The ABCD of making more of your content assets

Let’s face it, you don’t create great content cheaply. I don’t say this because I think writers are anything but good value, but because good content takes time: it takes quality thinking and input from more than one brain. And that can add up.

So once you have that lovely content assembled, you want to wring every last drop of value from it. Here’s a quick mnemonic to get you thinking about how to repurpose or extend the reach of your content.

• Alternative formats. This is about presenting the same story or messaging in a different way, such as moving from video to text or splitting a paper into a series of blogs. Typically this is to exploit different media, content vehicles or channels — print and digital; words and pictures; in person and online — or to provide for different languages. When thinking about formats, consider different devices (iphone, BlackBerry, ipad, etc) and the user experience (eg, how to achieve more interactivity).

• Building on content. We can expand on a topic to give further explanation and detail for those who need it; for example a primer for a sales team on the subject matter of a thought-leadership piece. Or we might want to cut up or add to a piece to create materials for customers at different stages of the sales cycle.

• Complementing. We can create material or tools that provide further substantiation or support for our messaging, such as customer testimony or an ROI calculator.

• Distributing wider. We can extend the reach of the assets we have; for example through tweets, blogs or emails that point to them or with comments on forums that link back to the main piece.

Which approaches do you use? We’d love to hear how you extract more value from your content.