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5 Secrets That Make Your Content 10x More Valuable (with Michele Linn)
Episode 7525th June 2024 • Distribution First • Justin Simon
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Maximizing the value of your content can feel like an uphill battle, especially if you spent months doing original research and aren’t sure how to share it with your audience. Gathering valuable data is one thing, but using it to create new and engaging content is another. If you're wondering how to keep your content interesting and impactful, you're not alone.

In this week’s episode, Justin and Michele Linn break it all down for you.

They review smart ways to repurpose your research, how to get your social media and content teams working together, and tips for adapting your data for different platforms.

Tune in to hear how simple yet strategic tweaks in your approach can draw significant traffic and backlinks. Michele also shares practical, actionable advice on creating a content strategy that ensures no valuable data is wasted.

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • How to Repurpose Research: Expand data to create sustainable, varied content across multiple platforms.
  • Why Collaborate: Bridging social media and content teams enhances content repackaging and sharing.
  • How to Reframe Survey Questions: Craft questions to uncover key insights and guide market strategy.
  • Why Original Research Matters: Adds value and helps stand out in a saturated market.
  • How to Engage on LinkedIn: Use genuine insights over promotional posts to spark meaningful conversations.

***

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Transcripts

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Hey, everybody, before we get started, I want to thank my friends at Hatch for

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producing this episode. You can get unlimited podcast editing and

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strategy for one flat rate by visiting Hatch

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FM. All right, let's get in the show.

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Welcome to Distribution first, the show where we flip content marketing on its head

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and focus on what happens after you hit publish. Each week I

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share playbooks, motivations, stories and strategies to help you repurpose and

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distribute your content because you deserve to get the most out of everything you

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create.

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Hey, friend, welcome to this week's episode of Distribution first.

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So excited to have Michelle Lynn on the show, who is a

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really, I would say one of the more, I was going to say outspoken,

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but I feel like that's too strong of a word. But, you know, advocate for

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original research and how to use original research as part of a larger content

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strategy and being able to really use those things to

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fuel a lot of the things that you're doing. And so I'm so excited to

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have Michelle on. We're going to actually talk through her five

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part framework to be able to repurpose original research. But

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I believe also a lot of these things will tie in directly to

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other pieces of content, bigger initiatives, regardless whether or not you're doing original research

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or not. So, Michelle, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me,

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Justin. Absolutely. So before we kick into the

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framework, maybe walk through a little bit. For me, just your

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take on original research, how to be

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able to use studies or surveys or things like that, and

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then why those things are so powerful as far

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as content marketing and how, regardless of company size,

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what are some of those things? Because I feel like it's a buzzword in content

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marketing, original research, you got to do like podcasts, original

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research and YouTube. Like, these are the things in B two B where people are

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like, we got to figure out our little corner of the market. And I think

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original research is one of those. So maybe touch on that to start. Yeah,

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absolutely. I think you're right. And I think, too, people hear this word

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original research and it means so many different things, or it can

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mean so many different things. So I think it is really important for a company

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to say, hey, why do we want to do this? So I'll start with the

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why and then the what. But I'm sure you guys talk a lot about AI

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and all this different content that's out there and just content saturation and all of

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the noise. And I think to really rise above

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and to say something that's actually net new and to say something that's actually

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meaningful to your audience. I think original research is a

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great way to do that because by its very nature, it's actually original.

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It's new, and I love doing projects that really focus on what are

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those unanswered questions and how can we help our audience think or

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behave differently. So it's new and it's very meaningful. So I

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think even though there is so much content out there, I don't think that. I

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think anytime you're doing something where you're adding value that isn't

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already out there is really useful. Yeah, I love that. And I think

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too, the way people say original research, to your point, Justin, it means a lot

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of different things. For instance, I focus specifically on

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helping marketing teams do survey based research. So going out to

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their audience or reaching out to panels to understand what those different trends

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are in the industry. But there's a lot of other ways to do

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original research, too. So you can do a series

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of qualitative interviews and publish those findings, or you

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can do, I just finished a project where we analyzed this company's first

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party data. They had all this data coming into their system and then we did

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a survey based project as well. We're marrying those two things together.

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Or you can do observational research. I know Andy Crestedin

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has done this. He's like, what are those things that are on websites? And he

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looks at 50 or 100 websites and he like says, you know, he kind of

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takes a list and says, here's what everyone's doing and here's the missing gaps and

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so forth. So there's a lot of different ways to do original

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research depending on budget access and all of those different

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things. Yeah, I've done them two different ways, maybe

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three. The observational one I like as just more of an ad

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hoc. Like you don't really have to have anything super formal. You can kind of

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just have a hypothesis and go expand on those things. The two I've

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done in the past, we did a massive survey, one several times when I was

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at Techsmith talking about video viewer research and really surveying

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audience. Then when I was at metadata, we did benchmark report which was

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using first party data out of the actual platform, spin those things

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up that way. So I do love the different mix of

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original research. I think you breaking it down that way is really helpful because I

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even think, for me sometimes I think of original research, even though I done a

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couple of different versions, I typically lean on one or the other even in my

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head as I'm thinking about it. So but yeah, I mean, you think

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about original research and let's just take that survey

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data and all of the questions and you can really, if you're

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doing it correctly, you can really frame up the narrative for

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what you're going to get out of that potentially based on the questions you

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ask or the topics. Or you can ask a question or not ask a

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question that can completely change which, what data you end up getting.

