How to customize done-for-you (DFY) content in minutes

The true benefits of using pre-written done-for-you (DFY) content is that it can save you A TON of time and money! High quality DFY articles and programs can save health pros from investing untold hours into researching and creating their own content or programs from scratch. Why do that when you can buy it already drafted and ready to customize and share/sell?

But *some* DFY content is sold to hundreds (thousands?) of your colleagues and competitors. That can be detrimental to the sage advice of “niching down” and specializing in one certain area or type of client.

(FYI – There’s one option where the quantities of DFYs are limited, so that won’t be a concern—spoiler alert—it’s the Credible Health Blog Shop on this very website!)

How do you get the best DFY content to save time and money and not sound like a clone of your colleagues?

By investing in limited-edition DFY content and customizing it a bit to reflect your voice, brand, and community.

Keep reading for pro tips about how to customize DFY content so that it:

• Doesn’t feel like it’s regurgitated or “cookie-cutter”
• Sounds like YOU speaking in your authentic voice
• Fits into your content strategy
• Attracts your ideal clients because it talks about your unique health practice
• Doesn’t take too much time (saving time is the name of the game when it comes to DFY content!)

The tips in this article will show you how to find quality DFY content, customize it for your voice, and turn it into content that attracts new clients and builds trust with your community. Essentially, it markets your business (your content’s job is to be content marketing)!

Let’s go over the ways . . .

Before you invest in any DFY health content

Not all DFY content is equal! Before you invest there are two big things to consider so that you get the value you deserve and the time savings you need.

1 – Choose the best DFY content for your health practice

The better the content, the less time you need to spend customizing it. You want your final product to reflect the excellence of your practice.

Imagine a professionally written and researched health article. It’s specific to your niche and expertise, it’s interesting and engaging for your ideal clients, and it can use a few easy tweaks to customize it.

Ideally, you want the content to be super high-quality, and with a bit of customization (that you’ll learn below) it will be excellent and you’ll be proud to share it far and wide, amiright?

When choosing DFY health content, opt for ones that are:

• the right topic for your niche and specialty
• limited edition (maximum number of sales)
• customizable
• high-quality without a bunch of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors
• properly researched, using only high-quality clinical studies (this is especially important for health content)

I highly recommend checking these out and making an informed decision before investing in any pre-written DFY products or programs.

2 – Make sure it’s the right topic

Once you’ve chosen the best quality content, now make sure the topics are right for you.

None of the customization strategies in this article will work if the content you purchase is irrelevant to your community, niche, or brand. The topic and references have to jive with your area of expertise and your ideal clients as much as possible or you’re better off researching and writing a brand-spankin’ new post from scratch!

For example, if you only deal with nutrition, food, meal plans, and recipes, then you might not need an article on mindfulness. Or, if your ideal clients aren’t concerned with metabolism, why would you need content on foods for metabolic health? And, if you never recommend plant-based foods, a post on 7 strategies for plant-based eating may not support your message.

See what I mean?

You need choice!

The bottom line is to be sure you only need to put minimal work and time into customizing a piece of content to make it work for you. To begin with, it should be a high-quality product on a relevant topic. Make sure that you’re investing in niche-specific content topics that work for your practice, brand, and community!

8 ways to customize done-for-you (DFY) content

Now that you’ve invested in some excellent, relevant content, you can customize it as little—or as much—as you’d like.

However . . .

I highly recommend spending a bit of time before you publish it as your own. Go through at least the first couple of steps below to customize and make it reflect your voice and brand. Whether you have just ten or ninety minutes, I’ve listed these steps in priority order (#1 is the most important). If you have a time limit, set your timer. Then go down the list and implement them one at a time. Stop when you run out of time or you’ve done all eight steps.

1 – Change the headline (and subheads) to address your ideal clients’ pain points and health goals

If you have just a few minutes to customize a DFY product, at least do this!

Headlines are arguably the most important part of an article. Without a good headline, very few people will ever read it. Your headline should grab your ideal client’s attention so they stop scrolling and open up your article, post, or email. Whether they see the headline on Google, social media, or their personal email account, you want to get them to click through, see the value you offer, and build your trust and expertise in their eyes.

