You’ve probably heard the saying that everything old becomes new again. We see this mainly in the fashion world. Bellbottom jeans waited two decades to make a comeback in the 90s. In the early 2000s, corsets made an appearance, and the entire decade of the 90s is making a comeback right now with the younger Gen Z crowd—everything from music to fashion to movies.
What can we learn, as content creators, from recycling trends? Well, for one, we can learn that new isn’t always better. Sometimes people just need time to realize the value of a good pair of JNCOs and some Airwalks…erm…I mean…a good piece of content?
Please don’t dig up any pics of me as a teenager;)
There’s this notion I see a lot of content creators succumb to that once you’ve told a story, you can’t revisit it. There’s always a desire to chase the newest, shiniest idea, thought, or topic. But one of the things that we need to realize is that our audience isn’t thinking about the stuff we’re thinking about as often or as deeply as we are. And so, they’re not aching for something new from you all the time. They may not have even heard what you have to say the first time.
So, the idea that we must always move on to the next thing isn’t quite right. To arbitrarily move on from the core of what makes your brand a brand in the pursuit of novelty isn’t a recipe for success. Sure, we want to be innovative and move our story forward as necessary—but with emphasis on the “as necessary” part.
On the contrary, it’s self-defeating.
The “Everything New” Content Strategy
While new ideas can feel exciting and fresh, focusing too intently on the “brand new” can lead to some undesirable behaviors and a poor mindset when creating content. In fact, there are two specific pitfalls I see to this strategy:
Shallow Content and Content Paralysis
Shallow Content
Shallow content happens to a lot of new content creators. They tell a story, then they move on. The problem is that they don’t allow themselves to put in the reps to get good at telling that story.
Think about your favorite joke. You know, the one you tell at every party? How many times have you told that joke? Several? Countless?
You know the joke so well you can tell the short version, the clean version, the long version, the NSFW version, and anything in between. Each time, a detail gets added. Or a new gesture gets folded into the act.
You’ve practiced telling it so often that you can drop into character at any moment. You know what parts of the joke haven’t worked in the past and have honed it to the point where you know exactly which parts will have your fellow partygoers rolling on the floor with laughter.
Now, imagine if you had only told that joke once. Do you think you’d be able to deliver the laughs like you can today? Like a seasoned vet? I doubt it.
And content is no different. Content creators must practice telling their brand stories over and over again in different ways, in various mediums. And just like your joke, you’ll find that a new wrinkle gets added to the story each time you tell it. You discover something that works or doesn’t work, and you get the chance to refine the message.
It’s in the refinement that your content becomes deep. Once it’s deep and you know all the ins and outs, you can get into your brand story from any angle, anytime, anywhere.
Content Paralysis
The other problem with chasing new content is that it can often lead to no content at all. New ideas are harder to come by and require more brain power to develop. And if you subscribe to the “all content should be new content” idea, you may not get around to making things as often as you should.
To illustrate, let’s go back to our party example.
Imagine you’re at the party, and someone brings up the latest political policy debate. You listen intently to the conversation but let’s say you’re only tangentially aware of the particulars. Meanwhile, most others appear to be extremely well-versed in the subject and have been seemingly thinking about this topic for weeks.
What happens to you? You go quiet. You don’t have much to add to the conversation. Maybe you ask a question here or there or interject a thought. But ultimately, you just don’t have the required information at your fingertips to participate in the discussion.
Now imagine that same phenomenon at scale. Imagine every conversation happening at the party is news to you. What would you do? What if every party you went to was like that? What would you do then? You might stop coming to parties altogether.
But there’s another option. You could look for that one group at the party, the ones bored with politics and small talk, and steer the conversation until you can tell that killer joke of yours.
To maintain a successful content strategy, you can’t ever stop coming to the party.
The algorithms don’t like it when you stop making content. They have ads to show people, and if you aren’t going to play ball and help them keep people on their platform, they’ll ding you. And the next time you go to post content, not as many people will see it. And I think we can all agree that we don’t want that.
So, the goal should be to show up to the party, seek out your tribe, and deliver the content they didn’t know they needed.
Recycle, Repackage, Repurpose
The truth is that most audiences consume content asynchronously, in bits and pieces over time. Often just scanning thru the copy or scrubbing thru a video to hit the highlights or the parts that they deem relevant to them. So, it stands to reason that we content creators may not have gotten our entire point across in just a single piece of content.
Or maybe we didn’t present the point in the right package to meet that person where they were emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, or financially when they saw it. So, we need to recycle, repackage, and repurpose brand stories to meet people where they are and allow them to fully understand our value proposition.
Every brand with a story to tell has a set of core stories. Core stories that they will tell forever.
Will there be new stories to tell? Absolutely. But the old stories will always be there.
We’ll add to them, expand upon them, and find different ways to talk about them. We’ll record videos about them, make podcasts from them, write them down, and turn them into nurture emails. We’ll tell the short versions, the long versions, the buttoned-up versions, and the casual versions.
But we’re going to tell them forever because they’re essential to who your brand is and critical to the long-term success of your content strategy.
