Latest / Content, Briefly / Is There a Difference Between Distribution and Repurposing in Zero-Click World?

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Is There a Difference Between Distribution and Repurposing in Zero-Click World? · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [on-hold music] Hey everyone, and thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly. Eric and I have a pretty interesting topic to talk through today.
• 0:14
  There was a recent thread in the Superpath Slack community where someone was discussing how to distribute zero-click content, and it turned into this really cool discussion on what is the difference between distribution and repurposing these days.
• 0:28
  You know, it used to be you create a big thing on your website, you distribute it as a way to get people back to your website, but that has all changed so much now. Pretty much everything is zero-click, right?
• 0:36
  And so how do you approach that? Should you still create a quote-unquote big thing and then use channels to publish small things? Should you abandon that idea and try something else?
• 0:46
  Eric shared some really interesting anecdotes about how he and his team at Dock u- are using podcasts actually as kind of the tip of the spear, and that is the genesis of content created later, both audio, video, and text.
• 1:01
  Anyways, lots to talk through here. Some of this is AI, but mostly not actually. This is more about the way that the platforms where we reach our readers are evolving.
• 1:10
  And so it's kind of a nice break actually to talk about something different and something still just as important to content teams. So hope you enjoy this one.
• 1:18
  Just a quick plug for Superpath Pro and a reminder that we have a thirty-day trial.
• 1:22
  You get access to the Slack group, content, courses, monthly one-on-one calls, monthly group calls, weekly co-working sessions, book club, LinkedIn challenge, so many other things. Come check it out, superpath.co.
• 1:34
  I'll get out of the way now. As always, really enjoyed this chat with Eric, and I hope you do too. As we record this, and someone was asking, like, how do you distribute zero-click content?
• 1:43
  And it kinda turned into this discussion about, well, what's the difference between distributing content and repurposing content?
• 1:50
  So I feel like there's sort of like some background we should discuss, like let's clarify all of our terminology.
• 1:53
  And then I think it's pretty interesting actually, because this has changed quite a bit over the last, you know, two years. I guess like everything else, but, like, this is a relatively new concept still. Yeah.
• 2:03
  And I think also one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about it is I think the distribution repurposing topic became really hot a couple of years ago, maybe, like, or maybe it was some companies were doing it, now everyone was doing it, and then maybe now in the light of AI, things are changing again, like what's easy to do versus what you should do.
• 2:23
  And so I think that's why it's an interesting discussion for me. And yeah, so maybe we start just by going through what-- just so we have like a shared definition of what we mean by distribution versus repurposing.
• 2:36
  Like, do you wanna take a stab first? I'm putting you on the spot. There's one other term I'm gonna throw in there, which is promotion. Yeah. So, you know, or I'm gonna rewind the clock a little bit.
• 2:45
  Distribution and promotion are terms that are used almost interchangeably. I think they're quite different though.
• 2:50
  In my mind, promotion means you have created content and you don't know what to do with it, and you're sort of begging people to click on the thing.
• 2:59
  Whereas distribution means you have created content and you have developed audiences on channels where you can send it to people.
• 3:07
  So you have a newsletter list, you have a LinkedIn following or whatever, you know, other social channels. And so the distribution means you take the content and you send it to those places.
• 3:17
  That used to be done with a link. That doesn't happen anymore. And I think that's where the conversation starts to get muddier.
• 3:23
  Then there's this simultaneous thing which is happening over the last few years, which is like, you know, content teams are just pouring insane amounts of energy and time and money into creating net new content.
• 3:31
  And then every now and then someone says, "Shouldn't we do something else with this?" And then that became repurposing.
• 3:40
  And now the things are all sort of coming together because no platform wants-- They, they don't want you to use links, so it's hard to get stuff back.
• 3:48
  So then it's like, does the idea of having like, you know, big content that becomes little content, is that a thing anymore? Or do we just do... Is it just little content? Like, do we need that anchor atomic unit?