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And I know whenever I have thought about original

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research, I always have had the x ray goggles is what I call them to

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see. Like, oh, this could be so many other things, right? Like we've got this

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question that answers a specific thing. It's just a piece of the

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research. But man, we can really expand on what that looks like.

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And so that's why I'm excited to talk through the framework. So let's maybe dive

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into the framework here. Number one on your list as far as like how to

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repurpose and reuse stuff, we're going to get into it is reuse. So maybe talk

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to me about, we're just reusing different pieces of content. What do you mean

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by that? Yeah, absolutely. And if you don't mind, can we go back to like

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framing up the story and asking survey questions? Because I do think what you hit

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on is really, really critical. And I think that writing a survey

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is really hard if you haven't done it before. And people will

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either ask questions that are boring. So, like you'll have all these stats,

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stat stats stats. And you kind of have this like benchmark of what is going

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on. And that's great in theory, but when you try to go

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repurpose those things, like, you can reuse them in minimal ways.

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But when I think about repurposing and when I'm thinking about story and survey

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data, I like to think about how can you ask survey questions? They're going to

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serve as a jumping off place to tell more stories and to share your point

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of view. So I think it's really critical to think about

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what those questions are. So, for instance, and I don't think you meant this, but

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I'm a very big believer in not trying to use original research or

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use survey based research to try to like lead someone down the path and

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says, aha, you know, buy my product and solution. And I'm sure you're saying the

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exact same thing. But I do think that there is a narrative in there. And

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I think as you're asking survey questions, think about how can I

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uncover people's pain points or how can I uncover missed

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opportunities? What are those things that people aren't doing or aren't thinking about doing

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what they really should be? Or how can I uncover

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gaps or disconnects? And so, like, try to figure out different ways to ask

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questions, to tell stories because then you'll be much better set

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up to do all of the repurposing that we're going to be talking about.

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So just as a, oh, one, I'm glad you made that point. A quick

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yet and important aside, I think it's just that you can't get that part wrong.

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Thousand percent, because I think, you know, we're going to go through these five rs

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and it's going to be, you know, oh, my gosh, we're going to, I can

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do all these things with all this content. And then the classic, I

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always make this joke, but like, if, if your content is a

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turd and you cut it up a hundred ways, you get 100 turds. And so

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I think that's just no different with original research. Maybe even

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worse with original research, because if you ask, like you said, if you ask a

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bunch of boring questions, you're going to end up with a bunch of boring

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content that comes out of it. And so, and you're right. You're exactly right. Like

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when I was thinking about leading, I'm thinking about leading with narrative

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and pain point and success. And like, what are all

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these things that now I can highlight and envision sharing

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out with my audience, not leading them down to product necessarily

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100%. And for what it's worth, I talked to marketers who've run these studies

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with these bigger companies, and a lot of times some of these companies ask marketers

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to come to them with the survey and then they'll just field it, which is,

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I think, kind of silly, but I've talked to marketers who've done these huge studies,

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spent all this money, and they're like, wow, we didn't learn anything interesting.

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So I mean, like, what a disappointment. And like, oh, my gosh. So just,

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what a missed opportunity. So it still does happen often

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enough. And I also read a lot of surveys and I'm like, what you think

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you're going to get out of that question is probably not what you're going to

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get out of that question, but that's a different topic for a different day.

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Interesting. Yeah, like that. Yeah. You could do a whole series on how to ask

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the right questions. Maybe we'll have you back and do that. That'll be fun. So,

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yeah, let's get into the framework here, let's assume we've got some good content or

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we've got at least a solid base of things we're going to do. Like we

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talked about. We're going to start with this idea of reusing content

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from what we have. So maybe walk me through what you think about just straight

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up reusing stuff that you have out of the survey. Yeah. So, I

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mean, reuse is the simplest, easiest way to repurpose your

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content. It's just taking a chart and sharing it on social media or using

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it within a blog post or a presentation. So it's essentially just

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taking something you already have, not doing much, if any,

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rework to it, and then using it in different spots. So it's something very

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easy to do. I just, as we're going to talk about, I think people just

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need to think beyond that because there's a lot more potential with your original

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research. Yeah, I would say reuse. That's the classic. I think that's what

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people think of. Even when I say repurposing, a lot of

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times when repurposing gets a bad name, it's just taking

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thing x and posting it on platform Y, which again, is

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fine. It's honestly, like you said, I think it's a starting point. It's better

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than nothing. And a lot of people are doing nothing.

