🔁 Please Repeat Yourself

Children aren’t known for having great listening skills—but it’s not their hearing that’s problematic. They simply need to hear the same lesson over and over again. “Don’t hit” is a simple rule that most parents tell their children a thousand times before it sinks in. But really, as adults, are we any different? Sure, we’ve learned the ten commandments (mostly), but we’re still working on “eat well and exercise often” even though we’ve heard it many times before.

As it turns out, we never lost the need for repetition. We still need to hear the same lesson over and over before it sinks in. We may need to hear a lesson a dozen different ways at a dozen different times before it “clicks” and our behavior truly changes.

Repeat Yourself Often, Again and Again

As a creator, pulling from your own experiences, every point you teach feels vivid and personal because for you, it is.

When you’re trying to help your audience with your content, it can be easy to assume that because you’ve taught something once it’s now checked off the list, and you need to teach something new. On the contrary, you need to repeat yourself often, coming back to key lessons you’re teaching that your audience needs to hear again and again. They may need to hear the same lesson a dozen different ways at a dozen different times before it “clicks” and the lesson hits home.

Periodically, you should look into your content archive and find lessons you can repurpose and republish, in a fresh and new way. This does not mean you should be reposting the same blog post (just two years later) or deleting the old content to start from scratch. Instead, take a new approach to the same idea by writing an updated post or recording a podcast episode on the same topic.

Repetition is a Winning Strategy

Don’t be afraid to reference yourself, linking to your own content. Feel free to repeat the same core message multiple times throughout the year. When your audience wins, you win. Sometimes that means you need to repeat the same lesson over and over, until it sinks in. Better yet, take the best of your content and find ways to reintroduce that to your audience at various milestones along the way.

Can you think of one way to revisit past content in a new light? Or repurpose old content into a new, fresh format? Or maybe, instead, find new ways to highlight the best of the best.