Hello there! This is an excerpt from Plug & Play Blog Posts, available in the Karma Store (where you can set your own price!) There are 20 more blog post templates in the full package. I hope you make a most excellent post from this template, and if you do, give me a shout-out on Twitter, and I’ll give you a virtual high-five! - Kris (PS – Also check out The IttyBiz Freebie Vault! There’s lots of great stuff in there.)

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T h e “ S P I N O F F ” P O S T The spinoff post will save your blog. Seriously. The number of times you can come up with content, link to content, repurpose content, revive old content – if you master the art of the spinoff, on a level, you never have to come up with a new idea again. Posts like Spring Cleaning Your Wardrobe (Part Two), 12 More Ways To Repurpose Ikea Furniture, or Even More Ways To Get Clients Saying Yes are examples of original posts that decided to have adorable little babies. You could make a whole family of them if you wanted to. These posts work best when they’re spinning off of evergreen content pieces that are useful for pretty much everybody – and almost as well when you’re spinning off something fairly deep or obscure, and you want to draw attention to the issue or subject. Realistically, a spinoff post can be anything you want it to be. You can write a big, meaty essay and follow it up with another big, meaty essay. You can write something heavy and substantial and follow it up with a lighter, “here’s some more stuff you may want to know” piece. In many cases, you’re going to follow up a “listicle” with another listicle – a bunch of things in a numbered list. (In this example, that’s what I did. I was under the gun on a lot of deadlines when this piece came out, but I needed to keep my list warm in anticipation of a launch. I needed a few pieces of content to come out back to back, but I couldn’t burn much creativity on them. A piece with a natural spinoff is perfect for these situations, because you don’t have to start from scratch.) Semi-spinoff pieces are often used as launch content. Of course, the idea of a spinoff is that something is successful, so you use it as the basis for something else. When you’re using them as launch content, it’s all planned out in advance, but to the reader, it looks the same. You’re taking piece one and using it as a launch pad for further pieces in the series.

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If you’re new to spinoff posts, a simple way to get started is to print out one of your old posts and circle any phrase that makes you think “I could write some more about that”. You could build your next 6 months of content doing this for just a handful of posts. (Wasn’t THAT easy?)

S i m p l e P o s t S t r u c t u r e Introduction & Setup

The introduction to this post is as easy as it can possibly be. All you have to do is link to the post you’re working from, and create some kind of connecting thread. You can be pretty boring about this – it’s not art. You can also have a little bit of fun and relieve yourself of the responsibility of coming up with something intelligent to say here by creating a playful intro that transitions from the original post to this one. “In keeping with our theme of X…” or “I thought I was done talking about X but it turns out I’m not” are perfectly reasonable ways to talk about this. I use this type of introduction a lot when I’m using blog posts as launch content. I lead with something like “Yesterday I told you X…”, which has an implied call to action for new visitors. I’m not explicitly telling them to go look at the last post, but it’s implied that they’re going to want to. That means I can save my call to action for something more important.

(Optional) Shout-Out

It’s common in these types of posts to refer back to the original frequently if it’s appropriate. Feel free to do this as much or as little as you like here. (Just bear in mind, while you can refer as often as you like, you’re not going to want to link to it more than twice. If they haven’t clicked yet, they’re not going to.)

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Body of Post

Since a spinoff post can take any form, you can refer to another blog post template to decide what to put here. If you’re making a duplicate post (Another 12 Ways To Spice Up Family Dinners), use the same structure. If you’re spinning off on another concept, use a different one – for example, How To Get Closer As A Family At Dinnertime would follow the Requirements For Success template.

Wrap-Up

How you craft your wrap-up is going to depend on how you created the post. In this example, this was a very simple piece with some very actionable tips, so we don’t need to get artistic here. Of course, if you’ve gone in a different direction and you’re telling part two of your birth story, you’re going to go with whatever angle feels appropriate to the tone and topic of the piece.

Optional - Encouragement / Direction / Next Steps

As always, at this point, you can decide what angle you want to take with your close, depending on the type of template you’re using. Refer to that template, and just do what it tells you to. And, of course, you can always make a spinoff of your spinoff, and go back and add a link to it here. The party never ends!