One way to do this is to take your most popular post and look at your headline. I always suggest instead of reinventing the wheel, double-down on what’s worked for you in the past. Does your popular headline start with a question? Paint a picture? Promise a benefit? Whatever has worked in the past to connect your readers to your content, try using that format and style again.

PRO TIP: You can use your email autoresponder to decide on the best headline for YOUR audience. I love this strategy! Find out which of your top two headline ideas resonates with your email subscribers by using your email software, like ConvertKit (affiliate link). I do this by using the email subject line A/B testing function. I simply include two headlines as options for the email subject line (headline A/headline B). Then, ConvertKit automatically sends each one out to 15% of my subscriber list. After a certain time (that you choose 30m? 120m?), whichever email subject line had a higher open rate, that is the one that goes out to the remaining 70% of subscribers! Then, I can go back and tweak my blog post headline afterwards if I want to.

2 – Add images that reflect your brand and resonate with your community

Images are necessary for online content. While I haven’t seen great research in this area, some top digital marketers recommend including one image for every 150-350 words of text. Yes, that’s a lot of images! There’s no hard and fast rule about this, but be sure your articles aren’t a wall of text. Think about people reading your post on their desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Break the text up with lots of white space and some relevant images that help drive your point home.

There are lots of ways to get images for free, or inexpensively.

Just as you wouldn’t use a random blog post as your own, do NOT use a random image you find online either. Make sure it’s from a reputable company that is offering it for free or purchase rights to use it (pay the fee in advance, rather than the penalty later).

BONUS POINTS: If you want an image that people will remember, run it through LaMem to find out how memorable it is.

You’re welcome.

Once you have a few great images, you can customize them—if you want to—by adding your brand colours, website, and/or logo. Also, you might want to put your snazzy new headline smack in the middle of it so it shows clearly in social media thumbnails. Canva is super-popular and I still use them sometimes. But, I usually start customizing my images with RelayThat. They have so many great templates and once you’ve created an image you’re happy with, you can download it in the right size for just about every platform (YT thumbnail, vertical for Pinterest, square for IG, etc.).

3 – Add unique calls-to-action (CTAs) to encourage your ideal clients to take the next step

Technically when investing in DFY content, you buy content; but you actually *need* content marketing. You need the content to work for you and promote your business and expertise.

According to Jon Morrow of Smartblogger,

At its core, the intention of any content marketing effort is to drive customer action.(ref)

Hence, “content marketing.”

The marketing part of content marketing is specifically for driving action.

So, after your headline and images are done, CTAs are uber-important! What do you want your readers to do (during or) after they read your article?

Here are a bunch of ideas (but you only need one for each piece of content):

• Sign up for your email newsletter (or download your opt-in freebie or content upgrade). *Note this is a great CTA because when your readers sign up for your email newsletter they’re giving you permission to email more content to them.
• See another related article, post, or page (add internal links or a suggestion on what to read next).
• Book a discovery call with you (this is most important on Work With Me or About pages, and sometimes Home pages too.
• Comment or reply email you their thoughts on this topic.
• Purchase one of your related products or services.

By adding in social sharing buttons, email opt-in incentives, and links to your products and programs and other valuable content, you are making sure that your content is building your email list and growing your health practice. Hence “marketing.”

Here’s an example of a CTA:

4 – Open the article with a bang so your readers feel understood and are interested to find out more

Make the opening/introduction of your post really hit home with your audience. Start with an interesting or surprising story (that relates to the topic) to grab your readers’ attention.

Perhaps the topic reminds you of an experience or an example you can share. Or maybe you can include a mini case-study showing your audience how you used this information to help a client. Asking an awesome question or stating an interesting fact are other great ways to start an article.

Use the opening to really draw your readers in. Here are some great ideas:

• • How to write spellbinding introductions by shamelessly copying the pros
  • 6 Steps to writing captivating blog post intros every time

5 – Add practical tips that help your audience see you as their red poppy in the field of green

It’s great to be educational and share expertise, but often your community wants to know HOW to apply the knowledge. How is the info you share going to benefit them? What do they need to DO (not just what they need to know)?

