The Chicken-Content Connection

Terrific leftovers: what my chicken tacos and your content have in common.

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Issue 13 | March 16, 2017 | The Chicken-Content Connection

On Monday night, we had chicken tacos for dinner.

Bear with me – I promise there’s a reason for telling you what we ate.

We had family visiting from out of state, so we needed dinner for nine instead of four. Two of the nine are college boys, so I figured I ought to be prepared to feed twelve instead of nine. ANYWAY. I made a big batch of spicy shredded chicken in a crock pot, a tasty taco base for each to serve up as they liked. All sorted out.

Turns out I overestimated the amount of chicken we needed. So on Tuesday night, I dug in the fridge for a few new toppings, and served it all up again, an easy dinner for four.

There is still more shredded chicken. But don’t worry – I have big plans involving enchilada sauce for Thursday. I suspect there might still be shredded chicken at the end of that meal, but if so, it shall crown a pile of cheesy nachos on Saturday.

The glory of content leftovers

Much like shredded chicken, content is best served in multiple iterations. For one thing, repurposing makes a marketing manager’s life easier. For all the work that goes into creating something interesting, insightful and engaging, it takes about a tenth of the effort to repurpose something.

That also makes repurposed content cheaper. I only had to plan for, shop for and prepare that chicken once for four meals – a much better return on invested time than drumming up four unique meals. With content, it can be tricky to budget out the exact cost of each piece – but as someone who sends invoices, I promise the cost difference is substantial between preparing a unique piece and preparing repurposed iterations of existing pieces.

But the most important reason to reuse content is that leftovers are actually more effective at engaging your audience. Or to put it a different way, an audience is more likely to notice and remember something when they’ve seen it multiple times. Think of television ads during NFL games – the same ad often plays 5 – 10 times during the course of a game. A lot of money goes into quantifying how effective ad dollars are for such big-budget investments. You can bet that the per-invested-dollar return is far better after the audience has seen the same ad several times.

Chicken Content, three ways

Here are a few ways you can repurpose content for an easier and cheaper process that also produces a better return on investment:

1. Same idea, different format. Take your latest white paper and reuse the best visual for a sales idea. Take your sales idea and use it as the discussion topic for a video or podcast. Take a roundtable call and turn it into a blog post, all covering the same main points as the original piece.
2. Deep dive into one part. Most pieces leave a lot on the cutting room floor. Take the scraps and work them into a deep dive on one section. For instance, a sales idea about liquid alts might have to gloss over category definitions, so a related piece could be a refresher on the difference between market neutral and directional strategies.
3. Same idea, different angle. A piece about small cap valuations could also be presented as a piece about small cap earnings, using all the same points, but focused on a different angle.

Need help repackaging your chicken? Reach out and let’s talk about effective ways to repurpose your best pieces.