Your reports, articles and recordings may already answer questions your audience is asking. Make better use of them by checking what remains useful and making that information easier to find and understand. You could share a resource again, draw out an answer buried in a report or turn a recording into a website article. Choose an approach that meets an audience need and fits your team’s available time.
Review existing content that answers a question your audience still asks. Check its accuracy, then decide whether to share it again or adapt the explanation so it is more useful to the people you want to reach.
Choose a useful starting point
Begin with something your audience needs to understand, such as accessing a service or seeing what supporters’ contributions have helped achieve. Find existing material that could help explain it. Review a small selection and choose one piece you have time to prepare. Nielsen Norman Group’s guidance on content inventories and audits recommends starting with a manageable selection and assessing its quality. Consider relevance alongside previous results. A popular guide may deserve wider distribution, while an article with few visits may simply have been difficult to find.
Decide whether to update, share again or adapt
If a clear, accurate resource has been overlooked, introduce it in a newsletter or link to it from a relevant website page. Explain how it could help readers. If an answer is buried in a lengthy report, create a short explanation and link to the detail. If the content assumes specialist knowledge, explain unfamiliar terms and its relevance to the reader. These actions can work together. You might update a guide before adapting part of it for an email. Leave material out if it no longer serves a useful purpose or requires more work than your team can justify.
Adapt the explanation for its audience
Repurposing content means adapting existing material for another purpose, audience or format. Decide what the new version should help people understand or do, then select the information they need. A supporter email might explain one finding from an annual report, showing what it means for your work and linking to the full report for further detail. An article based on a webinar needs an introduction for someone who missed the event and explanations of references made during the discussion. Check that the new version makes sense independently. Charity Digital’s guide to repurposing content offers further examples of adapting reports, articles and recordings.
Preserve accuracy, context and permissions
Check facts, service details and links. Keep reporting periods alongside figures, retain important qualifications and make sure edited quotations reflect what the person meant. Before reusing someone’s story, photograph or words, check that the permissions cover the proposed use. Clarify anything uncertain with the colleague responsible, and consider whether the new presentation could misrepresent the person. Check accessibility too. Include accurate captions for speech and meaningful sound in videos, describe essential visual information where needed, and provide important chart information in accessible text or a table.
Keep the work manageable
Identify the work before committing. A video extract may require editing, captions and approval; a written explanation may be more manageable. Agree who will prepare and check each version. Our guide to creating a realistic content plan can help you fit this around other commitments. Record the source and where adaptations are published so you can find them when information changes. Where practical, link to one maintained page for changing details such as eligibility or opening times.
Review whether the extra work helped
Assess the result against its purpose. If you wanted more people to find a guide, check visits or downloads from the new link. If you wanted to explain a service, ask whether the content answered readers’ questions. Clicks alone cannot establish understanding. Consider the response alongside the time spent. If people remained confused, improve the explanation. If few people saw the content, review where and how you shared it before deciding whether the content itself needs changing. Use what you learn to decide which adaptations are worth repeating.
Grinning Graphics can help you turn reports, guides and recordings into clear website articles and campaign content. We can help you choose what to reuse and develop the copy and design for your audience. Get in touch to discuss the material you have and who you want to reach.