Neurodiversity is a fascinating topic – it’s important to get to grips with the fact that we all learn and communicate in different ways.
Content repurposing is at the heart of this. Because it’s all about adjusting your content to meet and connect with different audiences and their preferences and needs.
In this blog post, let’s look at ways to go about repurposing with neurodiversity in mind and explore three ways to help you do this…
Press play to listen to the podcast episode.
Or keep reading to discover:
How neurodiversity is defined
Repurposing content with neurodiversity in mind
Three ways to help ensure your content is accessible and inclusive
As marketers and content creators, neurodiversity is something to be highly aware of, because our fundamental goal is to find effective ways to communicate and connect with people.
You don’t have to be a medical professional to know that people think and learn in a variety of different ways – a recent study published on mydisability.com states that 15% to 20% of the world’s population is neurodiverse, meaning many of your audience and clients are a part of this community and need your content to be accessible to them.
What is neurodiversity?
So how is neurodiversity defined?
In many ways. But ultimately, it’s the naturally occurring range in brain structure and chemistry that creates our ways of acting, thinking, communicating and processing information – and it’s different for everyone.
Conditions associated with neurodiversity include autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and Tourette’s syndrome. A full list can be found here.
So how does this impact content creation, repurposing and distribution?
Repurposing content with neurodiversity in mind
Content repurposing is all about reworking your content to reach and, very importantly, connect with a wider audience, in their format of choice. The goal is to create accessible and inclusive content, which not only expands our reach but also boosts the reputation of our brand or company.
The importance of this really hit home when we did a little vox pop among the Content 10x team, asking what kind of content they prefer.
Our Content & Operations Manager Harry and Head of Creative Ann are all about the videos – no hesitation there, while my executive assistant Ali leans towards audio content and our Head of Writing Emily doesn’t like videos or audio, she prefers written content and still images, which is very similar to Senior Content Writer Kara.
Founder Amy mixes it up. If she’s learning a new recipe or technique in the gym, she goes for a step-by-step video. But for business content, she’s a listener – at a very fast speed too! She can’t bear x1 speed!
Why are we mentioning this? Well as you can see in the Content 10x team alone – there are 11 of us – there is such a variety of ways that we choose to consume content, and there is neurodiversity in the team and it’s absolutely clear that there's no one format which can take precedence over another.
It’s not just format, but also long-form and short-form too.
The beauty of content repurposing is that you can initially focus your core content on one format – video, audio, or written – but then when you look to repurpose your content, ask yourself how you can make sure the results are both accessible and inclusive.
Three ways to repurpose for your neurodiverse audience
1. Ask your audience
We have covered ways to ask your audience what content they want and there are many ways to do this sensitively and effectively.
This is all about truly getting to know your audience more. Don’t assume that you are covering all the basis when you may not be. Your audience will appreciate the question and an involved audience, who feel listened to and valued, are a happy audience!
2. Have neurodiversity in mind from the beginning
We often refer to the content repurposing mindset and this is all about creating content with repurposing in mind, right from the outset.
This is also the perfect time to have neurodiversity in mind. Right at the beginning of your content planning process.
If you know you want to repurpose a piece of content, think about the learning styles that content is suited to, then think about the ways you can reach those different learning styles through your repurposed content.
In doing this, you want to ensure you are repurposing your content to connect with your audience.
Consider the formats, styles and platforms before you create the content. In doing this you will create it differently and structure it differently, ensuring it’s easier repurpose.
3. Mix and match your repurposed media
If you have followed step one and two, you’ve repurposed your content into a mixture of different assets in different formats.
Then it’s time for distribution – getting it out there, in front of the right people.
Embrace a multimedia approach on different platforms where possible, this will give your audience the option to consume the content in the way that works best.
For example, when you publish a blog post – having the video embedded, the podcast player embedded, the long-form written content, and engaging visuals throughout means a person can watch, read, listen and scan.
Repurposing is the answer when it comes to connecting with everyone in our audience – whether neurotypical or neurodiverse.
If you’d like to consume our content in a way other than what we produce already, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below.