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

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

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

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

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

create.

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

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

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

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

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

strategy and being able to really use those things to

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

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

part framework to be able to repurpose original research. But

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

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

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

Justin. Absolutely. So before we kick into the

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

take on original research, how to be

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

then why those things are so powerful as far

as content marketing and how, regardless of company size,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the noise. And I think to really rise above

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

meaningful to your audience. I think original research is a

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of different things. For instance, I focus specifically on

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

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

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

original research, too. So you can do a series

of qualitative interviews and publish those findings, or you

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

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

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

Or you can do observational research. I know Andy Crestedin

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

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

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

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

research depending on budget access and all of those different

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

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

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

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

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

at Techsmith talking about video viewer research and really surveying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

about original research and let's just take that survey

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

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

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

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

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

And I know whenever I have thought about original

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what they really should be? Or how can I uncover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

these things that now I can highlight and envision sharing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what a missed opportunity. So it still does happen often

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

opportunity to be able to kind of chew

on what you found and potentially spin that

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

do you think about what you're going to reflect

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

questions with the intent to find those pain points

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of the LinkedIn post would be to drive traffic

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

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

it, although I think if you are genuine in your

reflection and giving a actual unique

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

but I think each one of these things can really

expand out the data. They're really just

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

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

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

out of that piece of content, and you just posted

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

expansive and how long lasting that survey in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

so she does a beautiful job on LinkedIn of sharing those

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

into that sort of personalized world where people want

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

directly keeps the message the same, it keeps the reason

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

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

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

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

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

essentially taking something from the research and

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

taking your key findings of your research report and turning that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

spin it with a podcast? What did they do to

sort of frame up the research into

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

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

when I work on research studies, oftentimes they'll

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

training more effective. So when you plan like your table

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

re spurring, like my original thought when

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

talking about using cornerstone content, really original research

was at the heart of what my reality was with cornerstone

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

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

that really being six months worth of content. Truly to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I think that's where the true fun part

of repackaging comes in, is the strategic side

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

changing and evolving. But they also do a good job

of sharing that data and repackaging it and reusing it and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

going to become more and more imperative. Research works great

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

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

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

particular, because the Internet is changing and how people interact

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

people coming to your website is not really happening anymore.

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

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

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

being proactive in getting that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

most backlinks, it's oftentimes original research. So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that the main linking thing. So regardless of somebody clicked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

questions that reveal pain points or reveal missed

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

struggling with. So it's revealing what those

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

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

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

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

personal point of view on what someone can actually do.

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

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

training we did, workshop we did around distribution of all

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

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

clients, because unless you know what your strong

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

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

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

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

four or five strong points for this is kind of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

about following his own process and asking questions to understand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

have a really good story to tell. Yeah,

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

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

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

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

think the macro level of ideas, messaging,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

them and their experiences. And I think the key is

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

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

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

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

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

hard to stay consistent because one idea,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

advance before you start writing survey questions, it helps you

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

loudest voice, really changing your path. Love that.

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

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

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

messaging, you want to have those sort of guardrails in

place that keep you on track that everybody agrees

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

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

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

five pillars of our messaging. Has something changed?

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

valuable. Having that written down and agreed upon is so

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

of trying to convince somebody of

something who is in maybe in a partner position or

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

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

ago. Like actually sat down and wrote down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

more larger, broad content

strategy sort of mission documents I always

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

or had the stat around like 39% of companies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

like trying to go out of best place thoughts in my

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

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

company was sat down and wrote a draft of what their

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

documented content marketing strategy. Because this is a great

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And essentially, youre truly reimagining it into

another level of survey or another level

of original research at that point. Yes. And thats

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

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

yes, yeah. Like job title or in house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

original research, there are a million ways that you can

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

our research as maybe not the pillar, but definitely

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

as our content strategy went, to be able to continually

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode of distribution

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

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

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

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

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