In episode 67 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Kaitlyn Heath and Sarah O’Keefe continue their discussion on measuring content value based on accounting principles.
“Language evolves. Your content actually needs maintenance, just like your house.”
—Sarah O’Keefe

Related links:

* Content accounting: Calculating value of content in the enterprise 
* Content accounting: Measuring content value (podcast, part 1)

Twitter handles:

* @sarahokeefe
* @kheathScript

Transcript:
Kaitlyn Heath:     Welcome to the Content Strategy Experts podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In part two of the content accounting podcast, we focus on how to apply the concept of a balance sheet to content. Hi, I’m Kaitlyn Heath.
Sarah O’Keefe:     Hi, Kaitlyn, I’m Sarah O’Keefe.
KH:     And today we’re continuing our conversation about balance sheets and content accounting. So, tell us what a balance sheet is, as applied to content accounting.
SO:     So a balance sheet, at least for me, was the thing in accounting that took really the longest to understand because they make my head hurt. But basically a balance sheet, if you take something, let’s start with a house because before we move on to content…
KH:     Sounds good.
SO:     Yes. So, if you have a house, you own a house, it’s worth $1 million but you have a mortgage on the house for $900,000. And so you have an asset that’s worth $1 million but you have a mortgage, a liability, which is $900,000, which then implies that your equity in the house is $100,000.
KH:     Okay.
SO:     So, the balance sheet is called that because it always has to balance. Your assets always have to balance or equal your liabilities, your debts plus your equity.
KH:     Okay.
SO:     That’s the concept of a balance sheet. So, when you do this in regular accounting, you have your bank accounts under assets, you have your loans under liabilities, and then the equity is the difference between the two, basically. And it all kind of works out.
SO:     Now, we think about that from a content point of view. Right? Okay. Well if you have a content balance sheet, what’s your asset?
KH:     The content.
SO:     The content. Except is it really? What if your content is really bad?
KH:     Okay. So maybe that’s a liability.
SO:     So maybe it’s a liability. So broadly, yes, you have your asset, which is your content. We hope it has a positive value.
KH:     Right.
SO:     And then you have your liabilities, whatever those may be, we’ll talk about that. And then sort of the difference between the two is your overall content equity.
KH:     Alright.
SO:     Alright, so on the balance sheet you’re going to… Oh, and by the way, an asset is defined as something that has long-term value to the business. So I would argue that for example, a tweet…
KH:     Is not long-term.
SO:     Probably not an asset, right?
KH:     Right.
SO:     But maybe your process or your system of extracting tweets and putting… You schedule them, you put them somewhere, you have a whole strategy for how you do that. That might be a long-term asset, just not necessarily the individual tweets. And then of course, if a single tweet goes viral, then all bets are off.