Is Reusing Content a Punishable Offense?
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Someday, if you haven't already, you will find writing is to be an essential skill (regardless of career path.) No one is exempt from the writen word, regardless if you are a designer, marketer or media buyer. I myself (a designer,) am constantly writing e-mails, composing tweets, shaping social media updates, vomiting out proposals and agonizing over blog posts. If your breathing and earning money then chances are you are also writing.
We're fortunet to live in a time where technology provides us with sophisticated writing tools. No need for a jar of ink and a quill. Technology allows us to save, chop and expand our work as we see fit. Furthermore, it's now effortless to distribute our writing to thousands of sources and mediums. Of course distributing the same content to multiple mediums means repurposing content. After all, why write the same thing twice when you can save it and use it again later? But is this a good idea? Should you reuse content? Let's explore the implications.
Can You Reuse Content?
Marketers have been reusing content since the birth of the internet. Early websites were nothing more than a duplication company brochures. This practice was so widespread it aptly earned the term "brochureware." Today the same practice exists, marketers will use the same message on their website, through every social network and in traditional advertising. But is this the best way to communicate with your audience? Jacob Neilsen says "No."
Audience, Intention and Context Shape Content
If you are not familiar with Neilsen, I recommend you review his "Alertbox" articles. In a nutshell, Neilsen is a leading researcher and publisher on website usability. Most recently Neilsen published his findings on the reuse of content. Specifically, he found reusing content leads to bad experiences. This most commonly occurs when people repurpose print content for the web. Neilsen notes that good print content and good web content are fundamentally different. As one example, some online news sites try and reuse their print materials and experience dissatisfied users as a result. Alternatively, successful websites like The Drudge Report and CNN write content specifically. While reusing content saves time it does so at a cost. Each medium requires a unique approach and therefor unique content. For example, many argue status updates on Linkedin should be different than Twitter. This is because the audience, intention and context changes based on the medium and the content should as well.
What's Your Experience
Share you experiences with poorly repurposed content with the class. Have you come across websites that are overwhelmingly text heavy? Tweets that should be press releases? If you can't think of anything surf the web and find some examples of content that would be easier to read in print than web (hint: look at some local news websites.)
Comments & Feedback
I never really though much about the reusing of content before reading this blog post. In many ways I agree with Jacob Neilsen, but in other ways I also believe that reusing and repeating information can be an effective approach of grabing the attention of your target audience.
Just a couple of weeks ago I was sitting at home playing my ukulele and watching the Tigers on FSN Detroit. If there are any other tiger fans reading this, I'm sure you are all familiar with those cheap Bell Tire commercials. So anyways, it was only the fifth inning and this same Bell Tire commercial had already been on three times. After the fifth inning my mom had me drive to the grocery store pick up some stuff. I turned on the radio to listen to the game and what did I hear... that same commerical but on the radio!
Now although the commercial was overplayed, it still was effective in that I remember it and remember its main message (Bell Tire has great affordable tires and all that jazz). This is where I think reusing and repeating information is effect. After a certain amount of exposures to a message, it eventually is remembered by the viewer and is effective in getting its point across.
Here is where I agree with Jacob Neilsen: IT WAS GETTING ANNOYING! After hearing this guy, with an annoying voice I might add, four times in two hours I was starting to get annoyed and losing interest. I had already heard the message enough and now was sick of it. This is true with anything in life. If you already know something, and some still is telling you what to do or going on about it again, it becomes annoying and less appealing.
So to me there is a fine line when reusing and repeating information. You want to reuse it enought so the audience remembers it, but you don't want to reuse it to much so that it becomes annoying.
There are many instances when a content is reused. I believe it's okay to use the same content on the social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. As long as the article is written appropriately for the social media I think it's fine.
But I do agree with Jacob Neilsen when he argues that it's not effective if the message is exactly the same on the website and traditional advertising. I remember watching a Korean prime time news that reminded me of the news I heard through the radio. The content and the way it was worded in the news sounded very similar to the radio news I heard earlier in the day. Both the news channel and the radio station was from the same broadcasting station. Maybe this was why the content sounded exactly the same. As a listener, however, I thought it was poorerly done by the broadcasting station.
