Episode 75
5 Secrets That Make Your Content 10x More Valuable (with Michele Linn)
Maximizing the value of your content can feel like an uphill battle, especially if you spent months doing original research and aren’t sure how to share it with your audience. Gathering valuable data is one thing, but using it to create new and engaging content is another. If you're wondering how to keep your content interesting and impactful, you're not alone.
In this week’s episode, Justin and Michele Linn break it all down for you.
They review smart ways to repurpose your research, how to get your social media and content teams working together, and tips for adapting your data for different platforms.
Tune in to hear how simple yet strategic tweaks in your approach can draw significant traffic and backlinks. Michele also shares practical, actionable advice on creating a content strategy that ensures no valuable data is wasted.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How to Repurpose Research: Expand data to create sustainable, varied content across multiple platforms.
- Why Collaborate: Bridging social media and content teams enhances content repackaging and sharing.
- How to Reframe Survey Questions: Craft questions to uncover key insights and guide market strategy.
- Why Original Research Matters: Adds value and helps stand out in a saturated market.
- How to Engage on LinkedIn: Use genuine insights over promotional posts to spark meaningful conversations.
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Transcript
Hey, everybody, before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for
Speaker:producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and
Speaker:strategy for one flat rate by visiting Hatch
Speaker:FM. All right, let's get in the show.
Speaker:Welcome to Distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head
Speaker:and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I
Speaker:share playbooks, motivations, stories and strategies to help you repurpose and
Speaker:distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you
Speaker:create.
Speaker:Hey, friend, welcome to this week's episode of Distribution first.
Speaker:So excited to have Michelle Lynn on the show, who is a
Speaker:really, I would say one of the more, I was going to say outspoken,
Speaker:but I feel like that's too strong of a word. But, you know, advocate for
Speaker:original research and how to use original research as part of a larger content
Speaker:strategy and being able to really use those things to
Speaker:fuel a lot of the things that you're doing. And so I'm so excited to
Speaker:have Michelle on. We're going to actually talk through her five
Speaker:part framework to be able to repurpose original research. But
Speaker:I believe also a lot of these things will tie in directly to
Speaker:other pieces of content, bigger initiatives, regardless whether or not you're doing original research
Speaker:or not. So, Michelle, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me,
Speaker:Justin. Absolutely. So before we kick into the
Speaker:framework, maybe walk through a little bit. For me, just your
Speaker:take on original research, how to be
Speaker:able to use studies or surveys or things like that, and
Speaker:then why those things are so powerful as far
Speaker:as content marketing and how, regardless of company size,
Speaker:what are some of those things? Because I feel like it's a buzzword in content
Speaker:marketing, original research, you got to do like podcasts, original
Speaker:research and YouTube. Like, these are the things in B two B where people are
Speaker:like, we got to figure out our little corner of the market. And I think
Speaker:original research is one of those. So maybe touch on that to start. Yeah,
Speaker:absolutely. I think you're right. And I think, too, people hear this word
Speaker:original research and it means so many different things, or it can
Speaker:mean so many different things. So I think it is really important for a company
Speaker:to say, hey, why do we want to do this? So I'll start with the
Speaker:why and then the what. But I'm sure you guys talk a lot about AI
Speaker:and all this different content that's out there and just content saturation and all of
Speaker:the noise. And I think to really rise above
Speaker:and to say something that's actually net new and to say something that's actually
Speaker:meaningful to your audience. I think original research is a
Speaker:great way to do that because by its very nature, it's actually original.
Speaker:It's new, and I love doing projects that really focus on what are
Speaker:those unanswered questions and how can we help our audience think or
Speaker:behave differently. So it's new and it's very meaningful. So I
Speaker:think even though there is so much content out there, I don't think that. I
Speaker:think anytime you're doing something where you're adding value that isn't
Speaker:already out there is really useful. Yeah, I love that. And I think
Speaker:too, the way people say original research, to your point, Justin, it means a lot
Speaker:of different things. For instance, I focus specifically on
Speaker:helping marketing teams do survey based research. So going out to
Speaker:their audience or reaching out to panels to understand what those different trends
Speaker:are in the industry. But there's a lot of other ways to do
Speaker:original research, too. So you can do a series
Speaker:of qualitative interviews and publish those findings, or you
Speaker:can do, I just finished a project where we analyzed this company's first
Speaker:party data. They had all this data coming into their system and then we did
Speaker:a survey based project as well. We're marrying those two things together.
Speaker:Or you can do observational research. I know Andy Crestedin
Speaker:has done this. He's like, what are those things that are on websites? And he
Speaker:looks at 50 or 100 websites and he like says, you know, he kind of
Speaker:takes a list and says, here's what everyone's doing and here's the missing gaps and
Speaker:so forth. So there's a lot of different ways to do original
Speaker:research depending on budget access and all of those different
Speaker:things. Yeah, I've done them two different ways, maybe
Speaker:three. The observational one I like as just more of an ad
Speaker:hoc. Like you don't really have to have anything super formal. You can kind of
Speaker:just have a hypothesis and go expand on those things. The two I've
Speaker:done in the past, we did a massive survey, one several times when I was
Speaker:at Techsmith talking about video viewer research and really surveying
Speaker:audience. Then when I was at metadata, we did benchmark report which was
Speaker:using first party data out of the actual platform, spin those things
Speaker:up that way. So I do love the different mix of
Speaker:original research. I think you breaking it down that way is really helpful because I
Speaker:even think, for me sometimes I think of original research, even though I done a
Speaker:couple of different versions, I typically lean on one or the other even in my
Speaker:head as I'm thinking about it. So but yeah, I mean, you think
Speaker:about original research and let's just take that survey
Speaker:data and all of the questions and you can really, if you're
Speaker:doing it correctly, you can really frame up the narrative for
Speaker:what you're going to get out of that potentially based on the questions you
Speaker:ask or the topics. Or you can ask a question or not ask a
Speaker:question that can completely change which, what data you end up getting.
