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My 10-in-1 Content Creation Strategy [Case Study]

Posted By Guest Blogger 18th of January 2013 Writing Content 0 Comments

This guest post is by Wayne Turner of MurrayKilgour.Com.

Content creation calendars and schedules are the bane of most serious bloggers’ and content managers’ lives, depending on which side of the creative block you’re on.

I straddled this fine line on many occasions until my Eureka moment. Having amalgamated my home radio and video studios I realised that I could double up on content creation with my business-consultant partner, a content reservoir of genius proportions.

Soon we had discovered a 3-in-1, then a 6-in-1, and finally a 10-in-1 content creation strategy.

When I say “radio and video studio” (actually my third bedroom), be assured it’s not exactly state of the art, although I have slowly acquired suitable equipment and created a workable dual studio.

In saying this, anyone with a computer, some sort of USB audio interface/mixer, a reasonable microphone and digital video camera or DSLR can achieve the same results. In this article I assume you are familiar with your gear so I’m not going to go into any detail on how to use each piece of equipment in the process.

Time costs!

One of the most valuable, and rarest assets of a successful business consultant is time. To maximise the genius of my partner, when time is in such short supply, is a hectic operation usually resulting in a minimal flow of great content. This is where my Eureka moment has paid incredible dividends and saved many hours in the generation of multiple pieces of content at once.

Because we use a joint audio and video, green-screen studio, when we sit down and record a session, we create both an audio and a video recording simultaneously. The following ten points outline the quality content that we create from each five-minute recording session.

We now have this down to such a fine art that we can do six, five-minute recordings in 40 minutes. For me as the content creator, this is heaven, as it enables me to work in my genius. (A little side note here: your genius is simply working in your passion and talent, and I believe you need to be doing this for 80% of your working time.)

How it works

So, it all starts with one content creation session—just one!—where we have learned to maximise both time and genius. Of course there is preparation required to make the session go smoothly, and a good knowledge of your field of expertise is essential, but once we’re in studio, this is how the magic happens.

  1. The primary piece of content is a video for uploading to our YouTube channel and if we choose, we upload it to iTunes as a video podcast. We also embed the same video on our blog at MurrayKilgour.com. A well-prepared, quality video is the basis for this whole process. We use either a script or a series of bullet points to make the recording. I personally enjoy using a script with a DIY teleprompter, because of my radio background. Cheesycam.com is an awesome resource for DIY ideas and equipment—a lot of it DIY or reasonably priced new gear.
  2. The recorded audio track becomes a podcast which is embedded on our blog, and most often is uploaded to our Living on Purpose iTunes podcast channel as well. There are many other podcast sites to upload to, but we choose just iTunes. If you are unable to create video, the podcast can become the audio for a Slideshare video presentation, so give the audio the same good preparation as you would a video.
  3. We send the mp3 audio recording to a transcription contractor hired through eLance.com for transcription at $2 per recording. From this transcript, we create a blog post for our site, a guest post for another website, or an article for a site like ezinearticles.com. This invaluable piece of text is also used as a caption or transcript with our videos on Youtube for SEO purposes. Because it’s accurate, we gain the additional traction of having hearing-disabled people able to enjoy your video using the Youtube subtitles feature.
  4. The video we have created, if it’s not placed on our YouTube channel, can now form part of a multi-part video ecourse. We use an Aweber autoresponder to give this away for free and gain subscribers to our blog, but it can be monetized in the form of a paid video ecourse. You can determine the value or purpose of the content here.
  5. We again take the transcribed text and repurpose it into a ten-part ecourse delivered in the same way as the video ecourse: as a bonus for signing up as a subscriber to the blog. This method has been extremely successful—we’ve signed up thousands of subscribers to our blog this way.
  6. The transcribed text now adds real value when it is compiled into a section or chapter of an ebook to be used as a giveaway or sold on the blog as a free download. This is where the value of the method comes in, because many bloggers battle to get into writing an ebook. We edited, added and modified a lot of the text to create an ebook, but what this method did was give us a great quantity of raw material to work with. We had created more than 140 podcasts by the time we woke to the fact that we could compile a quality ebook using that material.
  7. I am in the fortunate position of being a breakfast show producer for a local radio station, so the podcast becomes a regular slot on our community radio station, Radio CCFm, which has 250 000 listeners. But before you say this is a privileged position, I can assure you that, as a producer, I can say most local radio stations are always looking for quality content, especially if it is free. So short podcasts with a good intro and outro may become a regular feature on radio stations and give good traffic to a website.
  8. With the advent of HD video DSLRs it is possible to produce high-quality video footage for TV programs. We repurpose our five-minute content creation session again in the form of a short TV program for a local community TV station, Cape Town Television. If it’s quality content and free, TV stations will take your show—especially if it’s relevant to their viewers.
  9. When we repurpose the transcribed text into an ebook, the audio becomes part of an audio book. You might say that this is pushing it, but I use the audio as a companion free audio book to the photography ebook I sell on my website. It’s a bonus for the buyer and for me, because I didn’t have to do anything extra to create it.
  10. Finally, blog posts, audio, and video make an amazing weekly or monthly newsletter. I do this using Aweber templates, which are free with the subscription. We try to do it on a two-weekly basis, as we don’t always have enough content for weekly mailings. It works perfectly for a monthly newsletter and I would advise this when you’re starting out. The amount of content you generate will determine the frequency.

