Reduce, reuse, recycle has become the phrase-du-jour for the environmentally conscious, but the social media boffins amongst us have appropriated the phrase for their own personal use.
And it turns out that they're on to something: recycling old content has proven to be 86% more effective than the original content. And you'd be in good company if you thought that that you can only get 1 reuse out of past posts. Studies have shown that even the 6th repost performs 67% better than the original one.
But why is this the case?
It comes down to reach and timing. Since originally posting the material, your follower base has *hopefully* grown meaning that with this regurgitation of content, you're reaching your newer audience that may not have had a look back at your archives. Keep in mind too that your followers are not online every minute of every day so even the audience that has stuck with you from day-1 might not have seen the first iteration of your content.
Unless your business or digital focus has changed significantly, those prehistoric posts should still be relevant to your followers.
Continued below…
Image Shot & Styled by Shout & Co. for Joie Gift Boxes
Now here are a couple of things to keep in mind when considering repeating your previous content:
Only reuse material that your audience in its current form would respond to. You will know what your followers like if you are tracking your engagement and reach on a regular basis. If a particular type of content resonates with your customer and is in tune with what they are likely going through or needing, then repeating that content will carry a relatively low risk of being perceived as spam. Reusing material for the sake of reposting will get you on the fast track to "unfollow" city
Tweak the original message somehow to make it a bit more relevant to today: update your hashtags, the geolocation, copy or even emojis
Incorporate a new call-to-action
Maintain a bit of distance between the improved post and the original one: this will depend on how often you post. 4 months is a good rule of thumb, but for accounts that don’t post too often, extend this to 6 months
If you've run out of content, look at your Insights dashboard, it will give you a view of your top performing posts to date. Start by reposting these before any others. While you're basking in the glory of freeing up some time for yourself, work on developing new content
Feel free to update the imagery you use on this new-and-improved content as Instagram-worthy aesthetics tend to change on a regular basis.
Reworking past material is not only good for business but makes good sense from a time management perspective.
If you'd like to outsource the entire operation altogether, get in touch and I can get this done for you: bevan@shoutandco.com