Speaker:And I know whenever I have thought about original
Speaker:research, I always have had the x ray goggles is what I call them to
Speaker:see. Like, oh, this could be so many other things, right? Like we've got this
Speaker:question that answers a specific thing. It's just a piece of the
Speaker:research. But man, we can really expand on what that looks like.
Speaker:And so that's why I'm excited to talk through the framework. So let's maybe dive
Speaker:into the framework here. Number one on your list as far as like how to
Speaker:repurpose and reuse stuff, we're going to get into it is reuse. So maybe talk
Speaker:to me about, we're just reusing different pieces of content. What do you mean
Speaker:by that? Yeah, absolutely. And if you don't mind, can we go back to like
Speaker:framing up the story and asking survey questions? Because I do think what you hit
Speaker:on is really, really critical. And I think that writing a survey
Speaker:is really hard if you haven't done it before. And people will
Speaker:either ask questions that are boring. So, like you'll have all these stats,
Speaker:stat stats stats. And you kind of have this like benchmark of what is going
Speaker:on. And that's great in theory, but when you try to go
Speaker:repurpose those things, like, you can reuse them in minimal ways.
Speaker:But when I think about repurposing and when I'm thinking about story and survey
Speaker:data, I like to think about how can you ask survey questions? They're going to
Speaker:serve as a jumping off place to tell more stories and to share your point
Speaker:of view. So I think it's really critical to think about
Speaker:what those questions are. So, for instance, and I don't think you meant this, but
Speaker:I'm a very big believer in not trying to use original research or
Speaker:use survey based research to try to like lead someone down the path and
Speaker:says, aha, you know, buy my product and solution. And I'm sure you're saying the
Speaker:exact same thing. But I do think that there is a narrative in there. And
Speaker:I think as you're asking survey questions, think about how can I
Speaker:uncover people's pain points or how can I uncover missed
Speaker:opportunities? What are those things that people aren't doing or aren't thinking about doing
Speaker:what they really should be? Or how can I uncover
Speaker:gaps or disconnects? And so, like, try to figure out different ways to ask
Speaker:questions, to tell stories because then you'll be much better set
Speaker:up to do all of the repurposing that we're going to be talking about.
Speaker:So just as a, oh, one, I'm glad you made that point. A quick
Speaker:yet and important aside, I think it's just that you can't get that part wrong.
Speaker:Thousand percent, because I think, you know, we're going to go through these five rs
Speaker:and it's going to be, you know, oh, my gosh, we're going to, I can
Speaker:do all these things with all this content. And then the classic, I
Speaker:always make this joke, but like, if, if your content is a
Speaker:turd and you cut it up a hundred ways, you get 100 turds. And so
Speaker:I think that's just no different with original research. Maybe even
Speaker:worse with original research, because if you ask, like you said, if you ask a
Speaker:bunch of boring questions, you're going to end up with a bunch of boring
Speaker:content that comes out of it. And so, and you're right. You're exactly right. Like
Speaker:when I was thinking about leading, I'm thinking about leading with narrative
Speaker:and pain point and success. And like, what are all
Speaker:these things that now I can highlight and envision sharing
Speaker:out with my audience, not leading them down to product necessarily
Speaker:100%. And for what it's worth, I talked to marketers who've run these studies
Speaker:with these bigger companies, and a lot of times some of these companies ask marketers
Speaker:to come to them with the survey and then they'll just field it, which is,
Speaker:I think, kind of silly, but I've talked to marketers who've done these huge studies,
Speaker:spent all this money, and they're like, wow, we didn't learn anything interesting.
Speaker:So I mean, like, what a disappointment. And like, oh, my gosh. So just,
Speaker:what a missed opportunity. So it still does happen often
Speaker:enough. And I also read a lot of surveys and I'm like, what you think
Speaker:you're going to get out of that question is probably not what you're going to
Speaker:get out of that question, but that's a different topic for a different day.
Speaker:Interesting. Yeah, like that. Yeah. You could do a whole series on how to ask
Speaker:the right questions. Maybe we'll have you back and do that. That'll be fun. So,
Speaker:yeah, let's get into the framework here, let's assume we've got some good content or
Speaker:we've got at least a solid base of things we're going to do. Like we
Speaker:talked about. We're going to start with this idea of reusing content
Speaker:from what we have. So maybe walk me through what you think about just straight
Speaker:up reusing stuff that you have out of the survey. Yeah. So, I
Speaker:mean, reuse is the simplest, easiest way to repurpose your
Speaker:content. It's just taking a chart and sharing it on social media or using
Speaker:it within a blog post or a presentation. So it's essentially just
Speaker:taking something you already have, not doing much, if any,
Speaker:rework to it, and then using it in different spots. So it's something very
Speaker:easy to do. I just, as we're going to talk about, I think people just
Speaker:need to think beyond that because there's a lot more potential with your original
Speaker:research. Yeah, I would say reuse. That's the classic. I think that's what
Speaker:people think of. Even when I say repurposing, a lot of
Speaker:times when repurposing gets a bad name, it's just taking
Speaker:thing x and posting it on platform Y, which again, is
Speaker:fine. It's honestly, like you said, I think it's a starting point. It's better
Speaker:than nothing. And a lot of people are doing nothing.