Ten points sounds good, and I thought that adding an eleventh point might be a bit much, but here’s a bonus idea. What we’ve done is created a boxed DVD set for offline and online sales as training modules. Not all people are excited about online, and some like a physical product in their hands. In our business we use all of the above content in its different forms as part of a DVD boxed series for sale to our coaching clients. They love it and we love it—especially the time it takes to create!

Unlimited content

There are no limits to how you can use your content if you begin with the end in mind, but the emphasis must be on quality content. When you sit down in front of the camera and microphone, think “end product,” and design your process to get the most out of the content creation session. I’m sure that most people can easily create seven of these ten pieces of content out of just one five-, ten-, or even 30-minute recording session.

So, think big in your content creation, begin with the end in mind, and maximize your time and effort to produce content that will attract the best traffic and convert those people into buyers. Your success will result from the quality of content you produce. So give it your best!

Wayne Turner is a multimedia strategist specialising in photography, radio and video at MurrayKilgour.Com. If you’d like to go to your next level in life and business by working in your genius you can sign up for our free ebook, Living on Purpose.

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Comments
  1. very useful tips…i applied them and result is appreciable…

  2. Wayne the strategy is very practical and result driven. Thank you for sharing your personal experience with us.

  3. That’s increcible and amazing that your able to expand and stretch each piece of content out like that. Are you saying that each thing is word for word the same? Meanig the article and the video is the exact same piece just read? Or do you tweak it any for any other avenue that you shared?

    Awesome information,

    Eric

    • Hi Eric

      Yes the video is recorded at the same time as the audio and then transcribed. We do tweak and expand when necessary.

      Because we repurpose for different scenarios there are overlaps where the content is the same although we are careful when duplicating text that could get slapped by Google. Not everyone uses all the content all the time so we find it an extremely effective use of time.

      Another factor is that the duplication/repurposing works differently with different people as some prefer reading, some listening while others watching and listening. We probably will modify the approach at times as we learn what does or doesn’t work. At the moment it works really well for us.

      Hope this answers your question.

      Regards

      Wayne

  4. Thanks a lot for the tips, gonna apply them right away…

  5. Amazing ideas. I love the notion of multi-purposing content. It’s efficient and smart, as it allows you to reach a different part of your audience with each piece. Someone may prefer to view the videos, while another user may be drawn to the ebook.

    Thanks for sharing. My primary space of content creation has been books, articles, and blog posts. But I am looking to add video and/or podcast audio to the mix. You’ve given me lots of reasons to do it!

    • Hi Monica

      I just wrote your observation as a comment above. Different strokes for different folks. The video generation makes it important to add video and audio, if recorded well, is a by-product of that recording.

      Give me a shout if you need any tips. Maybe I can help you avoid some of the bumps I endured:-)

      Regards

      Wayne

  6. Wow, it’s amazing how many times you’re able to reuse the same, albeit slightly modified, piece of content. I’ll have to come up with something like this for my own stuff. It’d definitely save me a lot of time.

    Great article.

    • There were actually a few more I thought of after the article. If you give you own situation careful thought you’ll probably come up with an equally successful strategy. There is nothing difficult about it, just look at your content and see what you can do.

  7. Amazing ideas.. i have read lots of books and articles on content creation but you give me the whole conclution in just one post.
    Thanx a lot for sharing with us

  8. Hi Rahul

    I think that I have bought and read, some several times, every major book on content creation. Key to the process is application of this knowledge to your unique situation. All I have done is create a method that really works well for us. And what I have written in this article is what is working for us on a daily basis. So the take out from this article for you is applying what you have read practically and if it works keep on at it.

    Wayne

  9. Wow. Very insightful article on content creation. I never thought about the many ways that you guys have broken down the content and applied on various platforms like that. I also note that it’s a very good strategy to utilize it in your aweber autoresponder campaigns as well. I’m sure your subscribers really love hearing from you especially when they are getting this kind of value. Thanks again for sharing these tips.

  10. Hey,

    Thanks for sharing such valuable tips with us and i will surely apply them.You have explained it in a very good manner.

    Regards,
    Jenifer Taylor

  11. The great thing about using Aweber is that they offer a blog broadcast feature. I don’t need to send out a newsletter manually. What it does is take the last 1, 2, 3, or whatever number you decide, blog articles and creates a newsletter. You set up a template and it takes the predetermined number or posts and sends them out daily, weekly or monthly. I set mine up and forget about it. So the newsletter part of my content strategy is totally automated.

  12. I comment each time I especially enjoy a post on a site
    or I have something to contribute to the discussion.

    Usually it’s caused by the fire communicated in the post I looked at. And after this article � My 10-in-1 Content Creation Strategy [Case Study]. I was actually moved enough to write a thought ;-) I actually do have 2 questions for you if it’s allright.
    Could it be simply me or does it look like some of these comments come across like they are left by brain dead visitors?
    :-P And, if you are posting on other sites, I would like to keep up with anything fresh
    you have to post. Would you make a list all of all your communal sites like your linkedin profile,
    Facebook page or twitter feed?

  13. Will surely going to use this tips for writing article next time for my blog.
    Waiting for the another one… :) :) :)

    Thanks

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