5 Ways to Create More with Fewer Resources and Lower Budgets

Creating engaging content that will be successful can be achieved even with limited resources and a constantly lower budget. The key is to think outside of the box while making the most creative content with what you do have. You can also observe content that other school districts are putting out. Using curated content allows you to keep your audience engaged without adding additional work. There are tools that can be used to help manage and organize your content. Lastly, focus on the quality as much as possible, not the quantity of content.  

5 Ways to Create More Content with Fewer Resources and Lower Budgets:

1. Use what you’ve already got
2. Leverage sources from your peers
3. Share curated content
4. Use tools
5. Focus on the quality, not the quantity

Challenges

Public institutions are held responsible and accountable for their spending. As such, schools and school districts must carefully decide where their budget is to be allocated. Reduced budgets and staff can make it increasingly difficult to supply the necessary resources to get specific tasks done. There are always new trends and new technologies that can increase the challenges of keeping up with changes, but at the same time, others appear that can help meet these challenges.

Use What You’ve Got

Combine

You can bring smaller pieces of existing content into larger pieces:

• Create an E-Book or Webinar with existing blog posts
• Expand on old blog posts

Separate

The more common practice as it's an easy way to provide more content. Cut down large content into smaller sub-pieces:

• Take an eBook and create blog posts, infographics, videos
• Create expanding individual blog posts from existing ones

Update

Make older content relevant again:

• Correct with new information
• Repackage in a new format (eg. convert a blog post into video format)

Leverage Your Peers

Consider the kind of content that other school districts are putting out, as this is an easy way to generate new ideas. Identify ways in which you can re-package that for your district:

• Look for gaps to fill
• Expand on what is available
• Present ideas in a new format

Look outside the K-12 space. Some outside sources can help you come up with more content:

• Quora: A website designed to asked and answer questions to relevant topics
• Trade Shows: Speak with other people to gain insight on what’s popular, what’s on the mind of other people
• Social Media Trends: View social media sites to identify trending topics  
• Website FAQ’s: Check to see if there are topics you can expand on. Address frequently asked questions

Curated Content

Share relevant content of other creators and organizations to give you more time to create your own. This can keep your audience engaged. You can share things like blog posts, videos, links to websites and more.

Tips for curating content:

• Follow Marketing/Communications Blogs for regular content to share, such as SchoolBundle, Edutopia and LinkedIn 50 Best Marketing
• Grow your network and increase conversations with your audience
• Build an impression of the school on your audience as a leader

Use Tools

Content Distribution Tools

You can manage your time by using a tool to take care of distribution and analysis:

• LinkedIn Pulse: This can be used to publish your content and increase the number of people who see your content
• ClickToTweet: Readers can share soundbites of your content on Twitter with a single click
• SharedCount: This measures the engagement of your social media post and can alert you which content is performing well, and which content may need revising
• Hootsuite: This allows you to schedule and publish content on several networks all from a single platform
• Buffer: The integrated metrics dashboard is designed to let you review and compare your performance across all social platforms

Content Creation Tools

Canva

This platform can be used to create images for your website, social media networks. You can create your own designs, upload pictures and edit everything within Canva. You also have the option of using templates for things like:

• Create original content
• Provide the answers to sought questions
• Communicate using visuals

Key Takeaways

Creating content using fewer resources and a lower budget can sometimes pose challenges, but they shouldn’t stand in the way of putting out successful content. By using what you have you can create new content by combining smaller pieces into one large piece, narrow down larger content, and continue to up-date older postings. Observe what other districts are putting out by identifying ways you can make something your own. You can also use curated content, in which you can share relevant posts to give you more time to complete your own content. There are tools that can help you create, distribute and analyze your content. It is key that with limited resources, your main focus remains on quality, not quantity. Consider focusing on what is working and creating original content.