Speaker:You know, all those charts and all those graphs and all those things that are
Speaker:within that data or showing unique data. It's left,
Speaker:honestly, like gated a lot of times behind a paywall or by insight,
Speaker:you're just limiting, narrowing in the amount of people that actually see
Speaker:that versus when I think about the reuse of it, it's
Speaker:just kind of opening up the floodgates and just being able to really
Speaker:tease out the data. You know, it's one data point. Maybe if you
Speaker:published all the data points and put all of the content out,
Speaker:eventually over a year, somebody could get all the information. But that's not how people
Speaker:work. Exactly. We're not going to see it all. We're not going to consume it
Speaker:all. We're not going to understand it all and be like, oh, I got all
Speaker:that right. You're going to see three or four and be like, oh, I'm just
Speaker:going to go down. I think I'm going to download this thing now. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker:So reuse, base level, easiest thing to start. I'm
Speaker:curious. Number two is reflect. Talk to me through reflection and what
Speaker:that means for you as far as repurposing goes. Yeah. So this is
Speaker:personally my favorite way to reuse or repurpose your research data.
Speaker:So it's essentially taking out what you learned and reflecting on it
Speaker:in public. So this is an older example, but I did a
Speaker:study all around thought leadership with Andy Cressidina, with surveymonkey several years
Speaker:ago, and there was a question in there that says, do you think the
Speaker:quality of your thought leadership is impacted if it's ghost written?
Speaker:And half said yes, half said no. And so I took that question out to
Speaker:LinkedIn, and I'm like, you know, here's what we asked, here's what we found. Here
Speaker:are my thoughts. What do you think? And, you know, all these people chimed
Speaker:in and they were like, you know, very thoughtful about why they thought yes or
Speaker:why they thought no. And then that spurred additional conversations and
Speaker:additional LinkedIn posts that really got into the nuance of ghost written
Speaker:thought leadership. And we never did repeat that particular study, but that would
Speaker:have given us new ideas of questions to ask and so forth. So I think
Speaker:it's just genuinely taking your data, taking something that you learned,
Speaker:something that you either validated, something that you believed or something
Speaker:that you found surprising or I've shared disconnects before.
Speaker:Like, marketers want to create more, but they don't want to spend more. Like the
Speaker:classic story, but we have data to back it up. And just taking those out
Speaker:and, like, sharing your thoughts and asking people to weigh in, it's very
Speaker:easy. I'm very big at using social media for conversation,
Speaker:not for promotion. I think it makes the data even more meaningful
Speaker:and even more genuine. Yeah, it's a unique
Speaker:opportunity to be able to kind of chew
Speaker:on what you found and potentially spin that
Speaker:up off of it? I think one of the things I'm kind of curious, how
Speaker:do you think about what you're going to reflect
Speaker:on? Is that more strategic in terms of you're going to go through it and
Speaker:actually maybe list out some of the things that you found most interesting. Is it
Speaker:more ad hoc in terms of like, this struck me today, I'm going to post
Speaker:about it, or how do you think about that, Michelle? Well, so if it's me,
Speaker:I'm an ad hoc kind of person. So that's how I would do it. I'm
Speaker:not as like structured, organized, but I think you absolutely win 100
Speaker:can do it in a structure, organized way. Again, when you're asking
Speaker:questions with the intent to find those pain points
Speaker:or expose disconnects or like, do all of those things where your questions
Speaker:are essentially those conversation starters, you can just make a list of
Speaker:all of those data points and then take those out to social media, take
Speaker:them out to your membership, take them out to anything that you want to. Just
Speaker:start conversations around those. So I think you can do it depending on
Speaker:how you and your system and your brain works. I think both ways
Speaker:work really well. Yeah, I'm just thinking through in terms of,
Speaker:because I know a lot of times, at least in b, two b, the goal
Speaker:of the LinkedIn post would be to drive traffic
Speaker:to the survey. And again, I think that adds a nice
Speaker:balancing point where the goal is not necessarily to get you to read
Speaker:it, although I think if you are genuine in your
Speaker:reflection and giving a actual unique
Speaker:take and trying to spur conversation, it will actually lead people
Speaker:to want to read it more than if you were straight up promoting,
Speaker:hey, I just did this new survey we surveyed, blah, blah, blah, blah, and we
Speaker:talked about x, Y and z. Go check it out. I think so, too. And
Speaker:obviously in your LinkedIn comments, say, hey, if you want to read the whole study,
Speaker:here's the link to the whole thing. And I think that works really well. You
Speaker:obviously need the culture of having that person. If you were to use LinkedIn,
Speaker:for instance, I feel like these best come from people,
Speaker:not from companies. So I think that you need that person within
Speaker:the organization who is on LinkedIn and who is sharing those thoughts. I think
Speaker:it's harder if you don't have that built in. I think it's
Speaker:possible. But yeah, I think I've always had really good success
Speaker:just being genuine and even, like saying, hey, you know, what we learned really surprised
Speaker:me and not. I think people really do want to dig in and not just,
Speaker:you know, get stats thrown at them. Yeah, I think the interesting thing, as
Speaker:I'm maybe tie this together at first when we were going over the framework prior,
Speaker:but I think each one of these things can really
Speaker:expand out the data. They're really just
Speaker:different angles and different ways to approach the data and what's coming
Speaker:out of it. And, you know, I'm just thinking of example, like
Speaker:if you had ten thoughts, kind of, or ten reflections
Speaker:out of that piece of content, and you just posted
Speaker:one reflection a month or two reflections, you could see how
Speaker:expansive and how long lasting that survey in
Speaker:original research data that becomes just off of a few posts a month, even if
Speaker:you posted once a week, you know, you're getting two and a half months worth
Speaker:of content that taught your reflections on this over two months.
