How To Repurpose Your Old College Essays For Content

This article was originally published on my LinkedIn on July 25th, 2017.
“A career is built one paragraph at a time.” -Barbara Kingsolver.
What was the point of losing sleep over all of those midterms and finals?
One of the biggest frustrations I have as a college graduate is wondering why I spent roughly three months of collective sleepless nights writing 10-page papers — and once graded I would never use the work ever again. Hours were spent developing well thought out arguments, using sources, and receiving peer reviewed feedback. All of that work was for me to get a grade, for a diploma, that quite frankly hasn’t come up in conversation in any of the job interviews I’ve had.
Then one day it dawned on me that there could be a way for me to use my old essays relevant to my career field — if I used them to add credibility to my LinkedIn profile. Now I do want to add a disclaimer: I studied music theory in college and currently work as a digital marketer, so my old essays couldn’t be used for this process. But, the same process we use in college to create essays is what I leverage every week to write my LinkedIn articles! At first, it didn’t seem like adding content to my profile would mean much. However, I did realize over time that graduates weren’t doing this. Even if recruiters didn’t read them, just showing that I created industry related content on a consistent basis, elevated my profile higher than if I had just submitted my job application. This process continues to help me stand out.
“All of that work was for me to get a grade, for a diploma, that quite frankly hasn’t come up in conversation in any of the job interviews I’ve had.”
Creating content for your personal brand adds credibility over time
I’ve been writing articles and blog content for two years now. One of the biggest benefits of writing that has motivated me to stay the course is that I feel I am not wasting my time and money. As college students, we get taught the skill of developing our thoughts through writing and some of us don’t utilize the skill after we graduate. I’ve noticed that as I continue to write and put my work out there, several aspects of my life have changed for the better.
This includes:
- Engaging in interesting conversations with other professionals in my field. Some of these conversations have led to business opportunities that have advanced my career.
- Accelerating my education by ensuring that I can speak about the topics that interest me the most and by learning from the feedback I get from my audience (no matter how small, someone will give you feedback on your work if you are consistent). I find that the more I write about the questions that I want answered, I’m taking my education into my own hands. Absorbing new concepts and associated topics has certainly become easier for me because of this.
The best place for recent college grads, graduate students, and young professionals to share their content (and old essays starting off) is on LinkedIn. According to Byron Ma, Head of Engineering at LinkedIn NYC, “You have the opportunity to reach other professionals from around the world — senior leaders, potential clients, employers, partners, mentors and more — the people that can impact your bottom line or have an impact on your career.”
And it’s easy to start, below is the are all of the considerations you need to take into account for repurposing your old college essays.
Related: How To Use LinkedIn To Find A Job: A 4-Step Checklist For Young Professionals
My process for creating content on a consistent basis
If you’ve passed any essay assignment, said essay is related to your career field, and you still have the copy because you didn’t delete all your homework (I’m extra-guilty of this) — here’s how to begin.
Citations become hyperlinks
If you use Chicago or MLA formatting for your citations, you’re going to have to replace them with hyperlinks. A hyperlink allows your reader to click out of your article and land on an online version of the source you used to build credibility for your content. The key challenge is figuring out which words in the sentence you’re going to highlight for the hyperlink. Don’t think too much about this when starting off. The best way to learn which words are appropriate is by reading a lot of articles and writing your own over time. Here’s an example below of how you would go about doing this (the words in red are the ones where the hyperlink will be added). You add hyperlinks by pressing command + K on Mac computers and Control + K on PCs.

Another challenge that you’ll encounter as you’re adding your hyperlinks, comes when you have cited the same source multiple times throughout the article. Don’t hyperlink the same web page multiple times. Each hyperlink used will be considered a new, unique resource by your reader.
Finally, identifying a suitable web page version of offline resources can be a hassle. If, for example, you are citing a particular book I would hyperlink to the Amazon page where the reader can purchase it and learn more (or the author(s) websites if they own any). It all depends on what you believe the reader will want to consume as an additional resource after reading your work.
Use Subheads to separate your main ideas

