Recycling Your Content: Is It Worth It?

If you’re running a creative business, you need to be recycling your content. It boosts engagement, builds trust and credibility, and allows your audience to digest 100% of the value you’re putting out there.

One of the most widely known psychological principles in business is social proof — the human need for approval from other’s. We look to others when buying things, we read reviews and listen to recommendations from people we trust before making decisions. Naturally, humans trust those around them for advice, especially when it’s something that’s being preached over and over.

Think about a close friend who, for years, has been raving about their favourite skin care products. If they mentioned it once, you probably think twice about it. But if they preach those products repeatedly, chances are you’d consider them more seriously.

The same idea goes for social media — we trust what we hear repeatedly.

Say you have 1000 followers. You post a photo and it gets viewed by 100 of those followers. The next day, you post another photo with a different topic. It gets viewed by 100 followers, each different from the previous day.

You do this for 10 days, at which point every follower has seen one of your posts.

If you speak about a new topic each day, only 100 followers see that topic, leaving 900 people to have never seen that information.

Posting like this means your followers are only getting 10% of the value you’re putting out.

Not ideal.

Now say you start fresh and post a piece of content every day for 10 days, each with a unique topic. You then recycle that content by making 10 different posts from each unique idea. With 10 main topics and 10 posts for each, you now have 100 unique pieces of content.

At this point you might feel like you’re repeating yourself, but that’s the point.

Now, you can shuffle the 100 pieces of content that you made and post them over the course of the year. This way, you repeat the same concepts over time but shuffle the daily content to keep people engaged.

By preaching the same message in different fonts, you build trust and credibility, and help your audience get all the value you’re putting out there — they have a higher chance of consuming at least one piece of content for each main idea. Not everyone sees your content the first time around, so recycling the content can also expose it to new followers who might have joined since the original post. 

Getting your audience to value and respect what you say takes time, but sharing a few key pieces of information repeatedly will land you that respect faster than trying to preach a brand new idea everyday.

If you have valuable information that remains relevant over time, recycling it helps ensure it stays accessible to your audience.

The takeaway? Recycle your content.