Speaker:And then, you know, by that point, maybe you're going to. You're also going to
Speaker:sprinkle in some reuse, or you're also going to sprinkle in some of these other
Speaker:areas. And so you can really think about it where. And I
Speaker:think that's what people ideally want to be able to
Speaker:do when they think about repurposing and the power of repurposing and how to use
Speaker:it. I think they love the idea of being able to make this stuff last
Speaker:longer. I just don't think they always know how to make that happen.
Speaker:And I think this framework's helpful. Correct. And I think they don't know how to
Speaker:make it happen without it seeming very repetitive, like, okay, I've already shared
Speaker:this, so I think taking that data to your point and presenting it in a
Speaker:different way, as we'll keep talking about, I think is useful because it doesn't seem
Speaker:like, okay, yeah, I've already heard this, you know what I mean? And I do
Speaker:believe most people haven't seen everything, but I also believe, like, your
Speaker:fans and followers do see a lot. So I always am cognizant of not trying
Speaker:to turn people off by just talking about something all the time.
Speaker:So I don't know if you know, do you know Emily Amos? She's on LinkedIn,
Speaker:and if you know her, she focuses on case studies. And so she did a
Speaker:really nice study around b, two b case studies and customer stories. And
Speaker:so she does a beautiful job on LinkedIn of sharing those
Speaker:findings in a lot of different ways. So just as a. Yeah, gonna have. To
Speaker:check it out. A nice shout out to her if people are looking to follow
Speaker:someone who does this well, she's a great person. Love that. Definitely gonna have to
Speaker:check it out. I'm always looking for ways to sort of, like, reverse
Speaker:engineer what good looks like in different areas. I think in
Speaker:particular, in the circles I run in with, like,
Speaker:b, two b companies. And, you know, everyone always wants to ask, like, what
Speaker:company's doing it well. And the unfortunate answer oftentimes is not
Speaker:many. And I think it's to your point, because we're moving
Speaker:into that sort of personalized world where people want
Speaker:people at the company to share what they want. But I think even using,
Speaker:whether it's Emily or somebody else, to see who's doing it well
Speaker:on LinkedIn and then being able to just see, okay, how do we then do
Speaker:that at our company? Or how do I do that for my company?
Speaker:Yes. And it's not that hard. I mean, as long as you obviously have
Speaker:that study, it's really not that hard. Yeah. Especially when you're thinking, I
Speaker:like the reflection angle of that because it's just, all right, what are
Speaker:the interesting pieces of this? And how can I sort of start a conversation
Speaker:around it again, like we touched on, if there aren't, if it's not an
Speaker:interesting angle, don't write about it. So,
Speaker:yes, and like we talked about, a lot of times, those conversations will spur
Speaker:additional LinkedIn posts. Like you're that person who's struggling. Like, what do we write about?
Speaker:What do we talk about? I mean, you could probably not all come, you don't
Speaker:know what conversations are going to lead to, what things, but
Speaker:generally those always, like, yep. I always find new
Speaker:threads to pull at to like, post again. Yeah. And I would say, too, like,
Speaker:if you're a company and you're starting to do this, this is where the
Speaker:collaboration piece between whoever's running social, whoever's doing
Speaker:content, maybe that's the same person, maybe it's not. But those are the areas where
Speaker:that stuff starts to really matter, because now you've got this conversation happening
Speaker:on social, and maybe that's your next podcast episode,
Speaker:maybe that's your next blog post, maybe that's your next series of
Speaker:LinkedIn posts, whatever that is. You can now touch on it, and then it
Speaker:directly keeps the message the same, it keeps the reason
Speaker:for the content the same, and it keeps the thread line through
Speaker:your original research and everything you just worked on, it helps just build on those
Speaker:things. So absolutely love it. And that may tie into this
Speaker:next one, which is repackaging. So, you know, it was meant to be.
Speaker:So let's touch on repackaging and what that looks like. So repackaging is
Speaker:essentially taking something from the research and
Speaker:repackaging it, like remixing it, redoing it for a certain platform. So
Speaker:taking your key findings of your research report and turning that
Speaker:into a webinar, or one of my former clients, Formstack, they
Speaker:took their research study that we did, and they turned it into a season
Speaker:of podcast episodes, or taking that, you know, those podcast
Speaker:episodes that you create and then repurposing those into LinkedIn posts or
Speaker:into blog posts or. So it's just taking anything that you have. And I know
Speaker:you talk about this all the time, Justin, but really making it make
Speaker:sense for the platform and the space on which it exists.
Speaker:So either expanding it or contracting it in a way that makes it
Speaker:useful for that person and for that platform. I'm curious, how did they
Speaker:spin it with a podcast? What did they do to
Speaker:sort of frame up the research into
Speaker:episodic content. So I will have to go back and look.