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You know, all those charts and all those graphs and all those things that are

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within that data or showing unique data. It's left,

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honestly, like gated a lot of times behind a paywall or by insight,

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you're just limiting, narrowing in the amount of people that actually see

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that versus when I think about the reuse of it, it's

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just kind of opening up the floodgates and just being able to really

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tease out the data. You know, it's one data point. Maybe if you

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published all the data points and put all of the content out,

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eventually over a year, somebody could get all the information. But that's not how people

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work. Exactly. We're not going to see it all. We're not going to consume it

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all. We're not going to understand it all and be like, oh, I got all

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that right. You're going to see three or four and be like, oh, I'm just

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going to go down. I think I'm going to download this thing now. Yes, absolutely.

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So reuse, base level, easiest thing to start. I'm

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curious. Number two is reflect. Talk to me through reflection and what

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that means for you as far as repurposing goes. Yeah. So this is

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personally my favorite way to reuse or repurpose your research data.

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So it's essentially taking out what you learned and reflecting on it

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in public. So this is an older example, but I did a

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study all around thought leadership with Andy Cressidina, with surveymonkey several years

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ago, and there was a question in there that says, do you think the

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quality of your thought leadership is impacted if it's ghost written?

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And half said yes, half said no. And so I took that question out to

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LinkedIn, and I'm like, you know, here's what we asked, here's what we found. Here

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are my thoughts. What do you think? And, you know, all these people chimed

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in and they were like, you know, very thoughtful about why they thought yes or

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why they thought no. And then that spurred additional conversations and

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additional LinkedIn posts that really got into the nuance of ghost written

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thought leadership. And we never did repeat that particular study, but that would

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have given us new ideas of questions to ask and so forth. So I think

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it's just genuinely taking your data, taking something that you learned,

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something that you either validated, something that you believed or something

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that you found surprising or I've shared disconnects before.

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Like, marketers want to create more, but they don't want to spend more. Like the

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classic story, but we have data to back it up. And just taking those out

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and, like, sharing your thoughts and asking people to weigh in, it's very

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easy. I'm very big at using social media for conversation,

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not for promotion. I think it makes the data even more meaningful

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and even more genuine. Yeah, it's a unique

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opportunity to be able to kind of chew

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on what you found and potentially spin that

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up off of it? I think one of the things I'm kind of curious, how

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do you think about what you're going to reflect

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on? Is that more strategic in terms of you're going to go through it and

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actually maybe list out some of the things that you found most interesting. Is it

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more ad hoc in terms of like, this struck me today, I'm going to post

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about it, or how do you think about that, Michelle? Well, so if it's me,

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I'm an ad hoc kind of person. So that's how I would do it. I'm

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not as like structured, organized, but I think you absolutely win 100

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can do it in a structure, organized way. Again, when you're asking

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questions with the intent to find those pain points

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or expose disconnects or like, do all of those things where your questions

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are essentially those conversation starters, you can just make a list of

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all of those data points and then take those out to social media, take

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them out to your membership, take them out to anything that you want to. Just

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start conversations around those. So I think you can do it depending on

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how you and your system and your brain works. I think both ways

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work really well. Yeah, I'm just thinking through in terms of,

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because I know a lot of times, at least in b, two b, the goal

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of the LinkedIn post would be to drive traffic

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to the survey. And again, I think that adds a nice

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balancing point where the goal is not necessarily to get you to read

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it, although I think if you are genuine in your

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reflection and giving a actual unique

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take and trying to spur conversation, it will actually lead people

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to want to read it more than if you were straight up promoting,

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hey, I just did this new survey we surveyed, blah, blah, blah, blah, and we

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talked about x, Y and z. Go check it out. I think so, too. And

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obviously in your LinkedIn comments, say, hey, if you want to read the whole study,

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here's the link to the whole thing. And I think that works really well. You

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obviously need the culture of having that person. If you were to use LinkedIn,

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for instance, I feel like these best come from people,

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not from companies. So I think that you need that person within

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the organization who is on LinkedIn and who is sharing those thoughts. I think

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it's harder if you don't have that built in. I think it's

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possible. But yeah, I think I've always had really good success

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just being genuine and even, like saying, hey, you know, what we learned really surprised

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me and not. I think people really do want to dig in and not just,

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you know, get stats thrown at them. Yeah, I think the interesting thing, as

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I'm maybe tie this together at first when we were going over the framework prior,

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but I think each one of these things can really

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expand out the data. They're really just

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different angles and different ways to approach the data and what's coming

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out of it. And, you know, I'm just thinking of example, like

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if you had ten thoughts, kind of, or ten reflections

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out of that piece of content, and you just posted

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one reflection a month or two reflections, you could see how

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expansive and how long lasting that survey in

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original research data that becomes just off of a few posts a month, even if

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you posted once a week, you know, you're getting two and a half months worth

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of content that taught your reflections on this over two months.