• 4:00
  Or kind of there's a couple different, like, ways you might phrase that. Like, is that relevant anymore, or is it just all about little content? Little meaning it's what we used to call, I think, repurposed content.
• 4:12
  Sorry, I'm getting myself confused now. To distribute the big thing, or is it now like, forget all that, just do what the channels want us to do? Yeah, for sure.
• 4:19
  And maybe I'll just summarize what you said in fewer words. Distribution was like, you have like a big thing, maybe whatever.
• 4:26
  You have like a ball, and you're just like passing it around to all the platforms saying, "Please look at my ball." Yeah.
• 4:31
  And then repurposing is more like you've made one thing, like let's say a research report, but then you're also redoing it as a webinar, you're redoing it as a newsletter edition, you are
• 4:46
  rewriting that into blog posts for SEO. You're taking one thing, and you're making it sort of platform native for a bunch of different channels.
• 4:52
  So I think that's, just to summarize what, as you put it, is like make little content from big content.
• 4:58
  And then the question I think a lot of people are grappling with now is, like, that big content used to be something that lived on your website, right?
• 5:07
  It was normally a gated asset, a PDF, or some big long video, and now it's not clear, like, what is the centralized unit that everything else is supposed to be repurposed from.
• 5:18
  And so I think it's kind of fundamentally changing the question of what repurposing is. It's not necessarily repurposing of a piece of content into either... And actually, I'll throw one more wrench into this too.
• 5:31
  There's also a version of repurposing that was like, we have this big thing, let's just chop it up into ten little things and just push all those things out. Yeah.
• 5:39
  Like a really good example is we have a podcast at Dock, and I just cut that into ten little clips and share those clips out. That's more like distribution, honestly, than repurposing. Mm-hmm.
• 5:51
  But I think we've started to call that repurposing, 'cause I'm like, we're repurposing the podcast for Instagram, right? So but really we're just like pushing it out and then not linking to it.
• 6:02
  So I think this is where the waters are really muddying in terms of-I think a lot of distribution and repurposing, there's an overlap, but there's, like, the proper way to do repurposing that is much more effort, which is redoing the initial idea or sort of piece of IP in the form that's more relevant for that platform.
• 6:23
  Yeah. I feel like this is a common theme of... Yeah, no, it was a common theme of, like, the things that we've discussed, you and I, on this podcast recently, because all this is just changing so quickly.
• 6:32
  Like, how is it that literally everything is changing at the same time? Like, this isn't really even about AI.
• 6:36
  I mean, I guess it is to the extent that AI makes it easier to repurpose or distribute, I guess depending wh- you know, which phrase you land on.
• 6:43
  But this is, you know, the impetus for this is more about the platforms wanting to own the- Yeah... relationship with your audience versus you getting to maintain control of that.
• 6:54
  And there's even, like, kind of behind all of this, like, probably even larger question of, like, do you even need a CMS? Like, if you don't create big content, do you need to have a blog at all?
• 7:02
  I mean, that kinda gets back to our last podcast, but that could take us way off track.
• 7:06
  You know, one-- as I was thinking about this, one thing I was reflecting on was, if you don't put the time and effort and kinda editorial energy into creating, quote-unquote, "big content," it's gonna be a lot harder to land on the ideas that are worth creating small content on, right?
• 7:24
  So if you don't do that, you're gonna have to have a completely different process for capturing the, whatever you end up calling it, the ideas, concepts, messaging frameworks or whatever that then be- trickle down into all the other places where content lives.
• 7:36
  And I feel like that, in my mind, like, doesn't make sense yet. Like, I haven't done that, and I'm having a hard time imagining how exactly that would work. Yeah.
• 7:45
  And I feel like a lot of it comes down to sort of marketing fundamentals of you need to be so clear on your positioning or what are the big opinions your brand has, what are the hills you're willing to die on, and how do you repeat those ideas across platforms.
