…surely you can recycle your content now and then. And you should.

To deliver consistent, on-message content to your audiences requires having a few tricks up your sleeve for when time just isn’t on your side.

I’m living the time-crunched life right now!

Between travel, new product launches, an impending cross-country move, prepping for next week’s Content Calendar Workshops, family members that need attention and trying to maintain some semblance of health and sanity, there’s not a lot left over for writing blogs, newsletters and sales material.

And compared to yours, my to-do list probably looks like a cakewalk.

That’s why content batching, content planning and content recycling (or should we call it content remakes?) are so important. They let you breeze through those time-challenged patches without going dark on your audiences.

Content Batching

Starting a million things and finishing none of them is annoying and disheartening. If you try to write blog posts, newsletters, proposals one sentence at a time between phone calls and putting out other fires, you will get nowhere fast.

Your experience, not to mention the quality of your output, will shift dramatically if you create content appointments in your calendar and use that chunk of time to work on things that can be pre-written like blogs, presentations, sales pages, web copy, your book, etc.

How much time and how often is up to you, but what’s critical is that you 1) honor the commitment and write in that timeframe and 2) you cut yourself off from distractions (hello, airplane mode!) and just focus on the task and message at hand. For instance, on my calendar, I have big chunks of time on Mondays and Fridays devoted to content creation. That’s one reason my newsletter, The 23rd, comes out on the 23rd of each month.

Content Planning

Another reason my newsletter, The 23rd, comes out on the 23rd is that I plan for it. I know the deadline for sending it, and I determine the content I’ll cover three months at a time.

This isn’t magic, it’s just working from an editorial calendar. I’m teaching the essentials of this process in my Content Calendar Build Workshop next week.

Over two hours in a live via videoconference session, I

1. guide you through creating an effective content plan, and let you ask questions along the way so you're tailoring your content plan to your business.

2. offer tricks and tactics to choosing the right schedule and — this one's been huge for the folks who’ve taken the workshop — the right topics.

3. include templates, tools and time to actually create your content plan during the workshop with input from me and brainstorming from the group.

Interested? Read the details here. Or just sign up if you're done with staring at blank pages and wondering why you bother writing for your business at all. 

Content Recycling

Repeat after me, “You can reuse materials. You should reuse materials.”

We are on our fourth — fourth! — version of A Star is Born*. Bradley Cooper and I give you permission to recycle material, especially blog posts. Here are a few ideas for how to mix it up:

1. You can always put a fresh opening on a old post and rerun it, like I did in this post.

2. Share your "greatest hits." Sitcoms call this technique "clip shows" when the episode consists of flashbacks to previous episodes. It works for content, too.  This part of this post is an example!

3. If all else fails...
   You can always acknowledge that we are fallible humans swimming against the tides of an ever-changing world. Like this one.

Comb through you posted content now. How many evergreen** (aka usable, and reusable at any time) posts do you have waiting in the wings for when you don’t have time create fresh content?

*For the record, I’ve seen them all. The James Mason/Judy Garland
version will always be my favorite. Sorry, Lady Gaga.

**Unintentional A Star Is Born pun. “Evergreen” was the also the name of the
Oscar-winning song from the Barbra Streisand/Kris Kristofferson version of the movie.