Is your content repeating on itself?

22nd February 2011 | Posted in Content creation

There’s a common mantra about content, exhorting recycle, repurpose, reuse. A lot of businesses are picking up on the recycle and reuse, but they’re ignoring the repurpose.

It’s important. As ever, put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Suppose you’ve received a piece of direct mail (print or email) that interests you. You follow the call to action to find out more on a web site. But the landing page says exactly – EXACTLY – the same as the DM you’ve just read.

Imagine you’re on a web site and you click the link to download the brochure. Then you find the brochure says precisely the same as the web site.

Are you irritated? Do you still go on to buy, or do you drop out in frustration because actually you did want to find out more?

When we talk about repurposing content, it’s not just because you can do more with fonts and images, or because you have more space in some contexts than others. It’s so that you really can make the most of your opportunities to inform, educate and sell.

One approach is to write the long stuff first. Get all the detail of your offering or your business into the brochure, the data sheet, the positioning paper. Then think about how to tell your story faster in fewer words for a web page. And then finally get really snappy for a DM or an ad. So the customer actually does get the chance to find out more with every call to action.