• 8:03
  And then that trickles down to content as well. Like, what is the big sort of pillar of this piece of content, and then how can that just be used everywhere?
• 8:13
  And so, yeah, it's almost like themes or campaigns, and then how does that trickle out into all the different channels, if that makes sense. Yeah. It feels intimidating to me. It is. Yeah.
• 8:22
  Like, honestly, especially if you're a lean team. Yeah. Totally.
• 8:26
  Like, I'm still personally struggling a bit with the idea of having to balance, you know, relying so heavily on channels that do not want to send people to your website. I lose sleep about this at night.
• 8:39
  And actually, we're gonna have Sean Blanda on at some point in the near future.
• 8:43
  Sean, at one point, owned, maybe he still does, owned the domain alwaysownyourplatform.com or, or like some variation of that, and he wrote this, like, manifesto about, like, why you shouldn't rely on all these rented channels, and I'm just curious, like, where he is on that, if he's digging his heels in on that idea.
• 9:00
  I, I suspect he probably is, you know, or if he's sort of giving in a bit and recognizing that, like, we k- kind of don't really have a choice. So anyways, we'll talk more about that in the future.
• 9:10
  But there is still part of me that thinks if you just do a simple version of, like, the quote-unquote, "old way," where you create big content and then repurpose.
• 9:19
  I'm gonna use the word repurpose 'cause we're not really trying to send people back to the original thing. That could still work pretty darn well. Yeah.
• 9:25
  So honestly, we're running that playbook at Dock, and because I'm a lean team, I'm one person, that sort of the distribution version of repurposing that I've talked about before, where we use the podcast as the nest egg for most of our other content because we can get our CEO to sit down for one hour with some other equally smart person that I would not get access to if I were writing a blog post, right?
• 9:50
  I can't round up 40 sales experts every time I wanna write a blog from scratch. Yeah. That's just an inefficient way of doing it, too, as, as a lean team or, or for any team, really.
• 10:00
  But I can take these 40 hours of conversations, and if I have some good way that I've organized these for myself and have some sort of, like, systematic memory of those... Here, let me restart that sentence. If I have
• 10:16
  saved those conversations in some way they're easily accessible to me. I mean, things like AI might make it easier to, like, query, for example, the podcast archive you have, you can query your past episodes.
• 10:26
  I'm not quite doing something like that at Dock. But what we're doing, for example, is we have a full hour episode.
• 10:31
  I have a freelancer just go and say, "Find five interesting two to three-minute YouTube videos from this, and let's upload those sort of full length, not for social, just, like, put them on YouTube."
• 10:42
  And then I save those mostly for myself. So now I have an expert talking for three minutes on some subject.
• 10:48
  We also make a lot of little short social clips using Opus, which is, like, one of those AI tools that clips up the video. I save all those as well.
• 10:56
  And then we just put them all on the podcast landing page for that show. Will anyone ever go to that page and, like, go through all the clips? Probably not. But I have that archive for myself now. And- Right...
• 11:07
  the way that we're repurposing these is when we're doing, like, an SEO blog post, for example. I send that gallery to the writer and say, "Hey, this person talked about this. Oh, so did this person, so did this person.
• 11:18
  Just grab the clips on the page, quote them in the blog, add them to the blog," and suddenly you have this really authoritative piece that you didn't have before.
• 11:28
  And so I'm using it to, like, enhance the other channels that we wanna be successful for us, like SEO, but wouldn't be part of, like, a traditional SEO workflow.
• 11:39
  Like, the freelancer would never be able to source these for themselves unless I was spending two, three times the budget to give them that time to go research.
• 11:48
  So as a lean team, it really helps me get, like, have this huge source of information that having that podcast, that we can then use in other, like, formats, right?
• 11:59
  And then now we've just launched a newsletter, which is just, like, an editorialized version of each episode.
• 12:04
  But there's something different about the flavor when it's a newsletter versus when it's an hour podcast episode, and we can sort of synthesize the good ideas, build on them, add to it.