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And then, you know, by that point, maybe you're going to. You're also going to

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sprinkle in some reuse, or you're also going to sprinkle in some of these other

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areas. And so you can really think about it where. And I

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think that's what people ideally want to be able to

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do when they think about repurposing and the power of repurposing and how to use

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it. I think they love the idea of being able to make this stuff last

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longer. I just don't think they always know how to make that happen.

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And I think this framework's helpful. Correct. And I think they don't know how to

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make it happen without it seeming very repetitive, like, okay, I've already shared

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this, so I think taking that data to your point and presenting it in a

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different way, as we'll keep talking about, I think is useful because it doesn't seem

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like, okay, yeah, I've already heard this, you know what I mean? And I do

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believe most people haven't seen everything, but I also believe, like, your

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fans and followers do see a lot. So I always am cognizant of not trying

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to turn people off by just talking about something all the time.

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So I don't know if you know, do you know Emily Amos? She's on LinkedIn,

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and if you know her, she focuses on case studies. And so she did a

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really nice study around b, two b case studies and customer stories. And

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so she does a beautiful job on LinkedIn of sharing those

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findings in a lot of different ways. So just as a. Yeah, gonna have. To

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check it out. A nice shout out to her if people are looking to follow

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someone who does this well, she's a great person. Love that. Definitely gonna have to

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check it out. I'm always looking for ways to sort of, like, reverse

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engineer what good looks like in different areas. I think in

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particular, in the circles I run in with, like,

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b, two b companies. And, you know, everyone always wants to ask, like, what

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company's doing it well. And the unfortunate answer oftentimes is not

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many. And I think it's to your point, because we're moving

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into that sort of personalized world where people want

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people at the company to share what they want. But I think even using,

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whether it's Emily or somebody else, to see who's doing it well

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on LinkedIn and then being able to just see, okay, how do we then do

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that at our company? Or how do I do that for my company?

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Yes. And it's not that hard. I mean, as long as you obviously have

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that study, it's really not that hard. Yeah. Especially when you're thinking, I

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like the reflection angle of that because it's just, all right, what are

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the interesting pieces of this? And how can I sort of start a conversation

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around it again, like we touched on, if there aren't, if it's not an

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interesting angle, don't write about it. So,

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yes, and like we talked about, a lot of times, those conversations will spur

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additional LinkedIn posts. Like you're that person who's struggling. Like, what do we write about?

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What do we talk about? I mean, you could probably not all come, you don't

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know what conversations are going to lead to, what things, but

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generally those always, like, yep. I always find new

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threads to pull at to like, post again. Yeah. And I would say, too, like,

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if you're a company and you're starting to do this, this is where the

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collaboration piece between whoever's running social, whoever's doing

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content, maybe that's the same person, maybe it's not. But those are the areas where

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that stuff starts to really matter, because now you've got this conversation happening

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on social, and maybe that's your next podcast episode,

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maybe that's your next blog post, maybe that's your next series of

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LinkedIn posts, whatever that is. You can now touch on it, and then it

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directly keeps the message the same, it keeps the reason

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for the content the same, and it keeps the thread line through

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your original research and everything you just worked on, it helps just build on those

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things. So absolutely love it. And that may tie into this

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next one, which is repackaging. So, you know, it was meant to be.

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So let's touch on repackaging and what that looks like. So repackaging is

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essentially taking something from the research and

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repackaging it, like remixing it, redoing it for a certain platform. So

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taking your key findings of your research report and turning that

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into a webinar, or one of my former clients, Formstack, they

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took their research study that we did, and they turned it into a season

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of podcast episodes, or taking that, you know, those podcast

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episodes that you create and then repurposing those into LinkedIn posts or

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into blog posts or. So it's just taking anything that you have. And I know

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you talk about this all the time, Justin, but really making it make

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sense for the platform and the space on which it exists.

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So either expanding it or contracting it in a way that makes it

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useful for that person and for that platform. I'm curious, how did they

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spin it with a podcast? What did they do to

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sort of frame up the research into

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episodic content. So I will have to go back and look.

