The Content You Already Wrote Can Keep Working Long After You Stop

You post something today, it does well for a few hours, and by tomorrow it’s buried under everyone else’s new posts, gone from view like it never existed. If you’re building a business online, you already know that treadmill, chase a platform’s algorithm, produce constantly, watch yesterday’s win vanish overnight. There’s a different kind of asset you can build instead, one that keeps pulling in views and leads for months after you’ve stopped touching it, and it’s built from content you’ve probably already written.

Why does content that works today disappear by tomorrow?

Different platforms have wildly different lifespans. Something posted on Twitter is essentially dead within a day. Facebook gives you a little longer, maybe a few days at best. That’s the nature of viral, in-the-moment traffic: it’s hot, it’s fast, and then it’s gone, which means staying visible requires constantly feeding the machine with something new. Most people never question that trade-off because it’s the only version of social traffic they’ve ever used.

There’s a slower-moving alternative that behaves nothing like that, and it comes from a platform most marketers never think to touch: SlideShare, a site built entirely around uploaded presentations that professionals actually search and browse. Content posted there doesn’t spike and vanish. It keeps circulating, keeps ranking in search, keeps getting found by people who weren’t looking for you specifically, just looking for the answer you happened to already write down.

What happens when you build something that keeps working after you stop touching it?

The clearest proof of this came from a deliberate experiment: stop uploading entirely for six months and watch what the existing content does on its own. It didn’t spike anymore without fresh uploads, but it didn’t die either. Thousands of additional views kept coming in from decks that had been sitting untouched the entire time, no new content, no paid promotion, nothing.

Every single slide that I built was repurposed from a blog post.

That’s the part that actually makes this approachable instead of overwhelming. This isn’t a call to create a second stream of brand-new content on top of everything else you’re already producing. It’s the opposite. Every deck came from material that already existed, a blog post that had already been written, with the same idea, the same keyword, the same core stats, just reformatted from paragraphs into slides. Nothing new had to be dreamed up. The work had already been done once.

How do you actually turn a blog post you already wrote into a slide deck?

The process is closer to typing an email than designing a presentation. A slide is just a sentence, sometimes a single word, laid out sideways instead of stacked in a paragraph.

As it’s put directly in the session, “It is exactly like a Word document. It’s just sideways.” Anyone who’s ever typed an email can build one. The steps that make the difference between a deck nobody finds and one that circulates for a year are straightforward:

• Pull the core idea, keyword, and stats directly out of a blog post you’ve already written
• Put the keyword in the title, in the description, and in a few tag variations
• Invest real effort in the first slide specifically, since that’s the only one most people see before deciding whether to keep scrolling
• Build toward one clear idea per deck rather than trying to cram a dozen points into it
• End with a clickable page that sends people somewhere, since the goal was never to keep them on the platform itself

What actually makes a slide deck spread once it’s live?

How-to guides and lists tend to outperform almost everything else on this kind of platform, for the same reason they perform well anywhere: people search for a specific answer, and a slide deck with a bold, easy-to-read one-idea-per-slide format delivers that answer faster than a wall of text ever could. The platform itself does part of the SEO work automatically, pulling the text out of your slides and using it to help search engines find the content, without requiring anything extra from you.

None of this replaces the fundamentals of a real online business, a blog, a way to capture leads, a way to follow up. It’s closer to a side dish than the main course. But it’s a side dish that, once it’s built, keeps feeding people to the rest of your business long after the effort to create it is finished, working quietly in the background while you’re doing something that has nothing to do with marketing at all.

The full session breaks down the exact repurposing workflow slide by slide. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Please welcome to the stage, Laurence Cam. What's going on, man? Awesome. Good morning!

Good morning! Good morning! Welcome, live streamers. Y'all can sit down.

We are going back to the classroom. So if some of you have nightmares, maybe drink some coffee and wake up because I'm taking you back to school. All right, so if you don't know my story, I am an engineer. So the slides and the presentation that I'm going to bring up will have a little more structure in terms of what I do.

