Last year I published How content creates content blog post. It’s one of my favorite blog posts. It shows how one piece of content can produce more content. Since everyone shifted to running online events/meetups I wanted to update this blog post and also offer new content ideas for the virtual world. I know it’s not always easy to come with content ideas. This blog post should help you develop more content. I also recommend you read How to scale Developer Relations with online meetups.
We have been running (almost) daily online meetups on the IBM Developer Crowdcast channel. You have been working on an article or tutorial how to solve a problem with a technology from you company. You want to share it with your community, maybe other developers will find this solution useful. You can start with publishing a step-by-step tutorial. That’s one piece of content.
Next you can host an online meetup where you will show the steps building a solution. Now you have:
It’s a good idea to record the online meetup. We use Crowdcast where each event is automatically recorded. You can upload the recording to YouTube and now you have:
I advice Developer Advocates to start their YouTube channel where they can upload event recordings. It can be a great resource. YouTube is the second most popular search engine.
Now you can take the YouTube video and publish a blog post. Embed the video and add a short description what developers will learn watching it. You can also link to the tutorial you already published. Now you have:
Let’s say that during the online meetup attendees had a lot of questions. You answered most of them but some were left unanswered. It’s also likely that the questions you did answer, you can now provide a better answer when you are not limited by time. This is a great blog post idea. Take all the questions and publish a new blog post answering each question with more details (such as links and other resources). So now you have:
Another idea is you can have a Q&A with links to the place in the video where questions are answered. Here is an example of such event I hosted Video and Q&A: Learn how COBOL and open source are used in modern mainframe ecosystem. Crowdcast allows to create a marker in the video when a question is answered. Once the event is over you get a link which allows you to jump to that question/answer in the video.
The tutorial you started with can give you more content ideas. An online meetup usually has an overview of a technology and then a hands-on portion. You can also record a video which shows only the hands-on portion and upload it to YouTube as well (shown by dashed line). It can be a very technical, step-by-step video tutorial. There is some overlap with the online meetup but that’s OK. I’m sharing this as a framework and you can decide what content makes the most sense to create.
Now you have this:
If you enjoy live video you might also want to stream a version of the live tutorial on Twitch:
Most content in this framework can also by republished (syndicated) on other community web sites such as Dev.to, Medium and others:
If you are wondering why not publish on these web sites the original content, my advice is always to publish content on your own blog and then republish.
All the content you created can be shared on social media: Twitter, LinkedIn or any other web sites. don’t limit sharing right after you publish the content. You can share one week later, four weeks later and even six months later. In general, you can continue sharing content and reaching developers on regular basis as long as it stays relevant. I talk about reaching developers anywhere and evergreen content (content that doesn’t go out of date) in How to scale Developer Relations with online meetups blog post.
What I shared so far is a framework, you can start with another piece of content and draw the arrows the opposite way. Here are some other ideas that can generate more content. The following examples are using online meetups but you should be able to publish articles or tutorials using the approach.
One such example is hosting a series of events on a particular topic (we hosted a 5-part series on Deep Learning earlier this year). Let’s say you want to host a series on Kubernetes. You can host three sessions:
You have three sessions, you can take everything I shared before and use for each session.
It’s likely you had great questions during the sessions. Now you can host a fourth session which will focus only on the Q&A. Invite everyone back where you will answer all the questions from the previous sessions and attendees will be able to ask any new questions.
Another great option is to host a series but with different speakers. The speakers can be from your company or external. For example, you can host a series all about containers:
Every session is hosted by you but has a different main speaker. Once the series is over you can host a Q&A session with all three speakers. Invite everyone back to ask questions. You can also host a panel discussion with the speakers.
Every individual session can still get the same content creates content treatment I shared at the beginning.
One last thing I want to share. If you are having a difficult time coming up with content ideas, you can always Borrow brilliance, or one quick way to come up with content ideas.
What I shared in this blog post is just a framework and examples that you should be able to customize and use for your needs. You can start with any other content type and the arrows can go any direction.
I’d love to hear your feedback. Please post feedback in comments or connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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