Repurpose Your Content | Overview of My Buffalo Concept
Today, I'm discussing my “Buffalo Concept Content Marketing Strategy” which I’ve also referred to as my “Chunking Strategy.” A lot of people refer to this strategy as repurposing content…but it’s so much more than that. I’m not talking about just making a lot of content or repurposing stuff for the sake of repurposing. No, today we’re going deeper. We’re talking about long-term value creation.
If a Tree Falls in the Woods… | Practice in Public
Recently my wife and I visited one of our favorite date night spots. It’s a steakhouse situated in a nice downtown area with great food, live entertainment, and a homey atmosphere. While we were eating, a guy entered the restaurant with a cinema camera. That immediately caught my eye since I’m also a filmmaker. After setting some things down at his table, he got up, walked around, and immediately started filming.
And then my brain started ticking, “Hmmm…that’s weird. Why is this guy filming random stuff?” I got even more critical. I started evaluating how he was framing shots and filming. I noticed he was shooting everything at the same angle…thus he’d wind up with boring footage. As I was heaping on the criticism internally, he came over and introduced himself, so I turned on “friendly Bryce.” We discussed filmmaking, exchanged contact information, and then departed for the evening.
The very next day, I got an email from him with a link to the video he made. I clicked on the link and immediately confirmed what I already knew: It was a basic video. It lacked interest. It didn’t blow me away.
But then it hit me – he had posted something and I hadn’t. I was just complaining and making myself feel superior. But he was out there being visible. And although it wasn't the video that I would have made, he made it and it was already out there.
After I recovered from feeling like a jerk, another thought hit me. It’s like this concept: If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? If I'm not communicating what I do and how I think about things...how will anyone know? If I’m not out there marketing what I do…will anyone figure it out? The answer is: NO. If you don’t show people what you’re doing, they’ll never know what you do.
So what I realized is this: He's winning. He's out there doing stuff and I'm not. And that changed it for me. I realized the only way for people to know that I do a certain thing is to show them what I'm doing. I added a new philosophy to my content strategy: practice in public. I have to be working on my craft, but I must do it openly in public…otherwise, no one knows.
And so here you have it. This is how I’m practicing in public right now. I’m laying it out there to inspire your own content journey of practicing in public.
Buffalo Concept Defined | How to Think About Content Production
As a small business, every dollar counts and every decision is heightened. We have to do more with less. It’s scary to think of sunk ad costs or building something that yields no return. Since we lack a massive budget, we want everything to be effective…which leads me to why the Buffalo Concept is so great for small businesses.
What do I mean by the “Buffalo Concept”? Think back to your elementary school days when you learned about the Native Americans on the great plains. They hunted buffalo, but it wasn’t a sport. It was life for them. And they didn’t waste a thing. Not only did they get a large amount of food, they gained other resources. They used it for clothing, shelter, and tools made out of bones. They took advantage of everything.
To create all of your content in the most efficient manner, you must identify your buffalo…then hunt it and use every part. After you have your buffalo, you can chunk that content out into many smaller pieces to repurpose your content. That gets the most value for you with the least amount of effort.
Video Is Perfect for Repurposing | You Should Be Using It
This is why I love video from a marketing context – it can be repurposed in so many ways to create dozens of content pieces from just one video. So, If you haven't embraced video, this is my sales pitch for you.
The word “video” is derived from the Latin word “vinere” which means “to see” and “audio” which means “to hear.” It’s a combination of what is seen and what is heard.
Video is actually just a sequence of images. I shoot in 24 frames per second, so there's 24 images per second that I could use — plus I get an audio file.
Can you see how you could pull apart a video into it’s a core pieces to create longevity? Not only do you have a video, but you could release the audio separately. You could cut the video or audio into smaller pieces. You could even chunk out some still frames.
Have I convinced you to start using video yet?
1 Episode = 2 Weeks of Content | How We Repurpose the Podcast
Now I’m going to get practical and show you how I chunk out my own content.
Every two weeks, I create and release one YouTube episode that’s repurposed across all my social media channels to create two weeks worth of content.
YouTube Episode (full-length): First, the video portion is released on YouTube.
Podcast: I take the audio portion from the episode and upload it on Anchor, a podcast tool which distributes the episode to multiple platforms including Apple, Spotify and Google Podcasts.
Blog article: I transcribe the article, then we clean it up to produce a written version. This gets added to my website and cross-promoted on LinkedIn. Now I have two searchable options helping with SEO (the blog article and YouTube episode).
