Repurposing content has long been a mantra of the content marketing world. It makes perfect sense; companies spend a lot of resources to create good content. Using that content in as many ways as possible leverages that investment to maximize return.
Three magazine brands have successfully taken this idea into the publishing world, by repurposing their editorial and audience assets for new success, and Scott McKinney reports in Folio.
Leveraging photo shoots for video
Cigar Aficionado, McKinney notes, recently released unpublished portions of its Michael Jordan interview, and publicized the video in a recent print edition.
“Snagging a rare interview with basketball legend Michael Jordan for its December 2017 cover, Cigar Aficionado was able to capture something that it never had before,” McKinney explains. “While the magazine had previously included video on its website—such as short features with editors reviewing cigars, or behind-the-scenes clips of Arnold Schwarzenegger driving his personal tank while chomping a cigar—it had never filmed any of its celebrity cover interviews.”
“The filming process was relatively simple: The photographer they used for the interview had video experience, so they supplied him with additional staff and a multi-camera setup for the video component,” says McKinney. “The results blew away the magazine staff’s expectations.”
Leveraging this video content – taken at little additional expense while they were doing the still shoot for the print magazine – was a simple as mentioning the video in the print magazine.
“Readers responded with enthusiasm. The video interview drew traffic from mentions in the print magazine, as well as from site visitors and social media followers, and it received press coverage from other outlets, including Golf Digest,” McKinney notes.
Photo archives leveraged in book form
For the team at New York magazine, the inspiration for new content came from its own archives. In the 50 years they’ve been publishing the magazine, they’ve amassed an incredible photo history of their city. And they’ve turned those assets into a hardbound anniversary book.
As McKinney explains, they “opted to use an editorially driven approach, rather than a ‘greatest hits’ piece, to tell the story of the city’s last 50 years. It found Simon & Schuster to publish the book and released ‘Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: Fifty Years of New York’ last November.”
Reverse engineering a digital audience
In another great example of outside-the-box repurposing, Allrecipes swam upstream to reverse-engineer its digital readership.
“The 20-year-old website began as an array of online recipe hubs, initially known as CookieRecipe.com, and ultimately consolidated into AllRecipes.com,” explains McKinney. “Its digital version has seen rapid growth, and now receives 80 million monthly users and 1.5 billion annual visits.”
That solid and enthusiastic user base was the foundation on which they launched their print magazine in 2013, to great success.
“AllRecipes.com released the magazine and has since increased its rate base seven times, to the current base of 1.4 million. And even though most of the print content is available for free online, consumers are still willing to pay,” McKinney notes.
Clearly, the value of curated content is high among their readership, and they were able to leverage that into a lucrative revenue stream.
As magazine brands evolve into multi-channel publishing businesses, inspiration often starts with looking at what they’ve already created. What’s your best work? How can you get it in front of new audiences and expand your return? That’s a great place to look for your next revenue opportunity.