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It's been a while since I looked at it, but I will say that like

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when I work on research studies, oftentimes they'll

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have some kind of like structure or some kind of model. So for instance,

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I worked on a study with marketing professionals all around effective b, two b

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marketing training. And so we looked at, I created this

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model. The questions were built on this model. I called the four c's of effective

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training. And like one was all around, you know, culture. So you could

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do, you know, you could take, I can't remember. The four C's were, to be

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honest with you, was like culture and collaboration and two others. But each of

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those c's could make a wonderful podcast episode in and of itself. Like today

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we're going to talk about how culture impacts, you know, effective b two

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B training. And then composition was another one, like what training actually

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looks like. So we found out that B two B marketers really want things like

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frameworks and templates and examples in their training, but we found out that those things

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were often missing. So do a whole episode about how to really create and

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structure and or look for training that has all of these things that make

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training more effective. So when you plan like your table

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of contents or your model or your framework, if your research is built on something

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like that, and I know formstacks was, it was a very structured

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project, you could just take all those topics and, you

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know, build it all out. Does that help? It does, it

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does. It's really. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think that's

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where the idea of having a table of contents is interesting. And using that

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to guide the really what you're going to do out

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of the research or out of the report or out of the white

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paper or out of the whatever. I talk about that a lot. With content reversing,

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even for blogs, like what's the table of content look like? What are

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your h two s? Like, those are your sub topics to then run

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with, to be able to create other types of content. But also it's

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re spurring, like my original thought when

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I was creating my course content, repurposing roadmap, when I was creating that and

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talking about using cornerstone content, really original research

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was at the heart of what my reality was with cornerstone

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content, which is this idea of I've got this thing.

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And really, if you did that survey, you could imagine

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that really being six months worth of content. Truly to

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hit on that and to be able to extract a lot of the thoughts out

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of that and lead that. And I think that's where, if you're doing

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original research, right, and this is true of any piece of content, but

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again, tying it around to the ideas, the thoughts, the pains, the

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problems, all the things that your customers have that then may lead

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to them wanting to become aware of the thing that you sell,

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ultimately. But if you're able to take those messages, again,

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not just the content, but repackaging the messages that are within that content.

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So those four C's, it's not that we're

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taking the original research and cutting up into a blog post. It's that

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we're taking c number one and writing about it on LinkedIn and

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c number one and writing it about it on a blog post, and c number

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one and having a whole podcast, maybe three podcast episodes,

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tacking different angles of c one and then being able to build that up.

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So I think that's where the true fun part

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of repackaging comes in, is the strategic side

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of, again, it's not that you're not creating

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anything new, because you are, but it's you're honing

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into the ideas that at the end of the year, this is a great

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question. I always have clients try to answer this when they're

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thinking about repurposing content, and it comes down from a messaging standpoint

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of at the end of year. Like, what do you want to be known for?

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Like, what do you want to be known for? What do you want to be

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talked about for? What do you want your people to know? And that could be

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from a content side, that could be from a messaging side. And I think

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if you're doing original research, you're doing these surveys, and you don't want to be

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known for that. Like you brought up, Andy, like orbit media, the blogger survey.

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Right. Like I said, one of the first things I think of when I think

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of orbit media is like, they're blogging survey that they just do and

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do and do and every year, and the data is always interesting and

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changing and evolving. But they also do a good job

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of sharing that data and repackaging it and reusing it and

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reflecting on it and all those type of things throughout the year to where it's

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not just this blip on their radar, it's something they're actually talking about.

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Yes. And if you do all these things that you and I were talking about,

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if you actually make it, I don't see, you don't make it meaningful. But if

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you're sharing it and talking about it and, like, trying to, like, poke at it

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and learn from it. I mean, it's a beautiful thing, and I think it ties

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really well into, like you said, people want to hear from people, and that's only

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going to become more and more imperative. Research works great

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for that. It's not this get it report you put together and, like, roll people

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to. It's how do you make this really come to life and be helpful to

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people? There's a real shift happening in marketing and in content marketing in

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particular, because the Internet is changing and how people interact

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on the Internet is changing. And the idea of bunches of

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people coming to your website is not really happening anymore.

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No, but I think there's a lag behind the awareness that

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this is happening in the tactics and strategies that people are using. And

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so I think when I think about repackaging it, it's

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being proactive in getting that

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research in front of your audience. It's not reactively waiting for them

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to stumble upon it or maybe search and find it, because you did

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keep, and we didn't even touch on that. But Google YouTube is a

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great resource for some of these things to be able to tap into what people

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are already looking for. But outside of that, we need to make sure we're

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actually getting that in front of people. Yes. And to your point, a quick

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aside, I think it's important that your research live on one page. So, for

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instance, Andy's blogger study, he has one URL every year. That

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URL. He uses that exact same URL. The amount of traffic that he gets is

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phenomenal. And even though he's been doing this for a long time, if you like,

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look at stats from different companies and you see which content is bringing in the

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most backlinks, it's oftentimes original research. So

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know that it works from that perspective, too. And just make sure that you have

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one central place to send people to so you're not taking all that interest

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and dispersing it. Right, right. And don't have that thing be a form

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because that's gonna block people, like, have it be something that's open access and

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useful. Yeah, that's a great point. I used to do like, I think we did

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this when I was at Med. I know we did it when it was Techsmith.

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We basically took the old research, like, let's say 20

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twenty's version back in the day, and we actually took that and

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housed it on a separate URL in case somebody wanted 20 twenty's data.