• 12:12
  And so-For me, I just have this, yeah, this really nice, like, nice big content if you talked about it, and am I making, like, little content out of it?
• 12:20
  Not necessarily, but I'm doing the repurposing into, like, more channel appropriate stuff. But I couldn't do that from an SEO blog post as the original source, right?
• 12:30
  Like, I couldn't take a three thousand word blog on how to make a sales proposal and, you know, turn that into a carousel and all-- Like, I don't think that works as well if the original source isn't a smart conversation between two people.
• 12:43
  Yeah. Wow, podcasts really are, like, the perfect tip of the spear for B2B SaaS companies.
• 12:48
  Like, once you have that, there's so much else you can do from it for external marketing and then also for internal efficiency as well. And I will point people to podcast.superpath.com to go look at our chatbot.
• 13:00
  Like we-- I made this simple... This is just, like, for fun. I was trying to, like, mess around with Lovable and, like, it's pretty cool.
• 13:06
  Like, it's trained on all of our episodes, so, like, I could imagine pretty much every B2B SaaS company having something similar.
• 13:12
  Like, train a chatbot on your stuff, and you can say, like, "Who has mentioned this topic?" And, "Give me timestamps and episode numbers," and even, "Give me the exact quotes."
• 13:20
  And then, yeah, your writer's just, like, loaded up with material to work with there. Yeah. And it's free to record the podcast. There's, there's a small... Like, I'm just advertising for podcasts here. But it's free.
• 13:30
  The guest doesn't charge you to come on normally, and a couple hundred bucks to edit the episode. And then, yeah, you can use those insights forever.
• 13:39
  And then there's built-in distribution, going back to that word, where normally the guest will share, if you're lucky, either the episode or the clips that you've tagged them in. So I think- Yeah.
• 13:50
  Yeah, it's important too when you're building content, like, how are you going to build in the distribution or repurposing, like, from the start as early as you can.
• 13:59
  Do you think a year from now you will still be creating three thousand word articles for the Doc site? That's a much different question. But yes.
• 14:08
  We're mostly redoing existing articles right now because, I mean, this is more of an SEO question, but, you know, we already have traffic to this thing.
• 14:17
  The traffic dips a little bit, you update the article, and it performs better. And in a lot of those cases, we're adding podcast clips and expert quotes to the article, and that helps.
• 14:26
  So that's another example of the repurposing. But there are some, like... I mean, SEO, [chuckles] we always end up talking about SEO, but for us, it's such a, it-it...
• 14:38
  We haven't fully saturated that channel yet because we're a startup, and it's sort of, our industry and our small world of, like, digital sales room or onboarding portal or whatever, it's a burgeoning product line.
• 14:51
  And so there's still lots of the greenfield or whatever you wanna call it for opportunity.
• 14:57
  It's not like CRM, where you've maxed out all the people in the world who already know what a CRM is, and it's just gonna decline as Google eats away your search volume.
• 15:06
  So for us, there's still, like, opportunity to be gained before we see those losses, so I might be the wrong person to ask.
• 15:13
  But there's certainly topics where a three thousand word article is the only thing that's gonna rank well, and then there's other topics where it's not. So it's, it's super dependent on what the goal is.
• 15:24
  I think that's a very, very important point, actually, is that I think that you are the right person to ask because each company has their own sort of nuanced version, right?
• 15:34
  Like, you have a good understanding of, like, what Doc needs. Like, the product is sort of early in this life cycle, so you have to do all this education still.
• 15:42
  It's a completely different story, like you said, if you're battling it out in the trenches of some, like, incredibly competitive thing.
• 15:48
  So, like, the way that you go about creating content, what type of content, where it goes, et cetera, is a hundred percent customized to the business.
• 15:56
  And I feel like that's super important because I do feel that there is this push or temptation to just play on the platforms, and that is way too generalized. Like, does it fit in somewhere? Yeah, probably.
