I have mentioned the wise marketing methods of Disney before.
Now that I see of all these posts, I realized I look kind of obsessed with Disney.
I am not really.
It’s just that I keep being reminded that they are geniuses at content marketing and I have to write about what I notice.
Well, please bear with me. Today, I am going to mention them again. 🙂
Disney Just Reminded Me of the Importance of Repurposing Content
I put on Netflix a couple of weeks ago and I was looking for something to watch.
I ended up watching a Bloomberg TV special called “Inside: Pixar”. It was all about Pixar and Disney animation.
As I was watching this short show, I suddenly heard the narrator say something that surprised me. He said, “It costs Disney $10-$15 million to make one of their old animated movies into a 3D film.”
That’s a lot of money to bother dealing with converting an old movies!
But what the narrator said next explained the “method to their madness.”
He went on to say, “But they make $50-75 million in new income from that old film being re-shown in 3D.”
Now that make more sense!
Spend $10 – $15 million = Get $50 – $75 million
That’s $40 million – $65 million dollars profit!
And they don’t have to:
- Spend months and years picking the right story
- Put in all the effort of story development
- Spend an immense amount of time on character development
- Consume man-hours creating the animation
- Etc.
NONE of that! They leap-frog over the normal production process, spend $10 – $15 million to convert the previous successful content, and they’re guaranteed to make money!
Wouldn’t you do that? I would – every day!
Why Aren’t You Re-Purposing Your Content?
That got me thinking. Have you ever thought about how much content you’ve created?
Even with the most popular blog post that you ever wrote, there are a lot of people who never saw it.
Isn’t that a waste?
That’s why we need to take a page from Disney’s playbook.
I am not saying you can make millions off of your old content. (If you do, I’d like 10% as a “thank you” gift. 🙂 )
But some of you probably have some content that you could repurpose and sell.
That’s not all.
- Many of you have blog posts you could turn into an audio recording.
- Many of you have audio recordings you could take and add a little to and transform them into videos.
- Many of you have videos that you could take and make into a webinar.
- Many of you have blog posts, audio recordings, videos, and webinars that you can repackage into talks that you can give.
You’re really only limited by your creativity!
Why Repurposing is Needed These Days
There is an insane amount of content being created every day.
How much? So much that content has become a commodity.
- 48 HOURS of video are uploaded to Youtube every MINUTE.
- 347 NEW BLOG POSTS are posted every MINUTE.
- Every TWO DAYS we create as much information as we did UP TO 2003.
- 90% of world’s data was generated over last TWO YEARS.
Isn’t that crazy? And some of these stats are a few years old!
Think about how many distractions there are.
In fact, I bet I already lost people who were reading this post. Why?
They clicked one of the links above and they never came back! 😛
Think about how much competition there is!
I believe that all of these facts demand that we repurpose content.
It is the only way it will be seen.
It is the only way to stand out.
The Experts Are Repurposing Content
Think about the people who stand out in the marketing arena.
Take Seth Godin, Brian Clark, and Joe Pulizzi as examples.
I bet you know who they are and the key ideas they stand for.
That isn’t by accident.
It’s because they created epic content marketing and they kept repeating and repackaging their ideas.
They write about an idea, then give a talk about it, put together a webinar on the topic, mention the same ideas in interviews, etc.
Repurposed content is the tool they leveraged to become household names!
Now obviously, they keep creating new content and so should you.
But they keep repurposing their key ideas.
They also use former, popular ideas to help guide them to know what type of new content to create.
Focus on Repurposing Your “Hits”
Now you don’t want to do that with all of your content. You want to focus on your popular content.
You should only repurpose your popular blog posts into audio recordings.
You only want to repurpose your popular audio recordings into video. You get the idea.
Even if you don’t make money off it, you still get to leap-frog the normal production process of creating any of these types of content.
The best thing is that you know that the end product will be received well!
That is valuable because:
- It will cause the content to be shared.
- It will cause your “hits” to be exposed to more people.
- It will cause your content to be remembered.
I know that some of you have heard this before, but have you done it?
I hope that this real-world example from Disney will be your inspiration to take action.
I am going to!
I have already repurposed my popular infographic “21 Types of Content We Crave” as a webinar.
But I am going to repurpose it and the webinar in new ways.
I am going to use it guide me to create content that expands on the ideas and adds to the ideas it contains.
I will also repurpose content from my ebook “How Your Business Can Survive and Prosper in a Recession.” (*For those of you who have wondered, that ebook is how I first came up with the current domain name.)
Comment on How You Will Apply This
What about you? How will you apply this idea?
Let us know in the comments below.
Related articles
- How Walt Disney Used Content Marketing To Launch And Finance Disneyland (recessionsolution.com)
- 12 Most Effective Ways To Create Irresistible Content (12Most.com)
- The Amazing, Crazy Story Of How A Man Named Pearl Accidentally Became A Brand (recessionsolution.com)
I’m a business strategist, consultant, content creation specialist, and speaker. I’ve been studying effective marketing and business methods (both online and offline) since 1999.
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