RePurpose Your Content: Say it Again, Sam

By on January 17, 2012 in Blog Coach, Social Media with 5 Comments

“We don’t know what we know until we articulate it.”

One of my pet sayings. I believe in it so much so, I repeat it often. Online and offline.

Recycle Your Content for Fresh Eyes

Do you have a quip or quote, an article or post that bears repeating? I’d bet “yes” if you’re over the age of eight. But once you’ve tweeted it or blogged it, do you repeat it?

You should.

Most of the content we consume comes to us in some sort of information stream (or InfoStream). It’s a rare chance that someone will catch your repeat if spread out – and a better chance that new eyes might see your golden post for the first time.

If you have yet to meet of follow Christoper S. Penn, please do so. He will help wake up the superhero inside of you. He also provides a great example of repeating valuable content. Because Chris makes new connections fast (over 48K on Twitter, already 10K on Google+), he often re-introduces his “stream” with a welcome message (his name above is linked to that page). He’s posted that nine times in the first 17 days of 2012.

I’ve followed, conversed, retweeted, disagreed, and applauded Chris’ work for years. I’ve clicked through his welcome page a few times over that span. And to me it’s still new.  To his new connections, it’s even newer.

I was silent about this in a video a few years ago:

We don’t know what we know until we articulate it. And if it’s good, we should continue to articulate it, even if in different ways (or times, or streams).

[Disclaimer: If you get the idea to repurpose old content on a new platform in a different manner, that's your idea ... and I'm proud of you for thinking that way]

Connect with Christopher S. Penn, follow his examples and practices.

Follow on Twitter or Facebook or on Google+


Dialing 8 Project

About Mike Sansone: Conversation Conductor & Social Mediatician: Amplify Reach, Relationships, and Revenues for Small, Rural and Independent Business. Blogging & Social Media as Conversation Stations.

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  • Anonymous

    The repetition of re-purposed content is everywhere these days. Do a search on “how to get leads using LinkedIn”, over a million results.

    We need to work on innovation and creating things that people will go back to, study and learn. If it’s not worth investing the time to learn and inwardly digest, it might not be worth repeating…

    • http://www.converstations.com MikeSansone

      Good point, and we should differentiate between “Automation” and “Repetition”

      The Eagles will sing Hotel California at every gig, and sometimes in a different manner. And how many times do we over hear a friend starting a business give their “porch pitch”

      One of the challenges in social media is many say something that does bear repeating, but they don’t. It’s almost as if they’ve got it out of their system. But if it’s good, maybe a rerun several weeks from now might be wise.

      Old audience remembers or renews it in their mind. New audience is introduced to it.

      Once said isn’t enough (if it’s good)

  • http://www.insatiablesolopreneur.com/ Dawn Mentzer

    Creative way to get the point across, Mike. Made me smile!!

  • http://just-ask-kim.com/ Kimberly Castleberry

    That’s funny as I was just talking over on my Facebook page today about this topic as well. We forget how much leverage we actually have at our disposal and rarely use our created content to its fullest. There’s so many ways we can repurpose things we’ve created to expand their reach (and ours) and give value to more people.

    • http://www.converstations.com MikeSansone

      Thanks, Kimberly – great addition. And I dig this part:

      “We forget how much leverage we actually have at our disposal and rarely use our created content to its fullest”

      That’ll make for a great tweet! :-)

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