Earth Day has just passed, and the big theme this year (and every year) was, of course, to recycle. And as I passed by sign after sign in my town leading up to our earth Day celebrations telling me to reuse and recycle, I couldn’t help but think that this too should be a theme to celebrate for content marketers.
Month after month, quarter after quarter, content marketers are creating more and more content and sending it out into the universe, be it on their corporate website, social networks, publisher sites, at tradeshows, etc. to attract and inform potential buyers. And for all of the work that goes into each piece of content—from brainstorming the idea of the piece, to writing it, to editing and formatting, and finalizing—it’s crazy to think how all of that time and effort and money (!) is represented in that one asset; which, for a time, will most likely be leveraged in x,y,z, ways, only to lay by the wayside once the next shiny asset comes to the forefront. But it shouldn’t be this way. That piece can do more, and be more—all it takes is a bit of recycling and reusing. That piece can become multiple pieces that build your content library up—and in a time-, cost-, and resource-efficient way,
Reuse and Recycle Content
Take the beloved webinar, for example. For all the work that goes into the creation of a live webinar, they tend to happen pretty quickly. But what if you could bottle up all of that time, energy, cost, and valuable information that the webinar was created with, and multiply it into a handful of additional, repurposed pieces?!—Safe to say you’ve got yourself a win, win.
The beauty of webinars is that they leave you not only with the scripted material that was used in them, but also the new material and data that was generated by them—due to the Q&A session, live chats, etc.—which definitely aids the creation of additional content in additional formats even more. And with varying consumption preferences from person to person, recycling, reusing and reformatting the piece may help attract additional and/or net new leads for you and your organization.
Unsure as to how to repurpose and recycle content? Using webinars as an example, here are a few ideas:
- Record the live webinar and syndicate the recording
- Turn the recording into a podcast and transcript to syndicate
- Truncate the webinar into short-form videos
- Create an infographic using some of the data and material presented
- Produce a white paper, eBook, or tip sheet based off of the information presented
- Create a highlight reel (PDF or streaming) to cover off on the top 10 points presented that one should take away from the content
- Turn the top 3 questions asked in the Q&A into a blog post
- Reuse the presentation (slides, material) at a tradeshow, conference, or partner webinar
So go on, try and be a little ‘greener’ with your content. Reuse and recycle when it makes sense to. Chances are that ‘awesome idea’ for a webinar, would be an ‘awesome idea’ for a few other pieces. You may not be helping save the planet with it (that’s where you may want to get a Prius, or use the cloth grocery bags); but you will be saving time, and resources!
We would love to hear from you on how you reuse, repurpose and recycle content. Feel free to leave a comment or connect with me on LinkedIn
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