Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
A memorable tactic for managing and scaling content
This post is part of a series of “Tactics,” giving you tangible practices to implement in your product education strategy.
Borrowing from this well-known mantra provides a memorable way to put good content habits in place. This practice can apply to content, images, onboarding tips, or any kind of information or media that you use in your product education.
Reduce
Less is more. Reducing content and media can be challenging, but you’ll set yourself up for success (and a lot less pain) in the long run by reducing the length of your content to tailor to your audience. Like many things, the ideal length of a learning artifact will depend highly on your audience, the medium, and your goals. These are areas where metrics can be invaluable in determining how much your audience is engaging.
For example, Google Analytics can provide helpful metrics for web-based learning channels. If you look at the number of pages per session combined with the average session duration, you can understand how to tailor your content to fit your user behavior. If your average user only visits 1.8 pages and spends 1.3 minutes on your site, you might adjust your content to be highly targeted and straight to the point to capture their attention. If you have higher page views and session duration, you may focus on longer-form content to match user preference.
Reuse
After you’ve reduced the amount of content or media you have, it’s time to reuse it. The guiding principle here is to store “single sources of truth” that can be reused across different mediums. Here are a few examples of reusable content to help put this into practice:
Screenshots of core product areas can be reused across channels.
Descriptions of your product can be centralized in a single repository and dynamically inserted into your content via your Content Management System (CMS).
Videos can be embedded in social posts, blog articles, or community posts that can be updated and pushed out wherever used.
Metadata, like the same introduction to a series of posts, or tags can be centrally managed and applied in bulk.
A complementary methodology to this practice is called C.O.P.E., or “Change Once, Publish Everywhere”. I’ll highlight this tactic in the next post, so come back in a week or subscribe to receive an email notification when it releases.
Recycle
If a piece of content isn’t performing, it’s time to toss it in the bin. The type of content, the channel it's used in, and your driving metrics will determine if it’s performing - this is the easy part.
The hard part is getting rid of content that you or your team has worked hard on to create. It’s difficult to let go of anything we’ve worked for or cherished in life, and this practice's mental (and maybe even emotional) aspect may be tough for you to overcome.
I’ve found the Pareto Principle (or the 80/20 rule) helpful in this regard, which is an “observation (not law) that most things in life are not distributed evenly1”. When applied to content, you can think of it as 80% of your content is useful to your audience, and the other 20% is not. This principle may help remind you that you're still providing your audience with content that is relevant to their needs, allowing them to focus on and find the best of what you've created.
Understanding the Pareto Principle, Better Explained