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But we always kept the freshest data on that same URL and kept

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that the main linking thing. So regardless of somebody clicked

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an old stat, it got them to the new, the new data and kept that

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URL fresh. Yes. That's really smart. That's what I recommend people

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do. Yeah. Versus every year, you know, survey data 2024.

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Survey data 2025. Like, you're losing all that, all that juice

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from people linking to it. 100%. Yeah. Awesome. So we're

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cruising. We're wrapping up here, two thirds of the way through, I think

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if I do math right, or we're at least getting there, three fifths, I guess,

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technically. Um, but the fourth one here, the fourth r so

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far, we took down reuse. So just straight up reusing content,

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reflecting on what your data sort of said, being able to give

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your own thoughts, opinions, et cetera, on that, repackaging it. So using

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different formats to be able to sort of speak to the same

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content, but using it in a different way. And now this one's an interesting one

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to me, is reveal. So talk to me about reveal, what that means as far

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as repurposing. Yeah. So again, we talked about asking

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questions that reveal pain points or reveal missed

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opportunities or reveal, you know, those things that people are actually

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struggling with. So it's revealing what those

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struggles are and then sharing how you would fix that or providing

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your point of view. Like, if you're in this situation, here's what you can do.

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So again, using your survey data to find out the pain point

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and then sharing that stat, and then bringing in your own

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personal point of view on what someone can actually do.

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So again, it's the stat is just that jumping off place. Yeah. And I love

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tying it to povs. I think it's funny inside the membership, the first

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training we did, workshop we did around distribution of all

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things, was nothing to really do about distribution. It was povs. We did a

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pov workshop because it's one of the first things I do when I work with

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clients, because unless you know what your strong

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points of view are, what your take is, it's hard for you to

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stand out. It's hard for you to have that opinion. It's even honestly kind of

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hard for you to reflect in a lot of ways. You might be reflecting in

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many ways or confusing ways. And so I think even having those

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four or five strong points for this is kind of

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my view or our company's view on the marketplace,

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what's going on, all those type of things, and then tying those in with

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the research is so important. And those are things when you know the

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povs ahead, you can actually reverse engineer that stuff and be able to frame

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up your question and build the survey data off of that. So then that naturally

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weaves in as you're sort of distributing after. Exactly. Like, I was just

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talking to someone yesterday, I actually do a thing called survey review

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service. So it's a course and it's a review. So people who are DIY in

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their own research, I'll review their surveys for them and give them feedback. And this

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particular person, he was like, all the questions we're trying to get at these benchmarking

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things, I'm like, that's interesting, but you can't do much with it. So we talked

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about following his own process and asking questions to understand

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where people are along these lines. And it's almost

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irrelevant what the data is because he just wants to understand are people

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doing XYZ? You know what I mean? So I think, and then that will

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be his story that he can then share, which I think can just work

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really, really well because, and this is another aside, I think

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sometimes, too, if you're trying to survey for anything very specific, like, I know

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people want to survey for pain, and I do talk about trying to surface pain

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points, but oftentimes the pain that you think is going to exist, it does not

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exist in the data as much as you think it's going to. So just making

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sure that however your data lands, you still have stories to tell from

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it, instead of saying, I want the data to come out this way. So we

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have a really good story to tell. Yeah,

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it's, it's a bit of a. Nuance, but I think disappointed, like, oh, wait, it

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doesn't say what we want. How are we going to use this? You know? Yeah.

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And it's a huge, I mean, again, it's, that's where I think having, when

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I think of repurposing, I always talk about it in micro and macro, and I

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think the macro level of ideas, messaging,

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consistency, making sure people understand who you are. Like,

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it's no accident that people often tell me, when

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I think of repurposing, I think of you. When I think of distribution, I think

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of you and it's like, well, there's a reason why for you, it's like, when

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I think of people doing original research for, it's like I think of Michelle, you

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know, there are certain people, certain companies, certain brands, where

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when you think of them, it's very clear. And the reason why is

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because they have their messages down, they have who they serve down. They have

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a really strong view on what those things are. Even if

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those views evolve and change, they're still strong and they're in, they're unique to

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them and their experiences. And I think the key is

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they don't waver from them. It's something that they,

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that they're able to see through consistently. They're not ping ponging between

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different initiatives. And again, like, I think me now

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being out, I don't know if this is true for you, working outside

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and then working with companies, but it's just really

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hard to stay consistent because one idea,

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one perspective can throw the whole thing off to where, oh, now

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we're, you know, why are we talking about this? This is not even a core

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to what we were trying to do. Yes. I mean, but I will say, too,

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like, when I work on surveys with clients, if this is what you're getting at,

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like, when we define the research topic, I also define what I

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call big picture questions. And like, these are the five to seven things. These are

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the big questions you want answered. And so we all agree to those

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and sometimes they'll shift during the strategy, but then the survey questions are

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built to answer those questions. When I present the data, we come back to those

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questions. So as we're having all those internal conversations and someone

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wants to add this and someone else wants to do that, I'm like, okay, but

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our guidepost is this. And I feel like if you have that in

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advance before you start writing survey questions, it helps you

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land where you actually expect to land instead of getting that, you know,

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loudest voice, really changing your path. Love that.

