Wastages!
“Content that doesn’t get used is content that doesn’t get seen.”
– Ginny Mineo
Let me scare you a little with some data.
Do you know that there are 500 million tweets sent out on Twitter every day?
Did you know that over 95 million photos and videos are posted on Instagram and about 300 million photos are shared on Facebook per day?
Did you also know that over 4.4 million blog posts are published daily, around 500 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube every minute, and there are about 300 billion emails sent out daily?
Have you ever imagined what happens to all of this content that is published online daily?
Wasted!
Long back, some of the top marketers established a myth called “FRESH CONTENT”.
They impressed upon people that it is fresh content that gets readers, listeners, and viewers.
And people took it on the literal meaning and started out with finding fresh content only to find themselves burnt out in a few days.
But there were a few others who were wiser to understand the meaning of the words between the lines. They knew that FRESH content was a myth and that FRESH is nothing but a fresh context to an existing piece of content.
Austin Kleon writes in his book, “Steal Like an Artist” – “All creative work builds on what came before”. He was referring to how great artists steal ideas from an existing piece of art and redo it with a different perspective.
And in order to reference it, he used a quote from Pablo Picasso –
“Good artists borrow, Great artists steal!”
– Pablo Picasso
I don’t think “stealing” would be the right word for this. It is actually “gap analysis”.
Evaluating the gap (between what a consumer expects and what is being delivered) in something that has already been created and then bridging that gap by creating something even better.
That’s how every piece of content out there is created.
But there is another aspect in this entire content creation process that a lot of us “small creators” don’t really focus on.
And that is the “gap analysis” in a piece of content that we created ourselves.
Let me explain it with an example from my podcast.
I have about 125 episodes on my show. The oldest episode in my podcast gets barely about 15-20 listens a week.
Why?
Because that doesn’t show up anywhere!
While as a listener, my audience has all the right in the world to ignore my oldest piece of content, it is criminal for me as a creator, to be ignoring it.
There is little chance that my newest subscriber has had a chance to listen to my oldest episode.
Truth be told, nobody really scrolls down to the 1st post, first episode or, the first video on my channel.
Which essentially means that I am wasting that piece of content!
Is it right for me to do it?
Absolutely not!
That’s where re-purposing comes in.
But when we talk about re-purposing, it is not only about repurposing that content for other channels.
In fact, it is about “analyzing the gap” and recreating the content for the same channel, be it a podcast, YouTube or, even a blog post.
You would have seen a lot of bloggers do it on their blogs these days. They update their oldest post and republish it.
And Google seems to like it too.
I have seen very few podcasters doing it though!
I tried it about 10 times now on my Podcast and every time I did it, the content got a fresh life and I got some new subscribers and listeners.
Here’s why content repurposing is a game-changer:
- Extended Reach: Different formats cater to various audience preferences, ensuring your message reaches a broader audience.
- Efficient Resource Utilization: You’re not starting from scratch; you’re building upon existing content, saving time and effort.
- Relevance: You can adapt content to stay current and address evolving trends and interests.
- Boosted SEO: Multiple pieces of content on the same topic can improve your search engine visibility.
- Consistency: Maintain a regular posting schedule, even when creating new content from scratch might be challenging.
Repurposing can be extremely effective.
But in order for it to be effective, the most important thing to keep in mind is to ensure that you don’t do it mindlessly.
Think through what you want to do with it, how you can add a different perspective to it and what update can you do to it based on all of the changes that had happened in your niche landscape.
That is when content repurposing becomes effective.
“To repurpose content, you have to take things out of the box they live in and put them in a new context.”
– Ann Handley
Here are some simple tips to get you started:
- Audit Your Content: Take stock of your existing content to identify pieces with repurposing potential.
- Choose Your Formats: Decide which formats (e.g., blog posts, podcasts, videos, infographics) suit your content and audience. You necessarily need not change the format. However, repurposing into different formats will help you get a newer audience for the same piece of content.
- Adapt, Don’t Duplicate: Don’t copy-paste; adapt the content to fit the new format and audience.
- Optimize for SEO: When repurposing, ensure that your content is optimized for search engines.
- Promote Relaunches: Don’t forget to promote repurposed content to your audience. It’s new to them!
So, if you have been struggling to find new content for your podcast/blog post/video then you know what to do now.
In a world where digital content races against time, your ability to give it new life is a testament to your resourcefulness.
Start re-purposing.
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Found on the internet
Here’s what I found on the internet this week.
A lot of times success is about pushing ourselves, reinventing, and re-evaluating. Satya Nadella talks about it so well in this video about how he turned around Microsoft!
This LinkedIn Post is gold. Some of the comments under the post are extremely valuable too. So don’t miss reading them.
If you are still contemplating starting a creator’s journey, then this tweet should help you get started.
Dickie Bush has some excellent tips on how to get started.
What am I reading?
So I finally managed to finish the last book I was reading.
There is something I hate about taking so much time to finish a book.
There is a break in continuity every time you break your reading. And if it takes a couple of days to get back to the book and start reading again, then you have already lost most of what you had read.
So, retention is practically ZERO if you take ages to finish reading a book.
My last read was somewhat like that. This means I will have to go back to read it again pretty soon.
Anyhow, this week I am reading, “Do Epic Shit” by Ankur Warikoo.
From the Podcast
I have been speaking to a lot of struggling podcasters on my consultation calls. This started after I had run a series of “Get Started Again” sessions.
These discussions have been extremely interesting and I got some extremely valuable insights on why people quit podcasting.
I created a concise version of these insights and shared that on my last episode. You can listen to it here if you haven’t already!
The latest episode that I released last week was about the 5 best, reliable, and future-proof podcast hosting platforms. I have been getting a lot of questions around what is a good paid podcast hosting and what are some of the best FREE podcast hosting.
If you have these same questions, then you can listen to this latest episode here!
That’s it for this week!
Do let me know your thoughts, feedback, and opinions about this newsletter.
