Just like Native Americans used every part of the bison, you too should aim to use every part of your community.

(Although, even the nose? What in the world are you supposed to do with a bison nose?!)

Reinvesting Content

To pick a concrete example, let’s say you’ve just held an AMA with some famous expert, and managed to generate a decent amount of content. Don’t move on just yet!

Why not write a blog post compiling the best questions and answers? Or even package together some kind of eBook you can give out when people sign up for your community?

Stats Sell

And even without special content, your community itself can be a source of news and data. You can blog about the most popular domains, talk about traffic stats, or publish monthly user rankings.

OKCupid got huge amounts of free publicity by publishing elaborate analysis of their own statistics on their OKTrends blog.

Sex and stats, a winning combination.

Compiling Collections

Product Hunt also employs the recycling mechanic perfectly: their “Collections” feature lets members create their own lists of products organized around a theme: this not only gives members a sense of ownership and engagement with the site, but it’s also a great way to help resurface older content for new members.

Product Hunt’s collections.

Member Interviews

If you’re lucky enough to have a lot of active members, why not highlight them? LayerVault takes advantage of their Designer News community to regularly interview leading figures in the design community.

“Why are you looking at my nose like that?”

Homework

  • Take inventory of all the content byproduct you’ve accumulated.
  • Come up with 3 new ways to make use of it.