• 16:07
  But, you know, what you've just described makes me feel like, actually, the quote unquote "old way" is pretty darn good, especially if you, like, you know, take some small steps in the direction of, like, getting better at posting on LinkedIn, getting better at, you know, kind of like squeezing all the juice out of the podcast, things like that.
• 16:24
  Yeah, and this applies so much to B2B.
• 16:27
  Like, the clients I see signing up for Doc or other B2B companies that are selling to other B2B company, sometimes it's like Industrial Power Solutions Inc., and their website looks like it's built in two thousand five, and you look them up, and they're a multi-billion dollar company doing extremely well, and they're not posting on Instagram.
• 16:47
  They're not doing all these things. They just have, like, a white paper.
• 16:49
  And so I, I think it's tempting for those of us who have our finger on the pulse of marketing at all times to only focus on what's new and trendy and different and exciting to us versus what's appropriate for that business in that industry and the point in the company life cycle.
• 17:07
  That's, like, as applies to all marketing advice, right? For sure. For sure. Yeah, not all of us are just, like, scrolling through LinkedIn all day to study what other marketing people are doing. Yeah.
• 17:17
  It makes me think of another kind of related thing, which is I sometimes use-- I sometimes go in the opposite direction of big to small. I will often go small to big. Mm.
• 17:24
  We don't do tons of content at Superpath, but I will often use a LinkedIn post to test, is there appetite for this? What am I missing?
• 17:32
  Let me get some other perspectives on this, and then that helps me decide, is it worth it to go make something bigger on this? And then close the loop by bringing it back to LinkedIn later after we've actually made it.
• 17:44
  Totally. I think that's an amazing way to do it. And yeah, I do the same with the Superpath newsletter. I key in on discussions that were interesting. Same thing we're doing here. And then I think it's also...
• 17:55
  Yeah, doing the small thing, even just as a personal brand or someone posting for yourself, which I know a lot of our audience does, is, like, you learn what's different about you or what people key in on based on that too.
• 18:07
  Like, you can have great ideas for content, and then you look around, and other people are already doing that.
• 18:11
  But if you're just a lot of small content with some frequency, you're, like, taking lots of shots, you'll realize more quickly, like, what stands out and-What people sort of find you interesting for as well, and that would apply to a company too.
• 18:24
  Yeah, I like that.
• 18:26
  I feel like potentially one takeaway for listeners, particularly people who work at, like, you know, in-house, probably it's ask companies, it's like our kinda, like, main listenership of this podcast is, make sure you're on the same page with the rest of your team about the terminology.
• 18:40
  Now that repurposing distribution are not totally separate, like, they used to be two distinct things, very obvious. That's no longer true. Get on the same page about that stuff.
• 18:50
  You know, get on the same page about pillar, atomic unit, whatever the big thing is, make sure that everybody's, like, talking about the same thing when you say those words, 'cause I feel like we are entering this era where this is changing, and often very quickly.
• 19:02
  And I feel like it actually is really important to really drill in and make sure everyone is aligned on this stuff. Totally. And then I'll add some tactical advice.
• 19:11
  I think one thing is just to have this repurposing distribution mindset from the start when you're making content. When I joined Dock, I drew a flowchart and said, "This is what our content strategy will be."
• 19:23
  It wasn't just a list of assets, it was the podcast will feed into the blog, into the newsletter. The blog will also send people to the newsletter as a CTA.
• 19:32
  Like, you should be able to draw a big chart of how all these things are gonna play into each other.
• 19:37
  And the same thing goes for a campaign or an idea, is before you start, way at the beginning, think about your distribution and repurposing rather than making one big piece of content all the time and then saying, "Okay, now I have this.
• 19:49
  What do I do with it?" I like that. I like that a lot.
• 19:52
  You know, I was thinking the other day, I actually tried to move the Superpath blog to Substack, because I've been thinking about all this stuff so much, and I was like, "Well, maybe I should just move it, see what it's like, and then I'll kinda report back on it."
