Content marketing

Turkey Slicing: A Content Marketing Thanksgiving Tradition

Editor's Note: This encore post on content marketing and turkey slicing has become its own LinkedIn Marketing Thanksgiving tradition. Enjoy this bit of Internet archaeology.

It may be time for America to rethink our approach to Thanksgiving.

Now, I’m not talking about the part where we show gratitude and reflect on the good things we have in life. And I’m certainly not talking about the falling asleep in front of football part. Those are fine traditions.

It’s the food. We gorge on turkey until we can barely stand to look at it, let alone contemplate eating another bite. Yet the fridge always ends up stuffed with turkey (no pun intended). By the end of the week, it takes some seriously creative repurposing to make it palatable. Like, for example, these leftover Thanksgiving Paninis. 

Then again, maybe the endless turkey remixing is a good thing. Especially for marketers. It serves to remind us that there is always extra value in our existing content. That putting a little extra effort into content we already have is less work than creating something brand new.

One of the smartest marketers I know, Rebecca Lieb, was the first to equate the Thanksgiving feast to the process of creating Big Rock content. “I use a Thanksgiving analogy,” she said. “You cook up this giant bird to serve up on one glorious occasion and then proceed to slice and dice this thing for weeks on end. If you are like most families you are going to be repurposing this bird as leftovers for quite some time, creating everything from sandwiches, to soups, and more. Your content marketing strategy can be thought of in the same way.”

To this day, I still call repurposed content “turkey slices.” Even though it sounds weird to carve turkey slices off a Big Rock, that’s the way we roll.

This infographic shows some of the creative ways you can take your existing content, add a few fresh ingredients, and delight a whole new audience.

Carve Up the Turkey

To get your creative juices flowing, here are stellar examples of each of these turkey slice types:

Blog Posts

This is the simplest way to repurpose Big Rock content. We make sure to turn each eBook we do into multiple blog posts. You can add value by focusing on one part of the eBook and expanding on it, like we did with this post on sourcing quality images that supports our LinkedIn Company Pages playbook.

We frequently use a blog post to drive to our multi-media online experiences, like our Sophisticated Marketer's Sessions. For example, we drove back to our Session all about driving optinmal engagement on LinkedIn by featuring an exclusive interview with LinkedIn's own Product Manager Andrew Kaplan.

SlideShares

It makes sense to keep your Big Rock gated for a while as it’s easier to generate leads with a gated asset. After demand starts to dip, though, it makes sense to release it as an ungated asset, too. SlideShare is a good platform to host it, because you will still have access to robust analytics to see who is viewing and sharing the content. You can even add a contact form to your SlideShare to collect a few extra leads.

You can also use SlideShare to drive traffic to the Big Rock by making a SlideShare of just one part, then adding a CTA at the end. That’s what we did with this slice of our Solving for ROI guide, pulling in over 3,000 views:

Videos

As the infographic points out, over half of senior executives would rather watch video than read text. It can seem daunting to dip a toe into video production, but you don’t have to be Steven Spielberg—or have his budget—to create something compelling.

For our Sales and Marketing video series, we shot all the video with a couple of lights, a tripod, and an inexpensive camera. The investment was small, and we admittedly don’t have a huge amount of experience in directing video. But they turned out:

Don’t feel intimidated by the video. Think of the 50% of your audience you might be missing, and jump on in.

Infographics

Adding visual interest to your data is a surefire way of introducing it to a new audience. If you have done solid research for a white paper or eBook, take the most compelling stats and turn them into an infographic.

For example, we pulled the most salient stats for marketers from our Secret Sauce: How LinkedIn uses LinkedIn for marketing eBook and made an infographic that earned over 5,000 views and drove traffic back to the main asset:

Webinars

Webinars give marketers a chance to capture leads while also providing the kind of useful instruction that builds relationships with potential customers. It does take a little tech savvy to host a webinar, depending on the software you use to run it. (We use on24.) But it’s worth the effort; you can expand on your big rock content and interact with potential customers live and on video.

Plus, if you record the webinar while it’s running, you create a new video asset:

If your audience is hungry for more content and you’re running low on inspiration, check out your fridge. There’s bound to be plenty of leftovers you can turn into something new and exciting.

Better yet, start planning your turkey slices as part of your Big Rock strategy, before you even start to create the asset. Keep repurposing in mind during the creation stage and you can fill your editorial calendar with content that satisfies your audience throughout the year.

For more interactive content marketing tools and tips, download the Content Marketing Toolkit.