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I think, yes, having that helps a lot. Having those,

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and that's how I frame up. POV is, to be honest in a lot of

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ways is like, however you want to individual piece of content, overall

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messaging, you want to have those sort of guardrails in

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place that keep you on track that everybody agrees

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on. So when somebody comes to you, you can say,

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look, we agreed on this. This is in our document. These are the five questions

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we're trying to answer. These are the five pillars of our content strategy. These the

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five pillars of our messaging. Has something changed?

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If it has, let me know. But at least, man, having that is so

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valuable. Having that written down and agreed upon is so

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valuable because then you're not put in the tough spot

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of trying to convince somebody of

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something who is in maybe in a partner position or

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different areas like that. But I think having those guardrails in

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place is so key, even for me, like, I just did this a couple weeks

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ago. Like actually sat down and wrote down

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my content strategy, vision and why I'm doing what

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I'm doing and what I'm creating and why and who's it for and

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how this content helps me win in the market. Like really just thinking through what

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all those things are and it's really clarifying and it's

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helpful. And what I need to do is actually like, I have it printed, but

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I need to like stick it on my wall and then that way, that's really

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the guiding thing for me. And when I'm creating content, think about what podcast creating

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about who to have on, thinking about what trainings to do, all that type of

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stuff. Or if you ever want to do research like that, your guidepost to figure

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out like what you want to ask and what you want to test, you know.

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Right. Thousand percent. Thousand percent. Yeah, you got it all there, you

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know. And how much more easy is that for you to then come in and

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run with it versus you now trying to have to pull those things out?

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Yeah, definitely. But honestly, I work with clients all the time who don't know what

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they want to study and they don't have that framework. And I'm sure you see

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this all the time, too, when they give you all this information and then you

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take it, you turn it into something, they're like, oh, like that light bulb

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moment of, and then that can also guide some of their other marketing too. So

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they're just not, once you put structure around their research, sometimes it puts structure around

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their marketing. Yep. So, but I'm sure you see it all the time. I just

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did this with a client. I've been starting to do kind of like

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more larger, broad content

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strategy sort of mission documents I always

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reference. I think it's, I think it's orbit media that has the stat,

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or had the stat around like 39% of companies

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have a written content strategy. And so, you know, you're, or it. Could be

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CMI too many years, we always just ask you to document a

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content marketing strategy. It's always hovering around 40 plus or

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minus. Yeah, actually, now that you say that, I think it is CMI. But think

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about that. And if only 40%, I mean, 60% of companies

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have nothing written down, which means they're all, whether you like to say

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it or not, you're just kind of shooting from the hip at that point or

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like trying to go out of best place thoughts in my

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head of what we're trying to do and who we're trying to talk to and

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what types of content we're best at. And so what I actually did with this

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company was sat down and wrote a draft of what their

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content strategy and content mission. I know content mission is something that Andy

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talks about that I like as far as like, why are we creating what we're

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creating and who's that for? And it's so helpful

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because you can come in and you can start to use that and

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see, oh, that is who we're talking about, or, oh, no, that's, that's not

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what we want to talk about. And it's like, okay, if that's not what we,

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then let's stop writing LinkedIn content about this topic. Let's stop. Like

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I, you know, it's very interesting and very revealing to kind of pull back

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those layers. So I used to work for CMI for many years, and so we

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had a mission statement. Joe Pulitzer talked about mission statements for many years, and so

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we lived and died by that. Like, I would turn down great things and like,

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it just doesn't align with our mission. But I think it's interesting you were talking

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about that one CMI stat, like whatever the number was about people who have a

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documented content marketing strategy. Because this is a great

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example of reveal. I took that stat. Obviously people need to

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document their content marketing strategy. So I wrote a guide about how to document

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your content marketing strategy. So that was like the jumping off place. And so we

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never gated our research, but then we gated that guide as a next

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step. So it was a nice way to get people to like do

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something after. And we already knew they had a problem. So it was easy to

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figure out what is that next step we want to guide people to. So I

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think it's a nice meta example about how you can use original research just

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to kind of further your story, further your content strategy. Yeah,

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love that. I love that it worked out to be able to touch it. We

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got there. We got there. So, yeah, let's wrap with the final one here, the

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final r, reimagine. So talk to me about reimagine and what

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you think about with repurposing. Yeah, so the last r is, like you said,

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reimagine. Most of what they do when they write, when they have an original

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research study is they have one research report, blog post, landing

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page, whatever that looks like. And there's going to be all of these things that

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don't make it into that report simply because that report needs to

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be clear, have a narrative and so forth. So this last step is all

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about taking all of those things that you haven't yet published and using those in

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different ways. So do you want to have a cut of the data?

