Create once. Distribute forever.
I'm piggybacking off an earlier piece where I talked about how Aditi, my 2-year-old, is more fascinated with the toy box than the toy itself.
One box... Several uses.
As a box itself, it's a car, place, house, bed.
When torn down into pieces, it becomes something to paint on, scribble on, and confetti.
Eventually, there are pieces of it all over the house... Effective distribution.
Similarly...
One piece of content... Several ways of distributing.
When you create one solid piece of content for your organisation - like a case study - milk it for what it is worth.
Creating a case study is not easy. It's a lot of work.
Creating and posting a link once just isn't going to cut it.
When writing a case study, you'll follow some or all of these steps:
- Draft questionnaire
- Identify what key message needs to "come out" of the piece
- Reach out to the key contact person at the customer's business
- Schedule a suitable time to conduct interview
- Conduct the interview
- Write first draft
- Edit
- Get internal feedback
- Send draft to the client for approval (this is usually where case studies go to die - if it is a hierarchical organisation, it'll need to go through several layers of approval)
- Final edits
- Publish online
This can take anywhere between 2 to 8 weeks. Sometimes, longer!
Here's where most businesses drop the ball.
After publishing the case study online, they share the link on social media.
WHAT A WASTE!!!
You've forgotten a social media user's behavioural pattern.
Someone on a platform like LinkedIn or Facebook is NOT looking to get out of the app to consume content. Meaning, they're rarely going to click a link that takes them outside of the platform. Unless it is extremely compelling. I'm sorry to say, your case study is not going to be on that list of "I must click"s.
To milk it for what it is worth, consider the case study as a Hub Piece or Mother Content.
Create several pieces of micro content around it. Examples include:
- Customer quotes: 2-3 posts
- Why did they decide to work with you (or buy from you): 3-4 posts
- The results they've enjoyed thanks to your product/service: 2-3 posts
There. A minimum of SEVEN posts from one case study.
Each of these posts can be turned into beautiful visuals and distributed via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more. Plus, it's native content (content that's tailored to a specific platform and lives on it).
Now, imagine if your case study had been a 10-minute video.
The possibilities are that much more.