Market Core · Content · Module
Reuse and lifespan
How long each piece stays useful, and how much of it can become something else — because the cheapest content is almost always something that already exists.
The idea
How it works
Lifespan is the most under-weighted property content has. A piece that remains useful for three years and one that is irrelevant in a week have completely different economics, and they are almost always budgeted from the same line.
Reuse is cheap when it is designed in and expensive when it is attempted afterwards. Deciding at commissioning what else a piece will become costs nothing; retrofitting it costs most of making it again.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Classify every format by lifespan
Evergreen, seasonal or topical. It should change how much is spent on each, and usually it changes nothing.
- 02
Decide the reuse at commissioning
What else this becomes, named before it is made. Afterwards is when reuse gets talked about and not done.
- 03
Refresh before replacing
A piece that still ranks and still helps is worth updating. Replacing it starts the accumulation over for no gain.
- 04
Retire deliberately
Content that has stopped being true costs more than it earns. Removal is a decision that has to be scheduled or it never happens.
One level in
The components of reuse and lifespan
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The lifespan classification
Evergreen, seasonal or topical, per format, and what each is worth spending.
LearnThe refresh and retire list
What is updated, what is removed, and when either was last reviewed.
Learn
Decide at commissioning what else the piece becomes. Reuse arranged afterwards costs nearly as much as making it again.
The other modules in content
Pillars
The few subjects the organisation keeps returning to and wants to be known for — chosen so that a body of work accumulates into a position rather than into a stream of unrelated pieces.
LearnFormats
What the organisation actually produces, and what job each format is doing — which audience, which stage, and what it is meant to change.
LearnProduction
What each piece costs to make, including the research, review and approval that dominate the total — and how much the organisation can actually get out of the door.
LearnThe calendar
The publishing rhythm, what is scheduled against it, and the fixed points in the year worth planning around — set at what can be held through a difficult quarter.
Learn