• 20:01
  It's kind of a pain. It's not that easy.
• 20:03
  I'm waiting for someone to offer, like, a substackification plugin for Webflow or WordPress or some of these other platforms, because I feel like that would actually go kind of a long way towards making, helping content teams clarify exactly what they're doing.
• 20:18
  Like, sometimes our, I think our behaviors are rooted in the tools that we use. You know, that actually reminds me a little bit of this kind of now old idea of your blog is not a publication.
• 20:29
  Like, people were treating blogs like publications, mostly because WordPress showed articles in reverse chronological order. You know what I mean?
• 20:36
  It, like, the default settings create the behavior, and I feel like for a lot of companies now, the default settings of Webflow, WordPress, whatever, are b- not quite aligned with what the future of content looks like.
• 20:49
  Mm-hmm. All of that is sort of a long way of saying, starting from the right place makes the rest of it a lot easier. You know? And so, like, as teams are figuring this out, like, what are our tactics?
• 20:58
  What do we need to change? What's still working?
• 21:00
  I always think it's worth looking at, yes, like, the foundational messaging frameworks and go to market strategy and all that, but also, like, what tools are you using, and how does that influence the behavior later on?
• 21:10
  Totally. Cool. Hey, that was fun. That was a good one. I feel like I love the idea of pulling threads from the Slack group and using them as discussion points, so hopefully we'll do more of that.
• 21:19
  We've got a bunch of fun stuff coming up. Sean Blanda, as I mentioned, will be on. We'll be talking a lot more about the idea of owning your audience or own your platform or whatever.
• 21:27
  And then on the Superpath Pro side, we have a bunch of stuff happening right now. We have book club. I have to admit that I haven't started reading the book yet, but I'm gonna. I heard it's short. I also haven't read it.
• 21:37
  Oh, that's okay. That's good. [laughs] You have two weeks still, I think. Yeah. And then we talk a lot about LinkedIn on this podcast.
• 21:43
  Obviously, Eric's, you're running this LinkedIn challenge for the month of June, where people are posting every day and then sharing their posts in LinkedIn. We're holding people accountable that way.
• 21:51
  That's been a huge hit. Yeah. Like, dozens and dozens of people every single day. Every day. Like, the Link, the people at LinkedIn are probably like, "What's going on?" Yeah. Another person who needs to pay me money.
• 22:01
  Exactly. Mr. LinkedIn. Yeah. [laughs] Bill LinkedIn. Shh. And then as always, 30-day free trial. Come check it out. You get access to the Slack group, monthly one-on-ones, our monthly group calls.
• 22:12
  That's coming up next week. Courses, content, co-working sessions. There's lots of stuff to like, but come kick the tires. See if it's for you. Perfect. Cool. Thanks as always, Eric, and thank you everyone for listening.
• 22:23
  We'll see you next time. Well, there you go. Thanks, Eric, for making the time to do this. You know, Eric's a pretty busy guy.
• 22:28
  I think some people may think that he works full-time on Superpath, but actually, he has a job, [laughs] and he's the content lead at a SAS company called Dock, and does Superpath on the side.
• 22:37
  So I'm always grateful when he's able to make time to have a conversation like this. I will also just plug podcast.superpath.co. I talked about that a little bit in the episode, but we've created this simple tool.
• 22:48
  It's a chatbot trained in all of our podcast transcripts. So you can go search it for patterns across episodes. You can ask it for episode summaries.
• 22:55
  I think you can ask it for episode numbers and timestamps, but see if it works. [laughs] I'm not positive. I built this in, like, two hours on Lovable. I think every SAS company should probably have this.
• 23:04
  Like, if you have a podcast, you need something like this, because as Eric mentioned, podcasts provide so much rich material for other content creators to use, and honestly, this was really, really easy to do.
• 23:15
  So go check it out, podcast.superpath.co. While you're there, you can check out all of our other stuff. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next time. [outro music]