I’ve had this blog post on my mind to write for a while, and in the intervening time, I’ve lost the reference source I had for this, so I’m going to tell you this factoid…

Pastor Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church based part of his latest book, Become a Better You, on material he developed in his weekly sermons.

…and ask you to take that on faith.

Now, you may be thinking something along the lines of, “He used the same material over again?! How unoriginal and lazy!” That’s the Deadly Sin thing - sloth, namely.

Years ago, I used to think that re-using material was lazy myself. But over time, I’ve come to realize that it’s not lazy at all. In fact, it’s darned smart for three very good reasons:

1. Your Ideal Audience doesn’t want to absorb your message, mission, and vision in just one way. In Osteen’s case, one person might only watch his sermons live, and another might only read his book. It’d be foolish  - even pride-filled, if we continue the Deadly Sins analogy - if Osteen thought everyone in his following read every single word, watched every single broadcast, and listened to every single radio message or podcast.

2. Having multiple “Content Catapults” reinforces your expert status. Undoubtedly, some people do take in Osteen’s content in multiple ways. Do they resent the fact that he re-purposes content from one venue into another? Of course not! Quite the contrary, they appreciate each in their own way, and they respect him more for it. Additionally, reading a lesson versus hearing it on a TV show exposes us to different communication cues and nuances. The brilliant insight you didn’t have the first time may come leaping out to you when you experience it differently.

3. For the time-crunched lifestyle entrepreneur or doing-it-all small business owner, efficiency is everything. One well-crafted piece of content can serve as the basis of:

• An article
• A blog post
• A news release
• A direct mail postcard campaign
• A newsletter
• An ezine
• Part of a media kit
• A display ad
• A piece of a larger ebook, book, white paper, or special report
• A podcast
• A video blog

You get the idea.

And for what it’s worth, Osteen isn’t the only one re-purposing content for different audiences (and revenue streams). Dilbert creator Scott Adams’ recent bestseller, Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! and Seth Godin’s Small Is the New Big are two prominent examples of books where the content was culled almost entirely from Adams’ and Godin’s blog postings.

Other books, like David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR and Scoble/Israel’s Naked Conversations were developed on Scott’s and Israel’s blogs with the specific intent of turning them into books.

Lani and I aren’t the only people out there preaching the gospel of content as the key to getting your message, mission, and vision out to your Ideal Audience. We’re not the only ones preaching the re-purposing of content, either.

So if we aren’t causing that flash of insight for you, at one of our workshops, on this blog, or in article directories and archives across the web, then hopefully, someone out there - whether a pastor like Osteen, a satirist like Adams, or other thought leaders like Scott, Godin, Scoble, and Israel - will inspire you to create and re-purpose content for your own business and bottom line.

Posted in All About Content |

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 1:47 pm and is filed under All About Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.