Double Down on Your Best Content: Recycle it
Last week I introduced the idea of recycling your top-performing content.
Re-use your content?! Yep.
Think about it…
Coming up with new content to post can be really hard to do consistently. In fact, it’s the main reason that people end up passing by this huge opportunity sitting right in front of them.
Recycling your best-performing content has a handful of advantages:
Way less work on you
Greater chances of high engagement - based on track record
Past performance notates it’s a high-value piece for your audience
Great for your new audience
Helps steer the direction of new and future content
So picking up from where we left off, let's jump into the ways to recycle content, the KPIs to pay attention to, and tools to help you start doing this for yourself.
2 Approaches to Reposting Recycled Content
There are two ways you can go about reposting your recycled content.
You can, if the platform allows, straight-up copy/paste your top-performing content to use at a later date, or you can make slight tweaks in an effort to maximize the impact of a particular piece of content.
But there are reposting rules for each platform that you will need to follow.
For instance, with YouTube, you cannot upload the same video file twice.
Therefore, a straight-up repost is not advised. However, repurposing a long video into shorts, or vice versa doesn’t seem to have a negative impact on your channel - I do this weekly with no issues at all.
However, with X, you can repost (re-tweet) to your heart's desire without getting in trouble with Elon.
Rules and algorithms change often, so be mindful of this when considering your reposting strategy.
When opting to improve a recycled post’s performance, consider modifying things like:
The Title or Caption
Character Length (brevity is key)
Format & Style (caps, punctuation, etc.)
Hook (Curiosity, Intrigue, Excitement)
First Frame / Cover Image
Length of Post
how many slides in the carousel?
How long is the reel
Thread -vs- long-post
Tweak things little by little in small increments.
You don’t have to re-invent the whole thing…
Especially cause we know it’s already a top-performing post for you!
Tip: This also goes beyond modifying existing content… You can use your top performers as a guide to the new content you make to increase the odds of another high-performing upload.
But how do we determine what content is technically doing best for us?
Let’s discuss the important KPIs (aka Key Performance Indicators) to pay attention to.
Important Social Content KPI’s to Watch
KPIs are the pre-selected analytics metrics that you choose to use as your guidepost to whether something is performing well or not.
While each social media platform has its own set of metrics to track, take a look at the chart below for an overview of the most common ones you'll see...
We also have to consider our content or post’s performance versus our overall channel performance over a given time period.
Some metrics are related directly to the performance of a post, whereas others are not directly related to content and are instead looking at the overall performance of your channel.
A handful of the metrics in the chart can be measured at a post-specific level and at a channel-wide level. Looking at post-specific metrics is what you’ll want to pay attention to when assessing what content you should recycle.
Let’s look at some tools that help you determine which of your content is performing it’s best.
Steal This Database (+ other tools)
Steal this recycled content database template to help you sort out your best posts and easily track the metrics that are most important to you.
♻️Top Performing Posts [Public Template]
Other tools I recommend:
Hypefury
This makes it super easy to auto-repost (aka re-tweet), and allows you to select evergreen posts that can stay in the upload rotation for longer periods of time. Hypefury is tailored to work for your X and LinkedIn accounts.
Click here to try it.
Metricool
This is my newest addition to my content arsenal but has proven to be a simple, yet powerful social media analytics tool - that shows you your important metrics.
YouTube Studio & Meta Business Suite
These tools are free and have a ton of useful analytics data in them. They’re so robust that it’s almost difficult to parse through. They’re absolutely worth familiarizing yourself with.
Simple Steps To Recycle Content
1. Measure top posts every 30-90 days
-pick a routine, and stay consistent
2. Grab the top 5-20% of posts sorted by your preferred KPIs
3. Put them in the ‘Top Performers’ Database
4. Set a future reminder or go ahead and re-schedule them for about 3-6months out
Your top performers database will continually be added to every 30-90 days, so the content bank of recyclable material will stack up fast.
Gradually, over time, your following and overall performance metrics will begin to climb. As this happens, the bar continually rises on what is considered a top-performing post.
An Important Final Note
Be sure to do your own research at a platform-specific level before choosing to recycle content with no edits to the file, caption, etc…
Social media platforms are constantly changing their rules about this.
At the end of the day, recycling content is just one method to keep your posting frequency up. Recycling is not an excuse for never creating fresh content again.
In fact, using a system to filter out your best-performing content, will more importantly, help you know what content topics and types to double down on when creating.
Time to Recycle! ♻️
Til Next Time ✌️🙂
Ev
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