In a world where information and entertainment is delivered 24/7 at little-to-no cost, it’s not always easy to provide truly unique and compelling content. So when you have original content that appeals to a large audience, you need to make the most of it by extending its reach and lifecycle as far as possible.
One way to do this is by finding interesting ways to repurpose your content for different channels and mediums. Here’s an example of how our team did this with a simple survey.
A survey – with a twist
Not long ago, our very creative PR team created a questionnaire about iPad usage, a topic that many are passionate about. The survey was designed to generate some provocative and humorous responses to go along with more business-oriented information, with questions including:
- Be honest! Have you ever used your iPad on a plane, in the tub, or during a date?
- From a business perspective, how has having an iPad made you more productive?
- If you were stranded on a desert island, would you rather have your iPad or your significant other? What about chocolate? Matches?
The survey had a total of 27 easy, fun-to-answer questions like these. As an added incentive to complete the questionnaire, we offered the opportunity for respondents to enter to win a gift card. We sent it out using SurveyMonkey and obtained over 1,600 responses. We then leveraged those responses to take advantage of a number of different content types and marketing channels. Here is what we did:
#1. Press Release and PR Campaign- Our PR team summarized the findings into a press release and pitched this unique content to the media.
#2. Infographic- In order to give the release even more punch, we supplemented it with a graphic element. We took some of the more intriguing and amusing questions as the basis for our own infographic, which the media responded to enthusiastically by publishing along with their articles.
#3. Blog Post- Infographics make for excellent blog post material as well. Therefore, we also featured it in an article for our Ideas Blog, paying special attention to potential SEO opportunities, especially since iPad-related topics and keywords have such high search values.
#4. Video- After the initial excitement generated by the press coverage and social media exposure, we wanted to find a way to extend the life of the survey even more. Our SlideShark VP Lisa Johnson came up with the brilliant idea to interview other iPad users using variations of the questions we used in the survey.
We sent out our reporter Alex Salop, videographer Jason Petrucci and director Marit Fratelli to Newbury Street in Boston to record several “man on the street” interviews. The result was this very entertaining video segment where iPad users reveal a lot (too much?) about how they use their iPads and how passionate they are about their tablets.
Distribution and Results
Because the content was developed and repurposed into different formats – text, graphic and video – we had a lot of options for distributing it. Aside from providing the infographic and release to the press, we also drove traffic via social media using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. We posted the video to our Brainshark YouTube channel as well.
The result was more press coverage from the combined press release and infographic than we typically get when announcing a major new feature in our product line. We also received coverage from broader publications such as Mashable, All Things Digital and PC Magazine.
The infographic blog post was among the top 10 most viewed content items in October and November, while the video now ranks in the top 20 (out of 69) of all our YouTube content (and we’ve only had it up for a few months).
This survey-infographic-video project was a great example of the power of repurposing high-quality content. It shortened the content development cycle because much of the core content for each piece was already developed and had gone through all the necessary stages of approval. At the same time, by transforming the content into different formats and sharing it via various channels, we not only achieved a quick hit in the first week of its life (i.e. press coverage), but also extended coverage and reach for another two months as well.
Do you have an example of content repurposing that made your team more effective? Drop us a line and we’ll share it with our audience.