As the mother of a 4-year-old, my life is surrounded by Legos. Daily, I watch my son tear down part of his monster lunar lander to quickly repurpose it as an alien observation tower with a parking garage for “the cars of the aliens.” The kid thinks in chunks, seeing his Legos not as specific blocks, but as cross-functional units ready to be quickly repurposed into other “stuff.”
Legos: cross-functional units ready to be quickly repurposed into other “stuff.”
It’s a good way to think about content, too—be it words or data. There’s no way every single one of your readers are going to read everything that you push out. And its likely that the things you write about have staying power well beyond the day you publish them, right?
But the minute you post your content, it is immediately competing against the news feeds of everything that comes after it. The social streams of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, plus the news feeds of news aggregators have very short memories. People move on.
Chunks: flexibility in writing and repurposing for later
But if you think and write your content in standalone, succinct “chunks,” (going back to the Lego analogy here), you can use these chunks later. You can combine them and thread them together into an overview narrative, like this morning’s “Three Technology Revolutions” story by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project. Notice how the main narrative in the story consists of just three short sections (a summary paragraph followed by a large data graphic).
What’s interesting about this is not the data itself, but rather how, if you click the links inside each paragraph, you’ll notice that they link to older articles published last year. And each of those articles is largely concentrated on a data graphic with a small amount of text for context.
As you can see, using (and writing) content in “chunks” allows you lots of flexibility as a writer, and even more flexibility in repurposing your content. (Last year I wrote about taking a similar approach to building infographics.) It’s tough to do this.
Builds discipline
As both a writer and a data designer, I think writing and designing in chunks builds discipline. You have to prioritize. You have to write or show what matters. You have to always think about your audience’s needs and your responsibility to convey the right thing in a short format. That need is heightened because you don’t have the luxury of space or length. You have to know when to stop.
It’s harder to repurpose “chunks” if you don’t think about it upfront, but it’s possible. Here are two ways:
Plan it out that way
One way is to plan it out over time. Think about the longer narrative, split it up into standalone, succinct sections, release it over a period of time, then wrap it up with broader narrative that allows you to create “new” content that links back to your old stuff, providing value and framing for the reader. Write and illustrate those chunks as pieces of content that stand on their own, and keeping them short is important. This makes it easier to repurpose them later. Not all stories lend themselves to this approach. But even for longer-form content, this is a nice way to tease out the central messages if you’re trying to reach a broader audience.
Or… mine old content for new ideas
If you haven’t done that, it’s always possible (and a good idea) to look over what you’ve published over time and see if there are any natural patterns that allow themselves to be threaded together into new content. This might be harder if it wasn’t part of your original approach. But if you’re struggling to produce value content, it’s a good idea to try.
And keep in mind that this stuff isn’t low-value content that you’re pushing out for the sake of traffic. Presumably, you thought it was relevant enough to publish the first time. Repurposing older content with a new, more current context (tied to something in the news cycle, for example) can be a good deal for your readers.
New isn’t always better. Relevant context is.
“New” isn’t always better. Sometimes packaging it up differently and concisely is a great way to get people to find something they may not have read the first time, and gives you the ability to publish “new” content. Or it gives you the ability to build a rockin’ alien observation tower with a parking garage.