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Like maybe you can look at the data by like a certain industry and share

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just that? Or maybe you can look at the data and compare, you

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know, how do males and females think differently about this? Or how do

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different generations, you know, Gen X versus millennials, think

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differently? So it's just taking all of this data because if you do one

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study and you have a big enough sample size, you're gonna have so many other

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different ways to look at the data. It's just doing that with everything else you

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haven't yet published. And of course, then you can apply the other r's

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to that as well and get even more life from your study.

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Thats super interesting. I would have never thought to then recut that data.

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And essentially, youre truly reimagining it into

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another level of survey or another level

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of original research at that point. Yes. And thats

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honestly not hard, right? I mean, its not hard. All the data is right there.

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And if you have the right tools, its so easy to spot the differences and,

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yes, yeah. Like job title or in house

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versus freelance. You know, what are the difference between how these people

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think about these things? Or. Yeah, like there's lots of ways,

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interesting ways to kind of cut up that data in a different way. Yes. So

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the possibilities go on and on and on and on. So, yeah, and again,

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that's where I think it's, if you did this and it all

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tied into what you were talking about, you could easily just use this

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to run your content engine. I think that people should understand, like, if

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you're coming out of this and thinking about doing an original research or you have

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original research, there are a million ways that you can

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reuse that. And again, if you are, it almost makes

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me think, too. Like if you're not doing this, either the survey data isn't good

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enough or maybe you just don't know how. Or let me ask you this,

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Michelle, because I guess as we wrap here, as I'm thinking about this, it's like

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if I do that, though, I'm going to miss out on doing other things in

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my head. As I'm thinking about it, I'm like, yeah, but if you cut up

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all that stuff and it ties to what your messaging are and what your

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topics are, that's exactly what you wanted to do. Yes, and

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I do think you probably talk about this, too. Like marketers get bored of their

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message before their audience gets bored of their message. And it's funny because

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I have a four step research project and by the time I get to step

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four, I'm like, I look at this, I'm personally ready to move on. And I

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think that's part of the issue. I think people aren't thinking about how to use

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it. I think that's another issue. I mean, I look at it as

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supplemental. I think it could be one thing that's really strong throughout your

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content strategy, but doesn't need to be your only content strategy.

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Unless you're new and you really have limited resources and you want to build

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your business off of research, which I've done and helped others

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do, I think then it can really fuel everything. But in a larger

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organization, I think it just plays a really good supporting role and

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can supplement a lot of content, but doesn't need to be the only thing that

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you do. Yeah, I'm sure it depends on size of team and company and all

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those things and what your content initiatives are. I guess I'm thinking more of like,

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yeah, when I was at metadata, that's what we were trying to do, is use

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our research as maybe not the pillar, but definitely

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a piece of the pillar, maybe a leg of the stool as far

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as our content strategy went, to be able to continually

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reassess and reuse and make sure that the data and those things were being able

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to spread in there. So one other really quick thought, I talked to a lot

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of marketers to do their own research, and I think part of the issue that

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where people struggle too, is their reporting is not good.

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So they have to manually calculate. Like, what does it look for by industry or

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by generation or by, if you plug into the right tools,

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you have these beautiful crosstab reports that it's just done for you. So

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make sure when you choose your survey tool that you understand what the backend

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reporting is going to look like so that you can get as much life out

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of your data as you want to so you're not manually calculating that

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because that's a huge issue. I've seen a lot of marketers run. Into

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wrangling the data is half the battle. 1000%. Yeah,

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sorry. But anyway, no, that's awesome. This has been

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super fun. I've loved kind of thinking through it from the original research standpoint.

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But again, like I mentioned at the beginning, I think this can be true of

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really anything you create, anything that you have that's maybe a

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larger piece. You know, I'm thinking for me, it's like, oh, man, even the, you

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know, my course, in a lot of ways, I've done similar things with this where,

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you know, I'm reusing pieces, I'm reflecting on the different areas of

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it, I'm repackaging those into different things, all of those areas. So

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this has been great. I think it's an easy framework that people can think about

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using regardless of their content, but certainly if they're doing original

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research, and it's just great to chat. Michelle, thanks for coming on. Thank you, Jess.

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This was so fun. Awesome chat soon. You too.

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All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution

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first, and thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you

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so, so much and I hope you're able to apply what you learned in

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this episode one way or another, into your content strategy as

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well. Speaking of strategy, we have a lot of things going on this year that

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are going to help you build your brand, ten x your content and

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transform the way you do content marketing. Make sure to subscribe

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to the show and sign up for my newsletter at Justin Simon Co.

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So you don't miss a thing. I look forward to serving you in the next

Speaker:

episode as well. And until then, take care and I'll see you next time.

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