How To Avoid Duplication: Renewing Your Great Old Content

Edit viciously and promote graciously to create something new

Do you duplicate content?

Many writers do.

There are many reasons you might duplicate content:

• You didn’t get curated the first time.
• You want to get more exposure by publishing in different publications.
• You believe in the value of your message.
• You don’t have time to create from scratch but you want to publish consistently.
• People need repetition.

People Need Repetition

You probably realize that your message may not immediately sink in the first time someone hears it. There’s much research to show how learning can be fast-tracked through repetition. In Repetition is the First Principle of All Learning, Robert F. Bruner explains:

“The learning process is one of slow engagement with ideas; gradually the engagement builds to a critical mass when the student actually acquires the idea.”

People need repetition — but you can give it to them without duplicating content. You don’t need to start from scratch either.

To avoid duplicating and create new articles with less effort than it takes to create one from scratch, you’ve got to edit viciously — and creatively.

Then to give your writing exposure, you’ve got to share the heck out of it.

1. Edit viciously
2. Promote graciously

Let’s dig deeper into these, shall we?

Edit Viciously

Look at your article with fresh eyes. Don’t rework it a few days after you’ve written it. Leave at least a few weeks and articles in between.

Be ruthless. Chop parts you don’t like anymore. Add to it. Switch out examples. Change the angle slightly.

You see, changing your headline and photo aren’t enough. You’ve got to edit the meat of your content, too. Here are a few ideas to recycle and revive old content:

• Substitute your heading and subtitle: Revisit the brainstorm of headlines you may have created in your first post (or create more enticing headlines and subtitles that make your headline shine).
• Add new stories or analogies: What personal, more recent examples can you share?
• Add extra points or take out a few and expand on them.
• Change quotes or add new ones.
• Add new phrases that convey your voice.
• Swap out the feature image: Look up keywords in Google and check the “Images” section for ideas. Use Unsplash, or better still, draw your own pictures.
• Revisit your other articles: Take bits out of them and piece them into a new article.

This sounds like a lot of work. Is it worth just starting from scratch?

Well, if your topic is sound and you’ve got a great base to work from, it’s worth it. It can still take a while to edit, but from experience, it takes much less time than it would take to start from scratch.

For instance, this post is a mesh of various posts I’ve written — after you’ve read the whole article, see if you can identify the parts I’ve grabbed from my old articles: How to Keep Giving to Your Readers After You’ve Hit Publisher and How to Revive Old Content and Not Start From Scratch.

This might help you understand how to easily recycle and revive old posts into new posts.

Now that we’ve identified a few ways to edit and gotten our articles published, let’s look at a crucial part of writing that many writers forget to do:

Promote.

If the word makes your tummy queasy, I get it. I shush my daughter when a door-to-door salesperson knocks on our door. And I tune down relationships with friends who attempt to casually organize a “fun catch up with friends” for their network marketing thing each time they catch up.

Well, I’m here to reassure you we won’t be that bloody annoying as writers. Let’s look at it in a different way: You have an obligation to readers to share your important messages. Don’t be selfish by writing and hoping they’ll find it. But be helpful. Genuinely care. And walk a two-way street.

Let’s explore the idea of how you can better promote your writing without losing all your mates in the process.

Get Better at Promoting Your Writing

Don’t rely solely on publications to spread the word. Don’t wait for your post to get curated, selected as an Editor’s Pick, or featured on a publication’s homepage — good on you if this happens.

All this gives you a great opportunity to be seen in more places. But you can get curated and still not get many reads. You can get selected or featured and still not get traction.

Instead of sitting around whining about how no one is reading your articles and publications or platforms aren’t doing enough, do something about it. Take responsibility. They’re your babies after all.

Harness the power of the online opportunities available to you. Consistently share the messages you craft with so much care — with the attitude to help as many people as possible.

Ways to keep giving to your writers after you’ve hit publish

• Use social media: Feature your article at the top of your feeds and in your profiles. Write a line or two about what inspired you to write a post. Your readers may also discover you on social media and find your writing there — and vice versa, you may find them there too, and you can get to know each other a little.
• Create a mailing list: You may have noticed some writers include a link to download something — say, an eBook or a newsletter in exchange for your email address. Building a list is a way to share your writing by email and other channels. Take out the first few lines from your post, add a button, and take them to your Medium post.
• Publish on your website (if you have one): Many publications don’t mind if you publish your posts on your own website.
• Share on forums: Share your posts on writing forums. Forums relating to your writing topic. On Quora. On Facebook groups.
• Contribute to communities: While you’re promoting yourself, don’t forget to give back. How often have you noticed when you show genuine interest in another writer’s piece, they quickly show interest in one of yours?
• Link to your own articles: In small doses. Only when it helps your reader. Check the links in this post — you may notice how I weaved in my posts while giving you tips. Well, this is a common technique to keep readers on your writing. It’s a natural, unsalesy way to promote your posts. The key is to share links only when it fits into the context of your content — and importantly, only when it will help your reader.
• Repeat: Don’t promote your piece once. Leverage your efforts. Leave a few pieces in between, and then promote it again. You’ll also reach new people who haven’t seen it before.

What I most love about connecting with readers by email, social, and other community platforms is I get a prism view of who they are. I can find out what they write. I learn what their life looks like and we can have deeper conversations. And we can learn from each other.

Be genuine, considerate, and grateful toward readers and other writers. Your intentions will shine through.

Your Content Is Worth the Effort

Reviving content isn’t as quick as duplicating content, but don’t shy away from it. You’ll come up with something amazing — perhaps even better than your original.

The fact that you’ve got content to share is friggin’ amazing.

If you’ve ever spoken to a marketing ad agency, you’ll discover they can do all sorts of magic to promote a business. But consistently, the main issue they have is what you and I can provide them (but most likely don’t because they pay so badly):

Content.

My experience for the past decade has been in online communications. I help organizations and businesses, large and small, to spread their messages. Without content, there’s nothing to communicate. When I’ve got creative, helpful, well-written content to share, I feel like a kid holding a mug under a chocolate fountain.

We take for granted that we can write great content — many businesses believe they have no time, budget, or inclination to write. They depend on content mills to conjure content that’s often hopelessly generic, or they don’t create any content at all.

Many web developers are so damn desperate for words to adorn their beautiful websites that they don’t care if the content is fresh, personal, or creative. They just want words on a page.

Summary

Whatever the reason that you can’t write duplicate content anymore, it’s natural to feel deflated and disappointed. It was such an awesome way to give your content a second life quickly, huh?

Well, don’t worry about it. People need repetition — and you don’t need to rely on duplication to give that to them. Now you’ve got plenty of ways to revive and recycle old content into great new content.

The two main ways to leverage old content: Work on editing and promoting your writing.

Here’s a quick recap:

Edit or piece together to create a new article

• Heading and subtitle: Revisit the brainstorm of headlines you may have created in your first post.
• Add new stories or analogies: What recent examples can you share?
• Add extra points or take out a few and expand on them.
• Change quotes or add new ones.
• Add new phrases they convey your voice.
• Swap out the picture.
• Revisit your other articles: Take bits out of them and weave them into a new article.

Promote your writing

• Get social.
• Create a mailing list — email your list.
• Publish on your website (if you have one).
• Share on forums.
• Contribute to communities.
• Link to your own articles (where it helps your reader).
• Repeat the process.

Don’t waste any more time sighing that you can’t duplicate your content anymore.

Trust in your ability to be creative with what you’ve already created. You’ve done the work already. Just do a little more to revive it and transform it into something new. As Maya Angelou once said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”