You need go no further than your nearest Developer Relations practitioner to find out how important content is. Content is used to inform, educate, and grow the communities we participate in and, in time, our user base for the organizations we work for.
Creating content can be difficult. It must be fresh and up-to-date with the latest information on the tech we are a part of, but also somewhat traditional in the way it delivers that information. There needs to be an air of creativity from the author, what is often referred to as the author’s “voice”, but there also needs to be a universality to it so everyone can access and understand it.
New content can often evolve from older content or similar content in a different form. A talk given at a conference can be the start of a great blogpost. A podcast recorded with a user could be upcycled into a great case study. Then there is the content that actually just spawns other content. We call this recursive content.
Don't Repeat Yourself?
Borrowing a concept from the Ruby programming community, one thing we want to focus on when stretching content is not constantly repeating the same words again and again. When we rebuild content, we can focus around a key phrase or concept, but we need to be cognizant of not just rewriting the same article over and over or developing the same talk for the stage.
That said, there is some comfort in certain forms of repetition. When creating content for a podcast, it's good to have a format and a script to follow for the parts that aren't the main content - such as the introduction and the exit bump. With blogposts, your developer marketers may prefer certain Call to Action language dependent on various marketing campaigns. While this content is repeatable, it doesn't effect the main message and can be repeated - just don't keep repeating the important thrust of the content!
Serialize All The Things
Content may be the most important part of DevRel, but we must consider the audience and their time when we write, broadcast, or deliver the content we build. Consumable blogposts and case studies often run in the 800-1200 word range when we look at what is most digestible. Add code snippets or app examples it may be a word count as low as 600. How do we deliver deeper concepts and keep it readable for our audience.
Taking a longer form article and breaking it into pieces is one way to make it possible for the audience to get everything they need in bite size chunks. This way too, someone who may not need the basics can "skip to the middle" and focus on the more complex forms. With serialized content you can stretch into documentation and learning content without having to rewrite it all from scratch.
There is also the value of taking a high level concept delivered in a conference talk and going deeper in a blogpost. Serialize that by adding a podcast about the topic and you've gone from a single, thirty to forty-five minute talk to three pieces of content that push the audience more deeply into the concept. This creates value without just repeating the same idea three different ways.
Self-referential Content is Immortal
Not every piece of content is stretchable or serializable. This does not mean we can't call back to it from other content that is tangential or related to our more recent content. In this way, we can make an article we work more succinct and avoid repeating an entire article. We leave it in the hands of the content consumer to examine, discover, or re-read. This allows us to expand on our current points.
In the world of comedy, this would be referred to as a call-back. Taking the content somewhere else that then harkens back to what was done before. It creates a circle of information that can be continually expanded, continually built up, further proving expertise and knowledge in the given subject of the content.
It's also possible to use self-references to connect concepts the audience may not have put together on their own. While it's always important to make clear distinctions between things that are disparate in our content, it can be just as important to equate things that are not always obviously part of the same whole.
To put a fine point on it, we have limited time to create amazing content. Serializing what we do, referring back to other content, all while ensuring we do not just churn out repetitive articles that are vague ideas for better SEO can take our content to the next level, give value to the communities we are a part of, and help us keep our voice as experts in the things we do.
Don't Repeat Yourself?
Borrowing a concept from the Ruby programming community, one thing we want to focus on when stretching content is not constantly repeating the same words again and again. When we rebuild content, we can focus around a key phrase or concept, but we need to be cognizant of not just rewriting the same article over and over or developing the same talk for the stage.
That said, there is some comfort in certain forms of repetition. When creating content for a podcast, it's good to have a format and a script to follow for the parts that aren't the main content - such as the introduction and the exit bump. With blogposts, your developer marketers may prefer certain Call to Action language dependent on various marketing campaigns. While this content is repeatable, it doesn't effect the main message and can be repeated - just don't keep repeating the important thrust of the content!
Serialize All The Things
Content may be the most important part of DevRel, but we must consider the audience and their time when we write, broadcast, or deliver the content we build. Consumable blogposts and case studies often run in the 800-1200 word range when we look at what is most digestible. Add code snippets or app examples it may be a word count as low as 600. How do we deliver deeper concepts and keep it readable for our audience.
Taking a longer form article and breaking it into pieces is one way to make it possible for the audience to get everything they need in bite size chunks. This way too, someone who may not need the basics can "skip to the middle" and focus on the more complex forms. With serialized content you can stretch into documentation and learning content without having to rewrite it all from scratch.
There is also the value of taking a high level concept delivered in a conference talk and going deeper in a blogpost. Serialize that by adding a podcast about the topic and you've gone from a single, thirty to forty-five minute talk to three pieces of content that push the audience more deeply into the concept. This creates value without just repeating the same idea three different ways.
Self-referential Content is Immortal
Not every piece of content is stretchable or serializable. This does not mean we can't call back to it from other content that is tangential or related to our more recent content. In this way, we can make an article we work more succinct and avoid repeating an entire article. We leave it in the hands of the content consumer to examine, discover, or re-read. This allows us to expand on our current points.
In the world of comedy, this would be referred to as a call-back. Taking the content somewhere else that then harkens back to what was done before. It creates a circle of information that can be continually expanded, continually built up, further proving expertise and knowledge in the given subject of the content.
It's also possible to use self-references to connect concepts the audience may not have put together on their own. While it's always important to make clear distinctions between things that are disparate in our content, it can be just as important to equate things that are not always obviously part of the same whole.
To put a fine point on it, we have limited time to create amazing content. Serializing what we do, referring back to other content, all while ensuring we do not just churn out repetitive articles that are vague ideas for better SEO can take our content to the next level, give value to the communities we are a part of, and help us keep our voice as experts in the things we do.