So when my colleague recommended I listened to a TED Radio Hour segment called, “Are Immigrants The Key To A Stronger Democracy?”, I was eager to listen. Not only is the content of interest, but it features one of our clients, Sayu Bhojwani, who is President and Founder of New American Leaders Project (NALP).
After listening to her segment on TED Radio Hour (which by the way if you haven’t checked it out yet, it is definitely worth the 8 minutes) I found her TED Talk, and threw myself into it. After the video finished, I realized the benefit of using a foundational piece of content — a TED Talk, in this case — as something to draw from and leverage for other media, platforms and channels. That there could be other ways for CSL and its clients to produce content with more legs.
The video of her TED Talk spoke to visual consumers with more time on their hands, while the TED Radio Hour segment is more accessible in terms of length and format. “How interesting,” I thought. They were able to get two separate, quality pieces of content not just out of the same theme, but out of the same source material. What if they stretched it to even more media, making slight variations and focusing on other facets of the conversation?
Cascading the same (or remixed) content across a variety of media channels and platforms is not just a good idea, it’s a smart one. You can reach more people, where they are.
Here are a few thoughts on this:
- Some of your audience, or an audience you have yet to tap into, may prefer audio and visual over reading. Don’t miss an opportunity to reach a group of people because your content isn’t projected on the medium they prefer.
- Imagine the amount of time you will save by not having to start from scratch for the creation process every time you need a new piece of content. Take a look at some of your most successful pieces of content and brainstorm about how you can project these same ideas in another, interesting way.
- Recycling similar subject matters into different media tells your followers how passionate you are about a particular topic.
- On that note, pick your remixed topics wisely! Not all content you create is worth resharing through different media.
So, did you write a blog post that really resonated with your audience in the past? Take those same themes and refurbish it into a podcast, an eBook, or perhaps even an interview. You get the point. If you are publishing content that is worth spreading, share that content across multiple channels and media to maximize your audience and investment!
What I’ve just described is taking a long-form of content into a shorter form of content, but you can of course go the other direction as well.