Speaker:It's been a while since I looked at it, but I will say that like
Speaker:when I work on research studies, oftentimes they'll
Speaker:have some kind of like structure or some kind of model. So for instance,
Speaker:I worked on a study with marketing professionals all around effective b, two b
Speaker:marketing training. And so we looked at, I created this
Speaker:model. The questions were built on this model. I called the four c's of effective
Speaker:training. And like one was all around, you know, culture. So you could
Speaker:do, you know, you could take, I can't remember. The four C's were, to be
Speaker:honest with you, was like culture and collaboration and two others. But each of
Speaker:those c's could make a wonderful podcast episode in and of itself. Like today
Speaker:we're going to talk about how culture impacts, you know, effective b two
Speaker:B training. And then composition was another one, like what training actually
Speaker:looks like. So we found out that B two B marketers really want things like
Speaker:frameworks and templates and examples in their training, but we found out that those things
Speaker:were often missing. So do a whole episode about how to really create and
Speaker:structure and or look for training that has all of these things that make
Speaker:training more effective. So when you plan like your table
Speaker:of contents or your model or your framework, if your research is built on something
Speaker:like that, and I know formstacks was, it was a very structured
Speaker:project, you could just take all those topics and, you
Speaker:know, build it all out. Does that help? It does, it
Speaker:does. It's really. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think that's
Speaker:where the idea of having a table of contents is interesting. And using that
Speaker:to guide the really what you're going to do out
Speaker:of the research or out of the report or out of the white
Speaker:paper or out of the whatever. I talk about that a lot. With content reversing,
Speaker:even for blogs, like what's the table of content look like? What are
Speaker:your h two s? Like, those are your sub topics to then run
Speaker:with, to be able to create other types of content. But also it's
Speaker:re spurring, like my original thought when
Speaker:I was creating my course content, repurposing roadmap, when I was creating that and
Speaker:talking about using cornerstone content, really original research
Speaker:was at the heart of what my reality was with cornerstone
Speaker:content, which is this idea of I've got this thing.
Speaker:And really, if you did that survey, you could imagine
Speaker:that really being six months worth of content. Truly to
Speaker:hit on that and to be able to extract a lot of the thoughts out
Speaker:of that and lead that. And I think that's where, if you're doing
Speaker:original research, right, and this is true of any piece of content, but
Speaker:again, tying it around to the ideas, the thoughts, the pains, the
Speaker:problems, all the things that your customers have that then may lead
Speaker:to them wanting to become aware of the thing that you sell,
Speaker:ultimately. But if you're able to take those messages, again,
Speaker:not just the content, but repackaging the messages that are within that content.
Speaker:So those four C's, it's not that we're
Speaker:taking the original research and cutting up into a blog post. It's that
Speaker:we're taking c number one and writing about it on LinkedIn and
Speaker:c number one and writing it about it on a blog post, and c number
Speaker:one and having a whole podcast, maybe three podcast episodes,
Speaker:tacking different angles of c one and then being able to build that up.
Speaker:So I think that's where the true fun part
Speaker:of repackaging comes in, is the strategic side
Speaker:of, again, it's not that you're not creating
Speaker:anything new, because you are, but it's you're honing
Speaker:into the ideas that at the end of the year, this is a great
Speaker:question. I always have clients try to answer this when they're
Speaker:thinking about repurposing content, and it comes down from a messaging standpoint
Speaker:of at the end of year. Like, what do you want to be known for?
Speaker:Like, what do you want to be known for? What do you want to be
Speaker:talked about for? What do you want your people to know? And that could be
Speaker:from a content side, that could be from a messaging side. And I think
Speaker:if you're doing original research, you're doing these surveys, and you don't want to be
Speaker:known for that. Like you brought up, Andy, like orbit media, the blogger survey.
Speaker:Right. Like I said, one of the first things I think of when I think
Speaker:of orbit media is like, they're blogging survey that they just do and
Speaker:do and do and every year, and the data is always interesting and
Speaker:changing and evolving. But they also do a good job
Speaker:of sharing that data and repackaging it and reusing it and
Speaker:reflecting on it and all those type of things throughout the year to where it's
Speaker:not just this blip on their radar, it's something they're actually talking about.
Speaker:Yes. And if you do all these things that you and I were talking about,
Speaker:if you actually make it, I don't see, you don't make it meaningful. But if
Speaker:you're sharing it and talking about it and, like, trying to, like, poke at it
Speaker:and learn from it. I mean, it's a beautiful thing, and I think it ties
Speaker:really well into, like you said, people want to hear from people, and that's only
Speaker:going to become more and more imperative. Research works great
Speaker:for that. It's not this get it report you put together and, like, roll people
Speaker:to. It's how do you make this really come to life and be helpful to
Speaker:people? There's a real shift happening in marketing and in content marketing in
Speaker:particular, because the Internet is changing and how people interact
Speaker:on the Internet is changing. And the idea of bunches of
Speaker:people coming to your website is not really happening anymore.
Speaker:No, but I think there's a lag behind the awareness that
Speaker:this is happening in the tactics and strategies that people are using. And
Speaker:so I think when I think about repackaging it, it's
Speaker:being proactive in getting that
Speaker:research in front of your audience. It's not reactively waiting for them
Speaker:to stumble upon it or maybe search and find it, because you did
Speaker:keep, and we didn't even touch on that. But Google YouTube is a
Speaker:great resource for some of these things to be able to tap into what people
Speaker:are already looking for. But outside of that, we need to make sure we're
Speaker:actually getting that in front of people. Yes. And to your point, a quick
Speaker:aside, I think it's important that your research live on one page. So, for
Speaker:instance, Andy's blogger study, he has one URL every year. That
Speaker:URL. He uses that exact same URL. The amount of traffic that he gets is
Speaker:phenomenal. And even though he's been doing this for a long time, if you like,
Speaker:look at stats from different companies and you see which content is bringing in the
Speaker:most backlinks, it's oftentimes original research. So
Speaker:know that it works from that perspective, too. And just make sure that you have
Speaker:one central place to send people to so you're not taking all that interest
Speaker:and dispersing it. Right, right. And don't have that thing be a form
Speaker:because that's gonna block people, like, have it be something that's open access and
Speaker:useful. Yeah, that's a great point. I used to do like, I think we did
Speaker:this when I was at Med. I know we did it when it was Techsmith.
Speaker:We basically took the old research, like, let's say 20
Speaker:twenty's version back in the day, and we actually took that and
Speaker:housed it on a separate URL in case somebody wanted 20 twenty's data.
