Thursday, May 26, 2016

#1455 nine lives

Our Sam's Club has an endcap display of about 20 books, usually new releases or best sellers that have the capacity to sell in volume. 

Last weekend I noticed that author Sandra Brown had a book featured. I am a fan of her suspense tales and was excited to see that she had a new book out. Only on closer examination, I discovered that it was just a new cover on a 1997 publication instead of a new story.

Sandra Brown has taken to heart the social media mantra of creating 20% new content and repurposing 80% of what is out there. She did it with her books, but I suspect she applies it in other ways as well. I would do well to learn from her in this area as about 99% of my content is new and only a bit is Tweeted or used (by me) elsewhere in places such as Facebook or Pinterest.

I did not grow up in the use-it-again generation and sharing the same thing in multiple places somehow feels like cheating. But if Sandra Brown can get a whole new life cycle out of a 20yr old book, maybe there is something to this repurposing idea.

There is hardly anyone out there that doesn't feel "too busy" at one point or another. Maybe we can all take a lesson from Sandra and reuse some of the great work we have done before. Perhaps the annual report can stay the same design with just numbers being updated. The meeting agenda can be made into a template. The history of an organization can be shared across platforms. Testimonials can be used in print and electronically. I could use blogs from three years ago again and see if anyone notices!

As my media friend says: "Content is king!" Let your royalty parade around a bit longer to get the full effect of its majesty.

-- beth triplett
leadershipdots.blogspot.com
@leadershipdots
leadershipdots@gmail.com




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