I want you to take a moment and think how do you consume content in the present days. To better illustrate it for you I’ll describe mine: Starts by the fact that first thing in the morning I open my eyes and right away I reach my phone. Then I realize several notifications from different Apps and social media that I have and I try to focus first on my email. I go through what I think is the most important first and then I browse fast some newsletter sources to know a bit more about the news of the day. After properly waking up and with all my morning chores done I sit to work. During the working time now and then I check email, social media and all the newsfeed that I have subscriptions. The way you consume content might look a bit different or exactly the same as mine, but one way or another you do consume content and I’m pretty sure there are some similarities.

The internet changed the way we consume news and content in general. There are several formats, medias, mediums when in the past this all was very limited, and the sources of information are more centralized. Today we have so much freedom of choice and quantity of sources that as a Content Creator and Digital Marketer I wonder “How to stick a message?”, and most strategic “How to best leverage content on the internet?”.

While I was studying about the importance of publishing on Medium I got to know about the technique called by Gary Vaynerchuk, a famous American entrepreneur and web celebrity, as “sawdust”. I mean, it’s not an actual technique, is more a content creation way of thinking.

As Vaynerchuk states “I want you to take a step back and ask yourself how you can create a weekly podcast or a daily video show that can lead to other pieces of content or micro-content. It’s all sawdust. I’m fascinated by sawdust. It’s the byproducts of your output whether you’re a podcaster or a writer or entrepreneur. It’s someone who took the sawdust after cutting a bunch of 2x4s, repackaging it and then selling it. Figure out your sawdust.”

To understand the analogy simply think that when you have something at the top, use it as a source to create other content, as he explains later on.

Yesterday’s sawdust became today’s profitable product. As the derivative of our contents, that can be explored to make more content.

Gary uses the sawdust analogy to point out that once you create a piece of content, there are numerous opportunities to repurpose it for other mediums and platforms.

The whole idea of fixating information by breaking a single content into several is so simple but yet genial.

During several years of working with online teams, content creation has always been a theme of discussion. And even more, how to explore and define the content of each social media chosen as part of the company strategy. With this new insight, I believe that the whole strategy needs to be somewhat meta and that the pillar needs to focus on the main source.

Content that fixates is not flooded content, neither spammed content. Is smart and adaptive to the several mediums that we utilize on a daily basis. I’ll use my own analogy of sawdust, but with another word, “spray”, once we create a central content piece that is then fragmented and powdered across the internet, gaining relevance among different content consumers, all being connected with the main one.

This article was originally published on Medium.