Accordingn to Nielsen, the approach by the Korean Broadcasting station was repurposing. There were very few design change and the content was reused since the cost of that was minimal.
I think that reusing content depends on the situation it is done in. I think that if someone uses the same caption on a picture on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter that is okay, but in instances with reusing paragraphs on the web and also on television or newspaper is wrong. Companies or news agencies that do this are not original and are straying people away from reading their articles. I know whenever i pull up an article on a website, especially news and I see that it is worded exactly the same in a newspaper or magazine, I do not bother reading it. It's enjoyable to read articles that have a different twist or unique wording other than what you have heard before. I agree with Neilsen in most cases in that it does lead to bad experiences. I think that his examples of the Drudge Report and CNN are excellent. I wish that more websites would follow their example in changing up their content. Even though it does save time, I am a culprit of this lax system as well, I think it definitely increases popularity of a website and more loyal followers to editors. Every type of communication requires a certain way of wording the text. People should not be composing tweets on twitter the same way that they compose a professional paragraph in a news magazine. Overall, I agree with Neilsen and think that recopying content is the easy shortcut out of being a true professional.
I find most local news websites (Click on Detroit) for one so packed with information, weather, video stories, text alerts, ads and every other possible bit of 'news' that its nauseating to try and find something. They want to be the first to break a story so they re-purpose the website with the morning news into the afternoon news into the evening news.
Nielson talks about the cost analysis of creating new content vs re-purposing. His point is that folks are trying to get the most for their money, but if re-purposing is causing your website to be a less attractive source of information it might be worth the extra cost to create new content for certain stories that will make people go to your website for an in-depth story that they may have missed on the local newscast.
Use re-purposing for stories that basically don't change over the course of the day, sport stories that are usually the same after the game is over or feature stories about a local event. The average person checks the websites because they don't buy print newspapers as much, so making the local news website more user friendly and less congested might be a good thing for the reader and an increase in traffic to the site.
Repurposing content is like telling your mom that you did five keg-stands at the party last night. It’s just plain wrong. What you should tell her is that you had a good time, and maybe showed off that handstand you’ve been working so hard to do.
In that same sense, Neilson is right. Just like in advertising, you need to cater to the appropriate audience. The story may still be a good one, or the content may still be applicable, but not in the same form. Each social media site serves a slightly different purpose; they each have their own niche. People who don’t respect this aspect seem awkward and inappropriate, like the person who has no social etiquette at the dinner table. We definitely need to be aware of this concept. The integration of content, when done appropriately, is the only way to go.
An example of the "awkward dinner guest": (see Kevin Marn's post at the top of the page- this is a comment for Twitter. On LinkedIn, this appears slightly awkward.)
I believe the reuse of content really depends on the situation. I think that it is okay to reuse content depending on whether or not it will be used for print, or web, and if it is used for web, it depends on what kind of blog it is. I agree with Neilson, that every part of a written post should be tailored for the site it is being used. Obviously you should not and cannot physically post an entire essay on Twitter, so if you cannot streamline it, then don't use it.
In terms of print or web, I definitely feel that web and print should stay two seperate entities. As asked by the post, I visited the news website msnbc.com as an example, and I didn't have to go any further to realize that most news websites are cluttered. A news website can only go so far to organize ALL of the information that it must provide. MSNBC.com does the best job it can by using the categories in the header, but beyond that below the page I got a little confused and disoriented. However, I do still think newsprint may be dead, so it will be interesting to see how they streamline news in the future.
MSU New Media Drivers License Copyright 2017
Depending on the context of an advertisement, sometimes it is okay to reuse the same advertisements. Particular social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, the same material can be reproduced without being repetitive.I believe that because those sites are more so interactive, the same materials can be used and still be effective when consumers see them. The content size often is the biggest factor whether or not the consumers would even pay attention to repurposed content on Facebook or Twitter.
Sometimes news sites are very text heavy, particular WLNS a local lansing news station. The site is not really hard to navigate through, though repurposed does effectively work. This communication channel does not work well, and I would rather pick up a newspaper. When it comes to news stations, its impossible for material not to be duplicated when its has more than medium being used.