by Tonya Vinas, Director of Content Strategy
It’s that time of year when Ralphie bemoans the loss of his family’s turkey after the Bumpus’ hound dogs abscond with it in the movie A Christmas Story:
“The heavenly aroma still hung heavy in the house. But it was gone, all gone! No turkey! No turkey sandwiches! No turkey salad! No turkey gravy! Turkey hash! Turkey a la king! Or gallons of turkey soup! Gone, ALL GONE!”
These days people don’t treasure leftovers as much. But in the 1930s in middle America, food wasn’t as plentiful and roast turkey was reserved for holidays.
When it comes to leftover content, however, reimagined content can become just the hot dish you need to complement programs already in place or as a base for new content.
As we end another year, I started thinking about all of the successful ways Content4Demand has helped clients reimagine their content leftovers. I’m sharing some use cases from my list to whet your appetite:
1. Short-Order Content
One client needed to quickly create an awareness campaign with 12-15 assets to take advantage of an imminent market opportunity. There would be no time for SME calls, so we had to work with previously vetted and published content.
After the client conducted an internal audit and identified existing available resources, we collaborated to define a list of 15 assets (blogs, social promotion, and core content assets)—some reimagined as new formats, and some net-new but drawing from existing content. We worked concurrently on asset creation to meet the fast timeline, but starting with existing assets was key to acceleration.
2. Irresistible Appetizers
We have started creating GIFs for social promotional of core assets for clients. These light, appealing appetizers can be created by drawing on minimal derivative content from the core asset—literally a handful of words and/or images. GIFs are exciting and accessible, and just the tease needed to leave someone craving more.
3. A Hearty Stew
One client craved fresh ideas for using channel-promotion dollars it receives quarterly. Their existing blog platform was successful, but they wanted to add an outbound email-based campaign to promote the blog, as well as specific training and service offers.
We worked with the client to create a content plan of topic-specific emails used for geographic and company-size targeting. The emails drew heavily on published blogs, reimagining the blog storylines to fit the buyer targets. The emails included a link back to the blog and a CTA for the training or service offering.
4. Serve Everyone’s Favorites
Content hubs are great for binging, but what if you want to create more targeted content for personas? We conducted a gap analysis of existing content on a hub for a client and identified gaps and opportunities for content creation for personas. We evaluated across the buyer journey and then presented ideas on creating new content or repurposing existing content to fill the gaps and execute on the opportunities.
5. Reorganize Your Pantry
Content audits are a great way to find the tasty tidbits in your “leftover” content. Christine Elliott, Global Director of Strategic Communications and Content for JLL, discussed the banquet of benefits she laid out from a recent audit of hundreds assets during this webinar.
Those benefits included: quickly identifying content for ABM campaign nurture paths, making a strategic connection between existing assets and new campaign messaging, abd driving a tagging architecture for a new sales-enablement platform. Those are just three of many she discussed. Check out the webinar for the rest.
The Bumpus hounds might have stolen the Christmas feast from Ralphie and his family, but they ended up with leftover Chinese food, which is better. By the way, the Bumpus’ house is now open for nightly rentals. Chew on that a while.
Brenda Caine recently dissected a JLL audit with Christine Elliott in this fantastic post about custom content audits. You can visit this previous blog post for more about the value of repurposing content. Need help conducting a content audit or mapping out a strategy to make the best use of your existing content? Contact us; we’re here to help!
