“We can talk, but money talks, so talk more bucks.” – Jay-Z whilst negotiating content creation
How can you create MORE content without compromising quality and without breaking the bank?
Repurposing.
Little-understood fact: The research portion of the creation process is usually the biggest time-suck; the second is ideation. Writing takes comparatively little time. Stretching your dollar further = using research and ideation more wisely.
This is brain-dead simple mathematics – yet hardly any businesses do it. They pay writers to constantly ideate, research, produce.
That’s a lot of waste.
Be smarter:
1. Conduct content ideation. Choose one “big idea” with a ton of legs and multiple angles.
2. Decide on a “Cornerstone Asset” – the largest/most comprehensive resource you will create. Usually, this is a guide/whitepaper/eBook.
3. Plan “Supporting Assets” – Ways to repackage the same info for different audiences and mediums.
Examples:
- Stats create tweets, infographics, slideshare presentations, compelling images
- Instructional sections become standalone blog posts or a series
- Those blog posts can be repackaged for specific audiences; turned into guest posts
- Host a webinar or record a video
- Field opinions on the topic/interview subject matter experts
- Roll into email campaigns
Bonus: All supporting assets can funnel people BACK to your cornerstone asset, which you can offer for download in exchange for email addresses. Cha-ching, that’s lead-gen for ya.
4. Conduct all research. Annotate and record separately for easy recall/reuse.
5. Create the cornerstone asset first. Follow up with supporting assets.
It’s really that simple – and it’s really that overlooked.
Go forth and make that cheddar.
*This is my sixth post for “Short Month” – a personal challenge to write valuable content in 250 words or less. How am I doing so far? Hit me with a comment or rant at me on Twitter @JoelKlettke!
Enjoying your short series Joel, keep ’em up.
I’d add retargeting as part 2 on how to get more mileage out of individual content projects and concepts. If you paid $5-10+ to get them engaged in your sales process, it makes a lot of sense to pay $1-2 to get them back into that funnel, rather than trying to attract them all over again with new content.
Really good point, and another that makes a ton of economic sense!
Great advice Joel. At Contentful, we also see clients saving a ton of time and $$ by re-using their content across platforms (website, mobile apps, billboards, cars, etc.) without having to re-work it.
[…] + sweet: here’s “The Easiest Way to Save a Fortune on Content” from my writing buddy Joel at Business Casual Copywriting. As time-strapped (and […]
[…] Repurposing should be a core tenant of every strategy. The easiest way to save a fortune on content is to take a “cornerstone asset” approach that empowers you to invest far LESS money into the ideation and creation phases of content production: Conduct ideation and identify a topic with a lot of utility for your audience—something big enough to warrant the creation of a permanent asset like an eBook, whitepaper or significant piece of “remarketable” content. Then, ideate on that idea: What smaller assets could you create from the large asset? Some examples: […]
[…] Repurposing should be a core tenant of every strategy.The easiest way to save a fortune on content is to take a “cornerstone asset” approach that empowers you to invest far LESS money into the ideation and creation phases of content production: Conduct ideation and identify a topic with a lot of utility for your audience—something big enough to warrant the creation of a permanent asset like an eBook, whitepaper or significant piece of “remarketable” content. Then, ideate on that idea: What smaller assets could you create from the large asset? Some examples: […]