Micro clips: I create a series of video clips which are less than 60 seconds and formatted as a square. Now, I can post that clip across multiple platforms. Currently, I’m creating 5 clips to post on YouTube shorts, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Quote posts: We create about 8 graphic posts for Instagram that are quotes from the episodes, lists, definitions, or points to remember. I designed custom templates in Canva which allows the creation to go quickly. I took the time upfront to get the design right, so we can focus on the words now. I can even pass off that task to someone else since they have templates to use.
From just one video, I’ve created two weeks worth of content including: a YouTube episode, audio podcast, a blog article, a series of micro clips, and a number of social media quote posts.
That’s the Buffalo Concept. I’ve gained 2 weeks worth of content distributed over multiple social media platforms from just one piece of content.
(Let me give credit where credit is due. A lot of the tactical implementation was gained from Gary Vaynerchuk’s incredible deck where it's how to create 64 pieces of content in a day. Download that deck. Use it as your content marketing Bible. It's awesome.)
A Word About Templates
The funny thing is that even though we're using templates, no one has ever complained that we keep reusing the same backgrounds and it's the same text format. Why? Because we love familiarity. We love consistency. Consistency equals professionalism. When you see consistency, you recognize the brand. You know my post is from me before you even look at the handle.
Creating templates streamlines your entire content creation process. You make all the hard, design decisions upfront, so you don’t keep redoing work. It allows you to focus on what you are actually saying in your posts.
In order to make the templates, I had to consider: What type of posts will we make? What kinds of things will they say? What kind of design system do we need?
Initially, I think we had about three to four templates, but after a couple months I realized I needed more things: a design template for lists and ones that allowed for more words.
It's an organic process that isn't set in stone. You have to be malleable and know that opportunities to design more templates will happen in the future. So just be easy on yourself as you start to templatize your social media. I have a lot more to say about templates, but that will take its own episode.
Batch Process Overview | Being Proactive About Content Production
To make sure I’m delivering great content efficiently, I batch together multiple episodes. Otherwise, I’d be sitting around every two wondering “what the heck am I going to talk about?” By doing a few episodes together at a time, it allows me to listen and reflect about what my audience wants to hear. What patterns am I hearing about during coaching calls? What kinds of questions are people asking about my content? What’s coming up during client discussions? All these questions help me understand what kind of information is worth sharing. If the same conversations keep happening, then I need to make a podcast episode about that topic.
From all these questions, I create an ongoing list of topics. Then every couple of months, I’ll reserve a few days or the whole week to record several episodes. If I make one every day, I’ll have 5 episodes which gives me 10 weeks worth of content…that’s 2.5 months of daily content created in a single week!
You have many demands on your time. You can’t spend all your time creating content. That’s why you need to leverage batch processing with repurposing. It will give you a wealth of content for daily posts to build brand equity…one piece at a time.
And if you keep talking about the same topics over and over again, it starts to help Google solidify keywords. Google will learn that I talk about branding, marketing, customer service and experience. It will start sending people to me who are interested in those topics. It builds and builds and builds…
The Purpose of Repurpose | My Buffalo Is a Book
Even though I just shared how to repurpose your content, you don’t want to repurpose it for the sake of “making a bunch of content.” Then it becomes another task on your marketing to-do list. You end up enslaved to checkbox marketing, devoid of purpose and intention.
Your marketing ought to be meaningful. There should be a real purpose behind it.
We need to focus on reaching our long-term goals business goals and taking steps to achieve them. Branding is about long-term value creation for your business. As you are building your brand, you need short-term value creation as well.
What should you be doing to create long-term value for your business? I don’t know what that will be for you, so let me share what I’m doing. Perhaps it will get the gears turning for you as well.
What I'm building towards is writing a book. Each podcast episode allows me to write the book in public. I explore each core concept and principle publicly so I can get immediate feedback. I know what to tweak, where to expand, and what to leave out.
My buffalo is the book. The path to get that buffalo is my podcast. I’ve found a singular approach that will benefit my business the most in the long run, but it also achieves my short-term need of daily content.
What Is Your Buffalo? | Identify Your Value Creation System
My encouragement to you is to start figuring out your buffalo concept.
What are you working towards?
What is the future state of your business that you want to achieve?
What is required to get you there?
What's going to add the most value to get you there?
This brings up the idea of obliquity which I came across in John Kay’s book by the same title. He discusses why it works best to try to achieve our goals indirectly. For example, a resort focused on providing world-class customer service is likely to be more profitable than a resort focused on becoming more profitable. It’s a great read - definitely check it out.
So start mapping out where your business is going. Where do you want to take your brand? You’ll need to achieve many small milestones along the path. What could you do to indirectly hit a lot of those stones along the way?
For me, that’s writing a book.
Have you figured out your buffalo yet? If you’re still working through it, I’d love to help. Please send a DM on Twitter, Instagram or through this website.
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