Reuse your content

If you're a business owner rather than a content creator, this quick tip is for you! I explain why reusing your content is good for both you and your audience - hooray for time saving wins!

Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/​
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/

Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844

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Alexis' links.
Me on Toot Wales: https://toot.wales/@alexisbushnell
Or on Calckey Social: https://calckey.social/@AlexisBushnell
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/​
Me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bushnellcs/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/

Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844

Transcript

Hawke: 0:00

Hello and welcome to social media for humans the podcast that empowers you to do social  differently. Your host, Alexis Bushnell, and her guests discuss their experience of social media  as business owners, users, and ultimately humans. With insights and advice to help  you find an effective and ethical strategy that works for you. Grab yourself a drink  and join the conversation.

Alexis: 0:22

Hi hello, I'm Alexis, my pronouns are she her. I want to talk to you about reusing content in this super quick tip episode of the Social Media for Humans podcast. So  reusing content, people have feelings about this! My feelings are do it! Just do it, please. But  there are a lot of people who think it's bad, who think "well everybody's already seen it why would  they want to see it again?" Or "shouldn't I be coming up with new ideas all the time?" I mean if  you have new ideas all the time, go for it! But I want to start by asking you one question. I don't  know what time you're listening to this, what time of day, if you've already been on social media,  you've had a bit of a scroll, you've seen some posts, kind of think, rewind your brain,  how many of those posts that you've seen today do you actually remember?  How how many could you say like, "I saw this image and I saw this this caption  and somebody was talking about this topic." How many out of the 50, 100 posts you've seen maybe?  That's a real question, I would love you to let me know how many you actually remember.  If you're listening to this super early in the morning have a think about yesterday, how many  posts can you remember that you saw yesterday? I am willing to bet it is close to zero.  If you're one of these people with a photographic memory you don't count, I'm sorry! You do count,  we love you, but like you know, it's different! So if you can't remember say,  I'm gonna be generous, say you remember 10 posts that you saw yesterday or earlier today,  over time would you would you still remember those posts in three weeks,  when you've seen 300, 400, several thousand more posts?  Really, that's a question; would you still remember those posts, even if they came up  in your feed would you still remember them? Would you go "oh, I've seen this before?" Because when I have tested this, and I have tested this a lot, people don't remember them. When we're  creating content we are in it, we care about it, we're thinking about it, we're coming up with the  content idea for it, we're finding the perfect image or creating the perfect video for it,  we're crafting the caption, we're looking for the right hashtags, we're checking the best  times to post, we are involved with our content. We are really really thinking about it, we will  remember it because we've put a lot of energy into it, we've put a lot of creativity into it,  we have spent a lot of time creating it, of course we remember it when we see it come up on our  feed three weeks, three months, a year later. We remember it because we have however long it took  us to create that post ingrained in our memory from the the effort and maybe the love that we  put into it, and maybe the idea that triggered us to write that post or the event or whatever it is,  we have an emotional connection to a lot of our content whether that's good or bad, but we do,  nobody else has that of our content. So when somebody else is seeing your post that you spent  three hours really working on, phrasing it just so, that had been inspired by this conversation  you had with your best friend and you think it's just amazing and it's a really powerful point,  and when you see that post you remember that time with your friend and you're like "yes,  I remember that thing that they said was just so amazing and it really shifted how I see  this," that's great but they don't feel that. When they read that post they might think this  is really interesting, yeah, this has shifted how I see things, this is a really great post,  but they don't have that association, they don't have the association with the connection with  your friend, with that chat, they don't have the connection with the three hours you spend  at midnight drinking coffee and trying to get it out there, they don't have the association with  the image that you used or whatever, and so they don't remember it because they're seeing that post  in hundreds of other posts and many of them also came from that amazing conversation you  had with someone, or that thing you saw on tv and it sparked an idea in you and you were like "yes,  this is the next big thing, this is the big topic that I need to talk about." We remember our content because we are so invested in it, other people are not.  This is why I advocate for reusing content  because you put a lot of time and energy into that content. If you're creating quality content  as opposed to just churning out anything to get stuff out there which I imagine most, if not all,  of you are doing, you're focusing on quality content, then as your follower numbers grow,  as things shift in the world, as things shift in your industry, as what you do maybe shifts,  there are people who haven't seen that content at all and there are people who are in a better place  to receive that piece of content now. So if you've put out a post about, say, repurposing content,  how meta! If you put out a post about reusing content and when I first put it out say  somebody saw it and they went "oh yeah, seems like a good idea, I have not got the time to go through  all my previous posts, I just don't, I'm already homeschooling, and going through a divorce, and  I'm already super busy with all the life stuff and all the work stuff and all the everything stuff,  and I do not have the time to do it." Maybe when I post it again six months later  they've hired a VA maybe and they're like "oh, I'll get my VA to do that,  that's a great idea. Cool." They can actually action it. Maybe they have shifted how  their business works so they have more time to work on their business to actually go through  some of their content and pull stuff out to reuse it. People are in different places  when they see your content and so you might catch somebody with that message the second, or third,  or fourth, or fifth time around that when you first posted it they just weren't ready for it,  they couldn't action it, they weren't in the place where it was useful to them.  And I think this is something we forget when we're in that scroll, we are in that content creation,  you've got to put the content out there, gotta do this, gotta do that. Not everybody is seeing your content, the people who are seeing it are not remembering it,  and the people who are seeing it and maybe do think it's awesome and maybe it does sort of  trigger a memory in their brain, they're like "oh yeah I saw this before and I couldn't do it,"  maybe they're in a better place now to actually action that, to actually hear that message, to  actually really take in what you're saying, and so it is valuable if you have created great content,  reshare it! Get it out there again and yes, if you want to change the image or tweak the caption or  change the hashtags or whatever you want to do, if you want to turn it into a different format,  so you want to change your feed post into a Reel or whatever it is, you can do that, but you don't  have to. And I say this so much to people who are overwhelmed with content creation, who feel like  "I do not have the time to create just all this new content forever. I have a job. I opened my  business because I want to do this job not because I want to become a creator." Reuse your content. Have a look back through your content and see what you can reuse,  and if you don't have the time to edit it, to tweak it,  who cares? Just put it out again exactly as it is, use the same image, use the same caption,  use the same hashtags, people don't care, just get it out there again, it takes some stress off  you, it means you can either get more content out there or you don't have to create as much content,  and maybe it will reach just the right person at just the right time.  I would love to know what you feel, where are you on the repurposing content fence?  Is it a fence?! Are you team repurposing? Are you really invested in the repurposing already?  Have I convinced you to try repurposing content? Or are you still like no, this is a hard no,  never not ever, not for me? That's fine if that's you,  you do you, that's fine. If you would like some extra help with repurposing your content, turning  evergreen content, blog posts, podcasts, stuff like that into social media content, getting  a scheduling system set up, all of that kind of thing, I would love to see you in the Social Media  for Humans Club where we have courses on that, we have trainings on that, we have support on that,  and basically everything else related to social media and self-care, so yeah, I would love to see  you over there. If you would like early access to these podcast episodes and also the guest episodes  you can join us on Patreon. And take care of yourself.

Hawke: 11:10

If you want more regular reminders to find your own way to use social media, follow Alexis on your social  platform of choice, all the links will be in the show notes. Until next time, be a human.