This tutorial is part of a series of tutorials we provide on content marketing and web content creation! We recommend subscribing to our FREE content creation course to learn how to create great content for your website or blog.

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Content Marketing With WordPress – Rewriting Content

In our previous tutorial, we briefly explored some of the challenges of creating 100% unique content and why it may be practical to consider using content that is unique enough for most practical purposes.

In this tutorial, we look at content rewriting methods and tools and how to incorporate rewritten content into your content marketing mix.

Content Rewriting

If you find that creating 100% unique content from scratch is too difficult or time-consuming and you don’t have the budget to hire quality writers to outsource the creation of original content for your website, the next best option is to consider publishing articles that contain rewritten content.

You will want to do this not only to avoid duplicate content penalties by search engines but also to avoid the big “no-no” in content publishing, which is to plagiarize some else’s work.

You can rewrite existing content yourself or outsource the work to someone else. Keep in mind, however, that rewriting content to make it unique can take just as much time as creating original content from scratch.

Research, Copy, Paste & Rewrite

You (or an outsourced writer) can create content for your website or blog from existing content by researching information on various sites (or offline sources, e.g. magazines) related to the topic you plan to write about, gathering notes and snippets of content from these sources, and then rewriting this information and adding your own experience, knowledge, and insights to turn it into something new.

This process is not too different than creating an essay for a University course. As you find good information for articles or whatever content you plan to create, make sure you create a “research” folder on your hard drive where you can copy and paste relevant content snippets saved as text files or Word processing documents, ideas, quotes, images, etc.

You can source material this way from a whole range of different places. For example, government sites, Wikipedia, other business websites and blogs, forums, product review sites (e.g. Amazon), podcasts, videos, slide presentations, court transcripts, news sites, etc.

Once you have gathered enough information for your article or blog post, don’t plagiarize the content or assemble it together as a straight out “collage” of other people’s work – use it as a template to provide your readers 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 original content. Organize your snippets into a logical sequence, then begin rewriting the information in snippets that contain facts or interesting aspects into your article.

There are many ways to say the same thing. For example, take a look at the short passage below on the topic of “Green Living” from a government site:

### SAMPLE ARTICLE START ###

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)

### SAMPLE ARTICLE END ###

Let’s say we want to use this information as an introduction to an article on sustainable living. Here’s one way to rewrite the above text:

### SAMPLE ARTICLE START ###

Green Living: 10 Baby Steps You Can Take Today To Start Discovering A More Sustainable Way To Live

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, blah, blah, blah, etc …

### SAMPLE ARTICLE END ###

The rewritten content above contains original content and took little time and effort to create. It would probably take less than 30 minutes to create a unique piece of content with 4-5 paragraphs of text using this method.

Here is a simple method for creating rewritten content:

1. Decide On The Topic: Decide on your main topic (refer to your “ideas” or “research” 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 tips, greening the home, composting, recycling, etc.), then copy and paste one or two useful snippets of content from each of the sites that you have visited into your research folder.
4. Rearrange And Organize: Rearrange and organize your content snippets into a logical structure and argument flow (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 in the snippets containing the end content near the conclusion section, and add a call to action or author bio at the bottom). After you have done this, begin rewriting each of the paragraphs and add your own unique 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 your result, schedule it for publishing on your site or blog.

If some of the content you like contains facts or information that you want to present as is, then just quote it in your article and credit the content source.

For example:

### SAMPLE ARTICLE START ###

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)

In this article, we review some of the steps you can take immediately to start reducing our environmental footprint on the planet, blah, blah, blah, etc …

### SAMPLE ARTICLE END ###

As you can see from the above, unique content can be created by doing research online, gathering existing snippets of content, recombining these to create a new topic flow and then rewriting the material using your own words.

Summary

You don’t have to create content from scratch. You can create unique articles and blog posts by rewriting existing content.

Action Step

Pick a topic from your “ideas folder” and 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 (i.e. Researching, Planning, Writing, and Editing). If you can, repeat this process 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 to outsource your content writings.

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Now that we’ve taken a look at rewriting existing content to create new content, let’s take a look at using content writing tools.

To learn about content writing tools, see the tutorial below:

• Using Content Writing Software

(Source: Pixabay)

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