One of the strange things about creating content for your business is that usually, YOU’RE the only one who sees all of it.
You see every email you send, every blog post you publish, every social media post you write, every product you promote, and more.
You know which stories you’ve told before. You remember the point you made three months ago. You know you’ve mentioned that product several times already.
And after a while, it can start to feel like everyone else must know all of it too.
I’ve definitely caught myself thinking, Haven’t I already talked about this?
Or wondering how many times I can mention the same product before people start thinking, Okay, Jessica. We GET it!
That’s usually when creating something new starts sounding like a really good idea.
A new topic would be more interesting. A new product would give me something different to promote. A new freebie would give people something they haven’t seen before.
Except there’s a problem with that logic.
The people I’m trying to reach don’t see nearly as much of my business as I do.
You See Everything. Your Audience Doesn’t.
Think about how you consume someone else’s content.
Do you read every email they send? See every social media post? Read every blog post? Remember every product they’ve mentioned?
Probably not.
Your audience isn’t doing that with your business either.
Someone may have joined your email list yesterday. Someone else has been subscribed for three years but missed your last five emails. Another person saw you mention a product six months ago, but it wasn’t something they needed then. Someone might discover a blog post through Google or Pinterest long after you wrote it.
And plenty of people simply don’t remember everything they’ve seen.
Meanwhile, you’re sitting on the other side of the business seeing ALL of it.
That creates a pretty big difference between how familiar something feels to you and how familiar it actually is to your audience.
Familiar to You Doesn’t Mean Overused
This matters because that feeling of familiarity can affect the decisions we make.
You sit down to write an email and reject a perfectly useful topic because you’ve talked about it before. You stop promoting a product because you’ve already mentioned it a few times. You decide you need a new freebie because the one you created last year doesn’t feel exciting anymore. You write another blog post instead of sharing one of the 50 useful posts already sitting on your website.
Sometimes creating something new really is the right decision. But sometimes we’re creating something new because we’re tired of looking at the old thing.
Those aren’t the same thing. And constantly moving on can create its own problem.
You end up with more and more things to maintain, promote, update, organize, and remember…while perfectly good things you’ve already created barely get a chance to do their jobs.
Repeating an Idea Doesn’t Mean Repeating the Exact Same Thing
I think this is where a lot of us get stuck.
If I’ve already talked about an idea, I don’t necessarily want to send the exact same email again.
And I certainly don’t want every conversation with my audience to sound identical.
But those aren’t my only choices.
I can revisit the same idea from a different angle. I can tell a different story that leads to the same lesson. I can take one section of an old blog post and turn it into an email. I can share an older article because it’s relevant to something I’m talking about now. I can answer a new question about a product I’ve sold for years. I can talk about the same problem at a different stage of someone’s business.
The underlying idea doesn’t have to be new for the conversation around it to be useful.
In fact, some of the ideas that are most important to my business should come up more than once.
If I believe business should work with your real life instead of requiring you to become a completely different person, I’m probably going to talk about that a lot.
If I believe small, realistic actions can move a business forward, that’s going to show up again too.
If I believe figuring out the right problem matters more than frantically trying to fix everything, you’ll probably hear me say that more than once.
Those aren’t signs that I’ve run out of things to say.
They’re part of what I believe.
Your Products Need More Than One Chance Too
The same thing happens with products. You create something, launch it, send a few emails about it…and then mentally file it under Everyone Knows About This Now.
Except they don’t.
Some people didn’t open those emails, and others weren’t on your list yet. Some saw the product but didn’t need it at the time. Some meant to go back and look at it and forgot approximately 14 seconds later because something else grabbed their attention.
And some people may need to hear about something more than once before they pay attention to it.
That doesn’t mean you should promote the same product in every email forever.
It does mean that “I’ve already promoted it” isn’t necessarily a good reason to stop promoting it.
Before creating another product because you need something new to sell, it may be worth asking whether you’ve actually given the products you already have enough opportunities to be seen.
Look at What You Already Have
This applies to more than content and products. There may be useful things all over your business that you’ve mentally moved past.
An old freebie that still solves a real problem. A blog post that answers a question your audience still asks. A promotion that worked well. A story people connected with. A product that hasn’t been mentioned in months. An idea buried in an old email that could become a video, post, or article.
Before automatically asking, “What should I create next?”, try asking:
“What have I already created that deserves another chance to be seen?”
That’s a very different question.
And sometimes it’s a much more profitable one.
You Don’t Have to Keep Feeding the Content Machine
There’s always going to be pressure to create something new. There’s content to write, products to develop, lead magnets to make, social posts to publish, new ideas to try, and so much more.
And obviously, I’m not going to stop creating new things.
But I don’t want new to become my default answer simply because everything I’ve already created feels old to me.
I’ve seen all of my content…but my audience hasn’t.
So before I decide that an idea, article, product, or resource has had enough attention, I want to make sure I’ve actually given it enough attention in the first place.
Because just because I’ve seen something 47 times doesn’t mean the person who needs it has seen it even once.
