Ep 206: A Writer's Guide to ROI (Part 4)

[Ep 206] Several years ago I watched a free training presented by Chalene Johnson, where she explained how to start with one piece of content and then use it in several forms for various outlets. With this efficient and productive approach, she gets the most mileage out of a single piece of content. It’s a clever, creative way to improve ROI. Chalene Johnson’s Content Creation System Chalene is comfortable on video, so she starts with a live video as the primary content form. She decides what she’ll speak on and has several points to cover, and I don’t think she scripts it in advance. She probably writes out bullet points to keep her on track and speaks from those. At the time of the training she recommended Facebook Live, but since then I’ve seen her and others do live video on multiple platforms at the same time. That might be like Facebook Live and Instagram Live or IGTV and maybe Periscope, too. With one live broadcast, she instantly reaches people in multiple places all at once. Afterwards, that video is saved. And that’s the beauty of her system. She can repurpose that saved video into multiple formats. For example, she can: edit the video recording into segments to publish on YouTube use the audio from that recorded livestream to create a podcast episode have the audio transcribed and use that written version as the draft of an article or two to publish at her website pull quotes and video excerpts to use on Twitter create infographics and quote posts to pin on Pinterest design quote images for her Instagram feed I don’t think she mentioned it, but she could create slide decks to publish on LinkedIN SlideShare and use the recorded video as part of a program or course. One piece of content turns into gobs of material for all kinds of purposes and platforms. The impact she can have with just one focused creative idea and effort blew me away. That’s a savvy use of one’s time and a remarkable return on investment. Creative Content Repurposing for Writers Maybe one day I’ll start with live broadcasts like Chalene Johnson, but that’s not who I am or where I’m at. Inspired by her training, I started to think about my own strengths: What one piece of content could be my starting point? What could I create to serve at least double-duty if not triple- or quadruple-duty to have the biggest impact possible? How can I take the principle behind Chalene’s training and adapt it for where I’m at as a writer to increase my ROI? Start with Written Content: Big to Small As a writer, an obvious starting point for me was written content. That’s what I did. Podcast: I ended up scripting my podcast episodes, so those are offered in audio form for those who subscribe to the podcast. Blog Article: The script is available as an article for those who prefer reading it at my website. Newsletter: Since it’s relatively short, I include that same content in my weekly newsletter, so people don’t have to go to my website or listen to the podcast to learn from my ideas. Instagram Quote: For the Instagram feed, I create a quote post with a brief excerpt from the article—enough so that people don’t have to go to the original piece in order to gain a valuable insight, in case they want to stay in Instagram rather than click away to my website. Instagram Image: To mix things up, I often take a photo that relates to the ideas, such as the image of a book I refer to in the article, and publish that in my feed. Instagram Story: Sharing the post from my Instagram feed in my Story draws a few people who are focusing more on that element of Instagram.