Make your customized DFY article practical for them by adding:

• Tips or techniques on how to implement the knowledge (i.e., tips for better sleep, etc.)
• A recipe using those ingredients
• Instructions or a short demo video of you doing a stretch or other move so they can see it
• Review a relevant product you’ve tried. BONUS points for adding in your affiliate links to these products.

6 – Repurpose the content into different formats that work for you

Just because you have content in written form does NOT mean you have to publish it just once, or publish it only as written content! Why not create an audio or visual component also? If the research and information are high-quality then paraphrase it into a podcast and/or video or create an infographic from it. Pull out some quotes or facts and make images to share on social media.

Quality health content can and should be repurposed! Don’t forget to share it by email, as free “opt-in incentives” to grow your email list, on social media, or in your own free or paid programs!

7 – Make the pre-written done-for-you content yours

If you’ve done the first six items, you’re pretty much good to go.

But, if you still have time, this is when you get to do some deeper magic with the content itself. There are a lot of ways to change up a post so it’s absolutely perfect for your community and sounds just like you.

First, ensure everything in the post aligns with your position and branding. If you’re gluten-free, then you don’t want a post with a section on the benefits of whole wheat, right? If there are parts that don’t align, either rework them or delete those sections altogether.

NOTE: In the done-for-you articles in the Credible Health Blog Shop, I specifically try to keep the articles educational and not add too much personality. Your audience needs your personality to shine through, not mine. Plus, the premium ones are pretty long with several subsections – you can chop one or two out and still have an article with bulk. 🙂

You can make the content yours by:

• Paraphrasing certain words or terms (use a thesaurus if you need to – I personally use WordHippo)
• Add your voice by including your favourite phrases, slang, or hashtags
• Break long posts into two separate parts—especially if they’re nice and long (HINT: If you split them into multiple posts, be sure to link them to each other and list all of the references at the end of both of them)
• Link to other relevant posts on your website (internal linking is great because it helps direct your reader to other content they may be interested in)

If you’re really adamant on having 100% unique content, but can’t invest the time to write it yourself or have it custom written for you, then customize it and run it through:

• Grammarly’s plagiarism checker
• Copyscape which checks the web for duplicate content

Of course, if you’re buying a DFY article, some health pros may use them with minimal customization, so just decide HOW unique-to-you you want your version to be.

8 – Create a branded content upgrade

Here’s an advanced content marketing tip, which is why I left it until the end: create a “content upgrade.”

Content upgrades are a GREAT way to use content to grow your email list! It’s basically offering additional valuable content that’s an “upgrade” to the free content you’re offering online for all to see. For example, you can make a downloadable checklist or use some of the practical tips in #5 as a content upgrade. This is an advanced tip for content marketing because in order for your readers to get the more exclusive “upgrade” you’ll ask them to subscribe to your email list so you can send it directly to their inbox.

I created a content upgrade in this post below:

BLOG POST: Struggling to blog? Here are 60+ wellness blog ideas you can create in 60 minutes

CONTENT UPGRADE:

Conclusion

I hope that these two pre-purchase and eight post-purchase strategies help you to get the best DFY content for your health practice and customize it to make it yours. Remember, you can do as many of these steps as you’d like. Of course, the more you choose to do, the more minutes it will take and the more custom your content will become. 🙂

PRO TIP: I’ve personally addressed all of these concerns with the done-for-you content in the Credible Health Blog Shop. These articles are fully customizable, limited edition (max 73 sales—you read that right only 73 are sold and then they’re gone forever), and packed with recent research studies as credible references. In fact, the ones marked “premium” also include headline title ideas, images, email newsletter, and social media prompts. If you opt for the full “content marketing kit” you also get a full tutorial how to customize that article for your business as well as 10 pre-written social media posts to schedule and share your new expert post with your followers for a year or more.

Signing off and toasting: To customizing done for you content like a pro in just a few minutes, and use it to really build your health practice.

Over to you

What do you think? Do you use DFY content? How much have you customized it? Will you do so more now? Did I miss something?

I’d love to know (in the comments below)!

*Originally published May 2017; updated with even more awesomeness August 2018, December 2020, and April 2026.