Speaker:But we always kept the freshest data on that same URL and kept
Speaker:that the main linking thing. So regardless of somebody clicked
Speaker:an old stat, it got them to the new, the new data and kept that
Speaker:URL fresh. Yes. That's really smart. That's what I recommend people
Speaker:do. Yeah. Versus every year, you know, survey data 2024.
Speaker:Survey data 2025. Like, you're losing all that, all that juice
Speaker:from people linking to it. 100%. Yeah. Awesome. So we're
Speaker:cruising. We're wrapping up here, two thirds of the way through, I think
Speaker:if I do math right, or we're at least getting there, three fifths, I guess,
Speaker:technically. Um, but the fourth one here, the fourth r so
Speaker:far, we took down reuse. So just straight up reusing content,
Speaker:reflecting on what your data sort of said, being able to give
Speaker:your own thoughts, opinions, et cetera, on that, repackaging it. So using
Speaker:different formats to be able to sort of speak to the same
Speaker:content, but using it in a different way. And now this one's an interesting one
Speaker:to me, is reveal. So talk to me about reveal, what that means as far
Speaker:as repurposing. Yeah. So again, we talked about asking
Speaker:questions that reveal pain points or reveal missed
Speaker:opportunities or reveal, you know, those things that people are actually
Speaker:struggling with. So it's revealing what those
Speaker:struggles are and then sharing how you would fix that or providing
Speaker:your point of view. Like, if you're in this situation, here's what you can do.
Speaker:So again, using your survey data to find out the pain point
Speaker:and then sharing that stat, and then bringing in your own
Speaker:personal point of view on what someone can actually do.
Speaker:So again, it's the stat is just that jumping off place. Yeah. And I love
Speaker:tying it to povs. I think it's funny inside the membership, the first
Speaker:training we did, workshop we did around distribution of all
Speaker:things, was nothing to really do about distribution. It was povs. We did a
Speaker:pov workshop because it's one of the first things I do when I work with
Speaker:clients, because unless you know what your strong
Speaker:points of view are, what your take is, it's hard for you to
Speaker:stand out. It's hard for you to have that opinion. It's even honestly kind of
Speaker:hard for you to reflect in a lot of ways. You might be reflecting in
Speaker:many ways or confusing ways. And so I think even having those
Speaker:four or five strong points for this is kind of
Speaker:my view or our company's view on the marketplace,
Speaker:what's going on, all those type of things, and then tying those in with
Speaker:the research is so important. And those are things when you know the
Speaker:povs ahead, you can actually reverse engineer that stuff and be able to frame
Speaker:up your question and build the survey data off of that. So then that naturally
Speaker:weaves in as you're sort of distributing after. Exactly. Like, I was just
Speaker:talking to someone yesterday, I actually do a thing called survey review
Speaker:service. So it's a course and it's a review. So people who are DIY in
Speaker:their own research, I'll review their surveys for them and give them feedback. And this
Speaker:particular person, he was like, all the questions we're trying to get at these benchmarking
Speaker:things, I'm like, that's interesting, but you can't do much with it. So we talked
Speaker:about following his own process and asking questions to understand
Speaker:where people are along these lines. And it's almost
Speaker:irrelevant what the data is because he just wants to understand are people
Speaker:doing XYZ? You know what I mean? So I think, and then that will
Speaker:be his story that he can then share, which I think can just work
Speaker:really, really well because, and this is another aside, I think
Speaker:sometimes, too, if you're trying to survey for anything very specific, like, I know
Speaker:people want to survey for pain, and I do talk about trying to surface pain
Speaker:points, but oftentimes the pain that you think is going to exist, it does not
Speaker:exist in the data as much as you think it's going to. So just making
Speaker:sure that however your data lands, you still have stories to tell from
Speaker:it, instead of saying, I want the data to come out this way. So we
Speaker:have a really good story to tell. Yeah,
Speaker:it's, it's a bit of a. Nuance, but I think disappointed, like, oh, wait, it
Speaker:doesn't say what we want. How are we going to use this? You know? Yeah.
Speaker:And it's a huge, I mean, again, it's, that's where I think having, when
Speaker:I think of repurposing, I always talk about it in micro and macro, and I
Speaker:think the macro level of ideas, messaging,
Speaker:consistency, making sure people understand who you are. Like,
Speaker:it's no accident that people often tell me, when
Speaker:I think of repurposing, I think of you. When I think of distribution, I think
Speaker:of you and it's like, well, there's a reason why for you, it's like, when
Speaker:I think of people doing original research for, it's like I think of Michelle, you
Speaker:know, there are certain people, certain companies, certain brands, where
Speaker:when you think of them, it's very clear. And the reason why is
Speaker:because they have their messages down, they have who they serve down. They have
Speaker:a really strong view on what those things are. Even if
Speaker:those views evolve and change, they're still strong and they're in, they're unique to
Speaker:them and their experiences. And I think the key is
Speaker:they don't waver from them. It's something that they,
Speaker:that they're able to see through consistently. They're not ping ponging between
Speaker:different initiatives. And again, like, I think me now
Speaker:being out, I don't know if this is true for you, working outside
Speaker:and then working with companies, but it's just really
Speaker:hard to stay consistent because one idea,
Speaker:one perspective can throw the whole thing off to where, oh, now
Speaker:we're, you know, why are we talking about this? This is not even a core
Speaker:to what we were trying to do. Yes. I mean, but I will say, too,
Speaker:like, when I work on surveys with clients, if this is what you're getting at,
Speaker:like, when we define the research topic, I also define what I
Speaker:call big picture questions. And like, these are the five to seven things. These are
Speaker:the big questions you want answered. And so we all agree to those
Speaker:and sometimes they'll shift during the strategy, but then the survey questions are
Speaker:built to answer those questions. When I present the data, we come back to those
Speaker:questions. So as we're having all those internal conversations and someone
Speaker:wants to add this and someone else wants to do that, I'm like, okay, but
Speaker:our guidepost is this. And I feel like if you have that in
Speaker:advance before you start writing survey questions, it helps you
Speaker:land where you actually expect to land instead of getting that, you know,
Speaker:loudest voice, really changing your path. Love that.