And I want to give you some numbers and give you a framework of why I did it, why I thought this way and figured it out. But if you're not blogging, this kind of won't work for you. So don't raise your hand, but in your brain, raise it, okay? So I'm going to see your eyes.

If you're not blogging, you're missing out on a lot of traffic. Just income disclaimer, of course. But my first million in this company was with zero paid traffic. Most of it was through blogs and video.

So if you're not doing blogging, maybe you just don't like money. So I'm going to reverse that. Maybe you should do blogging, right? It is one of our core things that we do, right?

And so many companies need it, right? I'm working with a restaurant with their blog. Think about that, right? Restaurant with their blog.

So there's a TV show called Dog with the Blog. So why are you not blogging, right? So hopefully I can inspire you to kind of use this strategy, but it's on top of your blog. So if you don't have that foundation, I mean, trying to build a building without a foundation, it's going to fall.

You might get some success. You might generate some leads, traffic using some sources. But if you don't have this blog, you're going to have some issues, right? And Aaron Rashkin put it out many times, and we speak it all the time.

You know, when you're driving, you need capture page, right? You need a blog. You need an autoresponder. So those are the basic, you know, sauce, ingredients of your meal, your recipe, your business.

This is more of a side dish, but I want to see if I can spark some, you know, just that little glimmer of hope that you're like, wow, he did that? Because if I can do it, you can do it. Okay, guys? And this applies for any industry.

So if I can have my slides, all right, so a simple process to evergreen traffic with slides. That's kind of weird, right? I'm talking about slides, but I'm on a slide. What does that even mean, right?

Who here does not or has never built a presentation on PowerPoint or Google Slides? Anyone? Okay, maybe 5%. Okay, if you can type, and you've typed on an email, or you've typed on Word or whatever, you can do a slide.

Like, it's just text. Like, this is not that difficult. And all you have to do is just put a little text on there. You can make a slide.

It is exactly like a Word document. It's just sideways. Is that cool? So for those of you who have never made a slide, I say make one.

Make one. Five slides, 10 slides. I've made slides. My daughter makes slides in elementary.

So let's get with the times. Presentations are a very good way to present ideas. And since your ideas, maybe you make bracelets, maybe you cut hair, maybe you're a hairstylist. Slides are a very interesting way to present an idea to an audience who does not even know you exist.

A slide, a sales presentation, a video sales letter, they're basically just slides, right? So here's some stats. So these are stats from a traffic source that I'm going to talk to you today. And hopefully one of y'all in 90 days will be like, damn, Lawrence, that was sick.

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Thank you. Okay. Here's the interesting thing. I had 55,000 people hit this website with my content, right, with only 28 uploads, and it was 100% free.

I did not pay them for paid traffic, 100% free. Who here would like that 55,000 people exposed to what you're doing? Maybe you're a carpenter. or maybe you're an insurance agent.

Is that something that's valuable for you? But here's the interesting part. I did a test, and you should always be testing. If you're in the industry of marketing and advertising, we learned this in Las Vegas.

We had a guest speaker talk about that if you learn anything about paid traffic, everything is granular. You need to find the small things that are working, right? Like the Pareto Law, 80-20. 80% of the stuff that you'll do just probably won't do jack for you, right?

And that's okay. Get used to it, right? This is why having an award for participation, that's useless. Participating and being average, that sucks, right?

You don't want that. No one wants a sucky life, right? I don't want my kids to have a sucky life, so I aspire them to always do their best. That's all I can ask.

So what I decided to do was take a six-month break. I wanted to see what my traffic would do. And so this graphically kind of shows if I was actively building, it spikes. If I didn't, it goes down.

But here's what's interesting. It didn't die. So a lot of, you have to understand, different social medias, different types of traffic, like who here is doing Periscope? Periscope, new technology.

