Fyreside Newsletter - 3/24/25

Hey Reader,

You've no doubt heard the Wild West cliché, "The Native Americans used every part of the buffalo." While I think this cliché is somewhat reductive of indigenous lifestyles in early North America, I appreciate the ethos. Use what you can, how you can. Don't let anything go to waste. Use it for all it's worth. However you personally recontextualize this cliché, I think it's valuable.

Today, I'd like to recontextualize this cliché through the frame of content marketing. So buckle in and prepare yourself for another extended metaphor because, in this instance, your content is a buffalo.

A buffalo?

You're right, I don't love that either. I searched and searched for a webpage on indigenous history written or researched by an indigenous creator and found next to nothing. That's problematic in it's own right, but it's not a problem I can solve today. If you'd like to learn more, I'll point you to this link from the National Park Service or this particularly robust article from a website called Frontier Life, authored by a gentleman with the last name Assmann. (nice)

Let's get away from this culturally sticky comparison and instead call your content "raw material."

Raw material?

Yup, raw material, we're sticking with it.

When you create a piece of content, you create a well of raw material. That may sound counterintuitive, but follow me here. The content you create, be it a video, a blog post, a newsletter, or a fourth thing, should be the jumping off point of your content marketing. It's easy to view "creating content" as the end of the process, but that would mean your content is the "final product," and it's not. Your "final product" is the way or ways you share that content because, again, your content is the "raw material."

So what should I do with these "materials?"

Great question, I'm glad you asked. Short answer: literally everything you can.

A lot of people (influencers, companies, grifters, etc.) in the content marketing sphere love to talk about "repurposing content." That's exactly what I'm talking about here, but I don't like it when other people say it. I don't like it because, most of the time, other people undersell the effort required to actually "repurpose" a piece of content. For most, "repurpose" has become synonymous with "repost." Just reposting your content in multiple places isn't bad, but it's also not particularly good.

I think this concept is most easily understood with an example. So, without further ado, let me tell you what I'm doing with last week's newsletter:

Send newsletter > Reformat newsletter for blog > Share link to blog on personal Facebook > Share link to blog on personal LinkedIn > Rewrite blog as LinkedIn article > Repost LinkedIn Article > Share LinkedIn article on Instagram > Reshare all posts, this time with link to sub to newsletter > Break blog down to 3 TikTok videos > Post TikTok videos in follow up newsletters > Share TikTok videos on Instagram > Reshare TikTok videos on TikTok story > Reference last newsletter in next newsletter

See how that works? See how I'm milking that newsletter for all it's worth? See how everything is cyclical and feeds back into itself? Yeah, you get it. (And if you don't get it, please reach out! I'll explain it further!)

In conclusion

The common advice for beginners in content marketing is "create a content calendar, plan your content, and stick to it." That advice is bad and anyone who tells it to you is dumb and wrong. If your content was the final product, this advice would have merit. But, as we've already established, your content is not your final product.

Instead, create some content, then figure out everything you can do with it. Once you know what you have, you can create a plan to get the most out of it.

-MC

p.s.

None of you forwarded my email last week and I'm sad about it. It also means you've all been cursed by a spooky ghost. Forward this email to save yourself from the spooky ghost curse.
If this email was forwarded to you, join the list here, then forward it to someone else!