Speaker:I think, yes, having that helps a lot. Having those,
Speaker:and that's how I frame up. POV is, to be honest in a lot of
Speaker:ways is like, however you want to individual piece of content, overall
Speaker:messaging, you want to have those sort of guardrails in
Speaker:place that keep you on track that everybody agrees
Speaker:on. So when somebody comes to you, you can say,
Speaker:look, we agreed on this. This is in our document. These are the five questions
Speaker:we're trying to answer. These are the five pillars of our content strategy. These the
Speaker:five pillars of our messaging. Has something changed?
Speaker:If it has, let me know. But at least, man, having that is so
Speaker:valuable. Having that written down and agreed upon is so
Speaker:valuable because then you're not put in the tough spot
Speaker:of trying to convince somebody of
Speaker:something who is in maybe in a partner position or
Speaker:different areas like that. But I think having those guardrails in
Speaker:place is so key, even for me, like, I just did this a couple weeks
Speaker:ago. Like actually sat down and wrote down
Speaker:my content strategy, vision and why I'm doing what
Speaker:I'm doing and what I'm creating and why and who's it for and
Speaker:how this content helps me win in the market. Like really just thinking through what
Speaker:all those things are and it's really clarifying and it's
Speaker:helpful. And what I need to do is actually like, I have it printed, but
Speaker:I need to like stick it on my wall and then that way, that's really
Speaker:the guiding thing for me. And when I'm creating content, think about what podcast creating
Speaker:about who to have on, thinking about what trainings to do, all that type of
Speaker:stuff. Or if you ever want to do research like that, your guidepost to figure
Speaker:out like what you want to ask and what you want to test, you know.
Speaker:Right. Thousand percent. Thousand percent. Yeah, you got it all there, you
Speaker:know. And how much more easy is that for you to then come in and
Speaker:run with it versus you now trying to have to pull those things out?
Speaker:Yeah, definitely. But honestly, I work with clients all the time who don't know what
Speaker:they want to study and they don't have that framework. And I'm sure you see
Speaker:this all the time, too, when they give you all this information and then you
Speaker:take it, you turn it into something, they're like, oh, like that light bulb
Speaker:moment of, and then that can also guide some of their other marketing too. So
Speaker:they're just not, once you put structure around their research, sometimes it puts structure around
Speaker:their marketing. Yep. So, but I'm sure you see it all the time. I just
Speaker:did this with a client. I've been starting to do kind of like
Speaker:more larger, broad content
Speaker:strategy sort of mission documents I always
Speaker:reference. I think it's, I think it's orbit media that has the stat,
Speaker:or had the stat around like 39% of companies
Speaker:have a written content strategy. And so, you know, you're, or it. Could be
Speaker:CMI too many years, we always just ask you to document a
Speaker:content marketing strategy. It's always hovering around 40 plus or
Speaker:minus. Yeah, actually, now that you say that, I think it is CMI. But think
Speaker:about that. And if only 40%, I mean, 60% of companies
Speaker:have nothing written down, which means they're all, whether you like to say
Speaker:it or not, you're just kind of shooting from the hip at that point or
Speaker:like trying to go out of best place thoughts in my
Speaker:head of what we're trying to do and who we're trying to talk to and
Speaker:what types of content we're best at. And so what I actually did with this
Speaker:company was sat down and wrote a draft of what their
Speaker:content strategy and content mission. I know content mission is something that Andy
Speaker:talks about that I like as far as like, why are we creating what we're
Speaker:creating and who's that for? And it's so helpful
Speaker:because you can come in and you can start to use that and
Speaker:see, oh, that is who we're talking about, or, oh, no, that's, that's not
Speaker:what we want to talk about. And it's like, okay, if that's not what we,
Speaker:then let's stop writing LinkedIn content about this topic. Let's stop. Like
Speaker:I, you know, it's very interesting and very revealing to kind of pull back
Speaker:those layers. So I used to work for CMI for many years, and so we
Speaker:had a mission statement. Joe Pulitzer talked about mission statements for many years, and so
Speaker:we lived and died by that. Like, I would turn down great things and like,
Speaker:it just doesn't align with our mission. But I think it's interesting you were talking
Speaker:about that one CMI stat, like whatever the number was about people who have a
Speaker:documented content marketing strategy. Because this is a great
Speaker:example of reveal. I took that stat. Obviously people need to
Speaker:document their content marketing strategy. So I wrote a guide about how to document
Speaker:your content marketing strategy. So that was like the jumping off place. And so we
Speaker:never gated our research, but then we gated that guide as a next
Speaker:step. So it was a nice way to get people to like do
Speaker:something after. And we already knew they had a problem. So it was easy to
Speaker:figure out what is that next step we want to guide people to. So I
Speaker:think it's a nice meta example about how you can use original research just
Speaker:to kind of further your story, further your content strategy. Yeah,
Speaker:love that. I love that it worked out to be able to touch it. We
Speaker:got there. We got there. So, yeah, let's wrap with the final one here, the
Speaker:final r, reimagine. So talk to me about reimagine and what
Speaker:you think about with repurposing. Yeah, so the last r is, like you said,
Speaker:reimagine. Most of what they do when they write, when they have an original
Speaker:research study is they have one research report, blog post, landing
Speaker:page, whatever that looks like. And there's going to be all of these things that
Speaker:don't make it into that report simply because that report needs to
Speaker:be clear, have a narrative and so forth. So this last step is all
Speaker:about taking all of those things that you haven't yet published and using those in
Speaker:different ways. So do you want to have a cut of the data?