Okay, cool. Who's doing Twitter? Okay, cool, cool, cool. Those things are gone like that.

Here today, gone tomorrow. But the purpose is it's news, it's hot, it's fresh, viral traffic, it's quick. This is the opposite. But I've been showing from this slide in one year, 55,000 views, where half of it, I did nothing with it.

Nothing. Nothing. So when you think of Evergreen, it's like a machine. Who's here seen the movie Inception?

You know, are you dreaming? They spin that little top? To me, this is it. This is like, damn, this is very sexy.

Like, I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay. Okay. Wow, I am driving traffic. A year later, 28 uploads.

I've written over 1,000 blog posts. So when I saw this, I'm like, that's very interesting. I'm seeing a pattern. So what are actions?

I got 600 people to leave that social media site. 142 of them said they loved it. Eight of them commented. But almost 800 people downloaded my slides.

Think about this. 800 people downloaded my slides. 66 people go, hey, Ben, you gotta see this guy's stuff. And they emailed it.

They emailed it. One year, 28 uploads. If you wanted to, you could probably do this in one month. 28 uploads.

One a day. One a day. One a day. One a day.

And if you've done a presentation, it might take you an hour. But is it worth it to get Evergreen traffic? It depends. If you're a business and you're like, hey, I want to do this.

I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do this.

I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do this.

It might take you an hour, but is it worth it to get Evergreen traffic? It depends. If your business is built on that, and you're not doing paid traffic, you gotta think of stuff like this. Sustainable traffic that comes in and comes in.

One of them got 14,000 views with zero paid traffic to it. I didn't send Facebook traffic to it. 14,000 people. So if your goal is to influence, to help change the world.

To maybe. Maybe talk about sustainable growth, or talk about eating healthy, or maybe you're in insurance about, you know, maybe the difference between term versus whole life. Your ideas are put into a place where people actively want to look and find you, your information. So in six months, no new uploads, I still had 13,000 people see my content.

Zero. So. I can literally say, I had 13,000 people generated through this website, being exposed to what I had to do, and I was eating cereal, I was at the pool, you know, I was having, I was at Disney World riding a roller coaster. Because people love the idea that you can make money without, you know, not doing anything.

But what if you could generate a business without doing anything? This is just one of those pillars of traffic, right? Now, I'm not saying you should be a master of everything, because you can't. Right?

You can't be the master of all trades and master of none. But the idea of this is, I only had 28 uploads. One hard month. In 90 days, your life can change.

Do y'all understand that? Y'all can, right? In 90 days, I had LASIK and lost 25 pounds. In 90 days.

So if you just figured out, like, I just want to make, I just want to make it happen. You make it, you just make a decision, if you want to, you can hammer one style of marketing in 30 days. But the next time we see you, or the next time we see you at an event, or the next time you're, you know, you do a hangout, you're like, I'm learning something. Because here's the thing.

If you're a network marketer, let's say you're promoting some juice or whatever, why would someone join you if you're not increasing your value? This is the stuff you should be doing. Figuring out stuff we teach you here in Empower Network is powerful. This type of traffic with no new uploads?

Like what would happen if you did zero Facebook posts in six months? Right? And then you did another post, you, I saw some finger pointing. You could do it, but you're going to, it's something called engagement.

It goes down because people are like, they kind of forget about you, except for family and friends, you know, because you call them, you bug them, right? But outside of that, the people you built those business relationships with, like we've had people who go like, I took a year off. I get that. Well, I took six months off.

Look at that. I'm not forgotten. It's okay to go on a one year hiatus. You can live your life and travel.

That's the internet marketing lifestyle because this site I paid $0 to, I paid $0 to push traffic to, but since I gave them valuable content, they want to give me traffic. 13,000 views last six months. No new uploads. The machine works on its own.

Some of y'all just got to turn the key, crank up your car and go. Right? This strategy involves using slides. You can use PowerPoint, which is Microsoft.