If you use your thesis in the introductory paragraph to outline the key points within your content, make sure you do the same thing using subheads. If you didn’t do this for your essays, that’s ok.
Subheads allow the reader to understand the overall themes discussed — not all of your readers will consume the full article. Some of your readers may only read one part. If they do take the time to read your work, they may not read the whole thing in one sitting. The important part is to have a placeholder for them to come back to later, which is extremely helpful to them.
Start off by creating your subheads before you create the title of the article. I find that the creation of the title is much easier after you’ve laid out all of the key takeaways that the reader can expect from skimming the subheads. The question I’ve used when considering whether the title work or not is — can the title encompass all of the main points while still enticing the reader to click on my work?
Other considerations when repurposing your old essays
You also don’t need to be as formal with your use of sentence structure and vocabulary. Depending on your target audience and topic of conversation, you can be flexible with how you approach the presentation of your ideas. One example is how you leverage the use of italics, underlining and bolding to highlight key items for the reader to remember. You want any reader who may not feel inclined to read your article in full to be able to extract value from it just by skimming the content (as with your subheads).
If you already have a bibliography, don’t delete it. Rename it as “Additional Reading” or “More Resources.” Your readers may want to dig deeper, and the resources you used were useful when you originally wrote the essay (include this section even when you add your hyperlinks because the reader may not click them during the first read-through).
You should also add author’s notes to add more context to what the reader should do or consider throughout the article. Consider asking them for feedback in the comments section or have them share the content with their network.
Lastly, you have to have someone edit your content. Once you revise it and add your Subheads, the title, hyperlinks, and add any other pieces of information you may have noticed were missing — having a second pair of eyes audit the content will help put the final stamp of approval before you ship it out to the world. I usually just ask my friends and family to proofread my work for me since most of my content is created or repurposed specifically with them in mind.
If you don’t have anyone in your network to help you edit and you have a budget you can allocate, I recommend hiring a freelancer to do it for you. Fiverr is a very affordable marketplace to start off with. You can also use Grammarly as a last resort, but any software tool you use shouldn’t be a replacement to an actual human reviewing your work.
Related: The Easiest Way College Seniors And Grads Can Start Creating Content On LinkedIn (8 Minute Read)
Easy ways to distribute your work once you publish
Start off with your sources

With enough time and research, you can find employees of the publishers and those directly responsible for creating your resources. Once you find them, reach out and let them know that you used their work for one of your most recent articles (LinkedIn search and enough digging Google should be enough).
Companies are always looking for more ways to keep their brands relevant online, even those who fall in the academic field. When you provide online content that they can curate from, it’s a win-win situation. They can use your content to help augment their original work!
Leverage LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups are designed for you to receive constructive feedback on your work. Remember, the content you’re creating with your essays and any original work moving forward should always lead to a common result — gaining valuable conversations. The groups you choose to join are determined by the people you want to talk with. An easy way to begin is simply using LinkedIn search and typing in an industry, such as Marketing and Advertising, and then clicking on Groups.
The key to effective communication within these groups is to not be spammy. For every article you distribute, you should comment and engage with 12–15 posts from other people. You can generate conversations from both the content you share and the content you engage with; keep a balance of the two.
Ask your friends and family to share your work
If you’ve already had a friend or family member proofread your work, perhaps they would also be inclined to help share it. It may not seem like it makes a big impact, but one extra reader gained from their network is one reader you wouldn’t have had otherwise. The goal with the essays you repurpose, and the content that you will create moving forward, should be dedicated to that one new reader you hope to get.
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Your main challenge after you’ve exhausted your archive of past essay assignments is creating new content. The mental model that I’ve used to continue my content development is thinking about assigning my own essay assignments. What are the questions that you currently have (or had in college) that were never answered? That’s always a good way to start your research. The reason I won’t stop creating content for my online presence is because I learn from the articles I create for myself (my audience comes second).
The more I write my own articles, the more I’m able to distill the complicated concepts that enter into my world and simplify them for everyday use. In addition, the feedback that I’m getting allows me to learn more about these concepts in ways I wouldn’t have considered before. This is just something to consider as you begin your journey into creating content online.
Lastly, the process I laid out for you also works for audio and video forms of content. If you don’t want to expand your career by writing, you can still get the same benefits using other forms. Experiment and see which format is more enjoyable during the creation process. If you’re not having fun creating and promoting what you’re learning, you’ll give up before the first year.
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