Speaker:Like maybe you can look at the data by like a certain industry and share
Speaker:just that? Or maybe you can look at the data and compare, you
Speaker:know, how do males and females think differently about this? Or how do
Speaker:different generations, you know, Gen X versus millennials, think
Speaker:differently? So it's just taking all of this data because if you do one
Speaker:study and you have a big enough sample size, you're gonna have so many other
Speaker:different ways to look at the data. It's just doing that with everything else you
Speaker:haven't yet published. And of course, then you can apply the other r's
Speaker:to that as well and get even more life from your study.
Speaker:Thats super interesting. I would have never thought to then recut that data.
Speaker:And essentially, youre truly reimagining it into
Speaker:another level of survey or another level
Speaker:of original research at that point. Yes. And thats
Speaker:honestly not hard, right? I mean, its not hard. All the data is right there.
Speaker:And if you have the right tools, its so easy to spot the differences and,
Speaker:yes, yeah. Like job title or in house
Speaker:versus freelance. You know, what are the difference between how these people
Speaker:think about these things? Or. Yeah, like there's lots of ways,
Speaker:interesting ways to kind of cut up that data in a different way. Yes. So
Speaker:the possibilities go on and on and on and on. So, yeah, and again,
Speaker:that's where I think it's, if you did this and it all
Speaker:tied into what you were talking about, you could easily just use this
Speaker:to run your content engine. I think that people should understand, like, if
Speaker:you're coming out of this and thinking about doing an original research or you have
Speaker:original research, there are a million ways that you can
Speaker:reuse that. And again, if you are, it almost makes
Speaker:me think, too. Like if you're not doing this, either the survey data isn't good
Speaker:enough or maybe you just don't know how. Or let me ask you this,
Speaker:Michelle, because I guess as we wrap here, as I'm thinking about this, it's like
Speaker:if I do that, though, I'm going to miss out on doing other things in
Speaker:my head. As I'm thinking about it, I'm like, yeah, but if you cut up
Speaker:all that stuff and it ties to what your messaging are and what your
Speaker:topics are, that's exactly what you wanted to do. Yes, and
Speaker:I do think you probably talk about this, too. Like marketers get bored of their
Speaker:message before their audience gets bored of their message. And it's funny because
Speaker:I have a four step research project and by the time I get to step
Speaker:four, I'm like, I look at this, I'm personally ready to move on. And I
Speaker:think that's part of the issue. I think people aren't thinking about how to use
Speaker:it. I think that's another issue. I mean, I look at it as
Speaker:supplemental. I think it could be one thing that's really strong throughout your
Speaker:content strategy, but doesn't need to be your only content strategy.
Speaker:Unless you're new and you really have limited resources and you want to build
Speaker:your business off of research, which I've done and helped others
Speaker:do, I think then it can really fuel everything. But in a larger
Speaker:organization, I think it just plays a really good supporting role and
Speaker:can supplement a lot of content, but doesn't need to be the only thing that
Speaker:you do. Yeah, I'm sure it depends on size of team and company and all
Speaker:those things and what your content initiatives are. I guess I'm thinking more of like,
Speaker:yeah, when I was at metadata, that's what we were trying to do, is use
Speaker:our research as maybe not the pillar, but definitely
Speaker:a piece of the pillar, maybe a leg of the stool as far
Speaker:as our content strategy went, to be able to continually
Speaker:reassess and reuse and make sure that the data and those things were being able
Speaker:to spread in there. So one other really quick thought, I talked to a lot
Speaker:of marketers to do their own research, and I think part of the issue that
Speaker:where people struggle too, is their reporting is not good.
Speaker:So they have to manually calculate. Like, what does it look for by industry or
Speaker:by generation or by, if you plug into the right tools,
Speaker:you have these beautiful crosstab reports that it's just done for you. So
Speaker:make sure when you choose your survey tool that you understand what the backend
Speaker:reporting is going to look like so that you can get as much life out
Speaker:of your data as you want to so you're not manually calculating that
Speaker:because that's a huge issue. I've seen a lot of marketers run. Into
Speaker:wrangling the data is half the battle. 1000%. Yeah,
Speaker:sorry. But anyway, no, that's awesome. This has been
Speaker:super fun. I've loved kind of thinking through it from the original research standpoint.
Speaker:But again, like I mentioned at the beginning, I think this can be true of
Speaker:really anything you create, anything that you have that's maybe a
Speaker:larger piece. You know, I'm thinking for me, it's like, oh, man, even the, you
Speaker:know, my course, in a lot of ways, I've done similar things with this where,
Speaker:you know, I'm reusing pieces, I'm reflecting on the different areas of
Speaker:it, I'm repackaging those into different things, all of those areas. So
Speaker:this has been great. I think it's an easy framework that people can think about
Speaker:using regardless of their content, but certainly if they're doing original
Speaker:research, and it's just great to chat. Michelle, thanks for coming on. Thank you, Jess.
Speaker:This was so fun. Awesome chat soon. You too.
Speaker:All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution
Speaker:first, and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you
Speaker:so, so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in
Speaker:this episode one way or another, into your content strategy as
Speaker:well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that
Speaker:are going to help you build your brand, ten x your content and
Speaker:transform the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe
Speaker:to the show and sign up for my newsletter at Justin Simon Co.
Speaker:So you don't miss a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next
Speaker:episode as well. And until then, take care and I'll see you next time.