I believe Apple's can use it, but I wouldn't recommend it. Keynote, which is a native slide share making software for Apple and Google slides. I actually recommend Google slides just for the fact that it's, you know, if you're collaborating with many different people, you can work on slides very easily on the internet. So Google slides is, it's in the cloud.

It's in, anyone understand what the cloud is? In the cloud? Yeah. Yeah.

So why use slide share? So I'm going to read this because I know it might be small for people in the back. So slide share is the actual place I put it to. One place.

Now you can obviously go to all these different sites, excuse me, all these different sites, but so if you're in a live stream, you might want to be making in like another window and just kind of like poking around there real quick with me while I describe this 70 million professionals. Why would I say professionals, right? I'll get to that. So 18 million uploads, 40 content categories, the Alexa, which is like the ranking of the world of, in terms of website traffic, it's 150th.

They broke 60 million unique visitors in 2013, they've continually grown in 2012, they were acquired by the largest professional social media network in the world called LinkedIn. So if you're doing professional services, if you're a recruiter, if you know, if you're a headhunter, if you know, maybe whatever it is. Yeah. The average income, I think in LinkedIn is like over 75, $90,000.

It's a very, versus like Instagram, which is all kids, right? Or you know, whatever the kids are doing these days. LinkedIn is, they acquired this, why? So many business majors in so many presentations and on boardroom meetings, they use slides.

So if you're looking to sell something, sell an idea, sell you, sell you as a service, build your list, you do it through a site. But here's the crazy thing. Every single slide that I built was repurposed from a blog post. Repurpose means I did not have to create a new idea, a new topic, a new keyword, a new stats.

All I did was change it. That's all I did. I took it from a word document or a blog post to a slide. It's done.

It's called repurposing, utilizing the things that you already have to redo it. And you can upload it as a PDF or a slide. I recommend PDF. On a Mac, it's native.

You can actually just export PDF. On PCs, I'm not exactly sure. And I highlighted this in red because this is killer. You can embed live links inside your presentation on SlideShare.

Now what that means is, you know how like when you're reading email or a website and like it's black text and then there's like one line that says click here or learn more, and it's like in blue? And if you click it, your mouse goes from like a pointer to like a finger maybe. And you click it, it takes you to somewhere else. Now I don't actively sell on any other website except from my blog or paid traffic or my email.

That's it. So SlideShare is the same thing. I don't actively insert like a, you know, how, like a sales page or account. I send them to a place where I can engage with them.

But I take them off. Off that social network. My goal is to take 70 million professionals off their website and into my website where I can sell, I can influence, and I can make money by helping people achieve what they want. That's a big market.

That's a big fishing pond. We're talking about fishing. That's a big fishing pond. And guess what?

It ranks on its own in Google. So it's like it's a multi-purpose tool. All you have to do is write your blog post. Commit to building content.

Repurpose it and put it as a slide and stick it on SlideShare. So here's a tip for a successful plan with SlideShare. You got to have a keyword. I would put the keywords in the title, right?

Recommended left to right. You should put more on the left. But make sure if you have a specific topic, you have done your research before. This isn't about, excuse me, this isn't about keyword research per se.

But just so that you know, keywords in the title, write some sentences in the description, and then a keyword in the description. The cool thing is about SlideShare, their computer goes into your slides, takes all the text, and adds it as a description so that the Google spider can find it. It does it automatically as a free service. You don't have to pay them extra for that.

So it just takes it. So if you understand indexing and researching on, you know, how does Google find content to rank? It's looking for stuff. That's relevant.

Relevancy starts with a keyword. You got to write something that if your topic's about, you know, tropical fruit, well, a lot of people talk about tropical fruit. That's very hard to rank. How about why you shouldn't eat tropical fruit at night?

Maybe that's your idea. Maybe, you know, you're trying to teach people not to eat fruit at night because for whatever reason, maybe you're a dietician. You put that in there as your actual keyword, not just the short form. It's called a long tail keyword.

Stick in the title. Stick in the description. And then variations of it in the tag. That's the simple, on-page, very simple.

Anyone can do this. That's why I broke it out. Put keywords and get it ranked. So what performs well on SlideShare?

How-to guides and lists. Because if you think about it, like, you're not supposed to write a blog post on a slide. No one wants to read it. Like the one I had before was kind of hard because of small font, too many bullets.

So you want a big, bold, easy to read, easy to digest. When you're doing a presentation for a business meeting. Your idea is not to, like, throw 50 different ideas. It's that one thing.

The one thing you're trying to drive home. The one thing you're trying to drive home. So what the cool thing is, SlideShare has so much traffic. Their home page, they're craving for content.

And Anna Zubarev, where's Anna at? Anna's over there. Oh, she's backstage because she understands viral traffic. She gets it.

She got featured on their home page. On their home page. Did she pay anything? No.

She paid zero dollars, and she got featured to professionals all over the world. Like 70 million people are hitting this website, and Anna just goes, boop, pops up, right? What you'll need is a great headline, right? When we talk about copywriting, I don't know if you guys have been into the mass influence and influencing people through words.

A great headline with your keyword, a cover slide, because that's the first thing they see. They don't see your whole slide deck of like, you know, 25 slides. They see that first one. Spend more time on the first one.

Use Canva. If you've never used Canva, use Canva, C-A-N-V-A dot com. It's free. It builds you an image.

You can put it nice and sexy on your first slide. And well-designed slides will work, but the first two are the biggest. And the way Anna did it was through trending topics. Something that's hot, people are looking for it, you provide it.

Ain't that interesting? Right? So, if you kind of do this, this is the extra traffic you get that's just a bonus for being on their website. So, here's an example.

Two million views on this slide deck. Two million views. Now, this isn't mine. This is from Jesse.

And you suck at PowerPoint. Five shocking design mistakes you need to avoid. Uses an image. This is built in probably Canva.

Looks like a Canva template. Template. Photo. Now, I would recommend.

If you do any type of photos, you get copyright-free photos or use your own photo just in case. You don't want to be, you know, hunted down for, you know, stealing copywriting information. So, make sure you give relevance. Make sure you either buy the photo, make your own.

But how hard is that? Right? It's not hard. And that's probably a slide.

Right? The first image is just a slide, guys. It's just a slide. Nothing powerful.

You can definitely do this on your own. He has a 61-slide slide deck in here. Two million views. So, this is a very good example of one of the higher performers in SlideShare.

What you can, you're just shooting for. We're always looking for, okay, I'm brand new. How do I get there? Well, here's an example of a very good slide deck.

In his last page, all clickable. Everything in there is clickable. He can send you to his Twitter, his SlideShare, his Tweet, right? And to download his presentation.

He has a call to action. This is a very, very good use. Use of the last page before they leave. But his goal is not for you to stay on SlideShare.

His goal is to leave you. Now, I have no affiliation with this gentleman. This is just a very good, well-formatted, and it's performing in this social network. You will quickly realize social media and their networks, they're all different and they perform differently.

Right? So, you always want to see who the best performers are and what they're doing and always, always working to get there. Right? So, repurpose your content, your blog posts into slides.

Right? Turn them into slides. Turn them into slides. Update content with your slides.

Stick that slide on your blog post. Stick that slide on your blog post. It will increase, it will increase the time people stay in your blog post. And you want that because Google likes people who stay on your websites longer.

So one way to stall them, keep them, engage them longer, a slide. A slide. So, guys. Hopefully, that will kind of blow your mind.

I'm going to go ahead and close this. Guys, don't go down the road and blow your mind on sustainable traffic, on evergreen traffic. And, my name is Lawrence Tam. Peace out.

One, two, three. Give it up for Lawrence Tam everyone. Lawrence Tam.