A common writing exercise for fiction writers is to write a short story and then switch the voice or point-of-view from which it is told – take first person to third or main character first person to narrated by a secondary observer of the action. It changes your story and the details you include. It changes the action and the emotion. Since everyone’s perspective is their own reality, at the end of this exercise you may have two very different pieces.
You can use this same concept to repurpose your own content. The common ways to recycle content such as elongating blog posts into articles, or using a whitepaper for the basis of a video, merely changes the medium. Exploring your topics from different audience types or professional point-of-view allows you to approach the piece from several different angles. For instance if you are writing an article about improving events, you would write it very differently whether you were targeting membership directors, event coordinators or event attendees. For membership directors you may suggest ways to tie in membership drives with the event; for the event coordinator you may refer to software that projects live tweets behind the speaker; for the event attendees you may encourage tweeting as an organizational tool for take-aways.
Our educators have instilled in us the importance of knowing our audience and purpose behind our writing. Adjustments to either of these can help you repurpose your existing content easily and disseminate it to a wider audience.
