Reduce, Reuse and Recycle...

When I was younger, I knew someone who worked on this campaign, they were incredibly passionate about recycling and this was before it was big news. Maybe because I knew them or maybe because I actually believe in the message, but that little alliterative collection has stuck with me for years and I remembered it afresh the other day when I was chatting to someone about content.

Creating content is hard work – especially if you run a business that is in an aggressive growth phase and needs all of your attention. The classic phrase is working in the business, not on it. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able afford (at this point, think big though) support to help them produce all the content needed to stay relevant (I hate that word) which really just means staying present through all your marketing channels and not falling off the communication wagon.

If you’re in an industry that needs you to generate constant sales (think retail) then this is especially important as you’ll notice a direct relationship between the amount of content you put out and the amount of sales you get.

And, when I say content that could be anything from a blog, to a social post, to an email to your list to SEO driven copy on your website.

Chances are – if you’ve been going for a while that you’ve already got a lot of content on your site, drafted up and sent out and I’m here to tell you that you need to dust off that collection and review where you can reuse it to make your life easier! Let’s take a blog post as an example, you could:

·       You could REDUCE the blog post down to some really key (interesting and relevant) points

·       You could REUSE these key points as social media posts

·       You could RECYCLE these key points as the basis for an email, reminding people how amazing your blogs are

One blog post – lot’s more content. Nothing we do is ever wasted, if what you wrote 6 months ago is not as polished as you’d like get the brasso out and give it a shine; if you know more today than you did then – add and embellish to update the piece then reshare it. We all learn, grow and change so your content should reflect this.

Don’t throw away hours of time desperately trying to generate NEW when you can just Reduce, Reuse and Recycle existing.

It’s better for the environment, well alright, maybe not – but it’s a lot better for your brain!