhora