Why Most Authors are Creating Too Much Content

This month, the month of June, we’re kicking off a brand new series called Create Once, Reach More: Simple Content Repurposing For Authors. If you’ve ever felt like you’re constantly creating content, but never quite catching up, then this series is for you.

And today, we’re starting with something that may surprise you. Most authors are creating too much content. Now, before you panic and tell me, “Alicia, I can barely keep up with the content I’m creating now,” hear me out. The problem isn’t necessarily that you’re creating too much content overall; the problem is that you’re creating too many separate pieces of content.

Core Message as Content

You are starting from scratch over and over and over again. Every social media post is new. Every email is new. Every blog post is new. Every podcast episode is new. And before long, content creation starts to feel like it might be your full-time job. Does that sound familiar? I see this happen all the time with authors, speakers, and coaches, and they know that they need to market their books and build their platforms, so they sit down every day to think of something new to say.

And honestly, that’s exhausting. It’s also completely unnecessary. The truth is, most people don’t need more content. They need a better strategy for using the content that they already have. So, think about your favorite author, speaker, or business leader. Do they talk about something completely different every time they show up?

Not usually. In fact, the most successful communicators repeat their core message again and again. They simply say it in different ways. So they share different stories or different examples, but their core message remains the same, and it remains consistent. Somewhere along the way, many authors started believing that repetition was bad, and we worry that we’ll say something twice and people will get bored.

Repetition of Content Creates Message Engagement

We think everyone sees everything we post, but that’s simply not true. Most people miss most of what we share. And even when they do see it, repetition is often what helps the message to stick. So think about it, your favorite Bible verse or the sermon that you’ve heard over the years. Think about lessons that you learned in life.

Rarely did you hear something once and immediately master it. This brings me back to when I was teaching middle school. So when I first started teaching middle school, I didn’t go to school to be a teacher, and I knew my subject matter well. But when I first got the books, the curriculum, I was supposed to be teaching seventh, eighth, and ninth-grade English.

And what surprised me about that was I looked through the curriculum, and it looked all the same. It’s built on each other, but they were learning the same grammar rules, and they were learning the same things. But it just got a little bit harder, progressively harder along the way. And so that’s because in order to learn something, we have to repeat it. And the most important lessons that we learn and truths that we learn are repeated.

So marketing, it works the same way. Your audience needs repetition. They need reminders. They need multiple opportunities to engage with your message. So instead of constantly creating something new, what if you focused on getting more mileage from the content you’ve already created?

Repurposing Content Creates Impact

What if one podcast episode became multiple blog posts or multiple social media posts? What if one blog post became your email newsletter? What if one story became several pieces of content across different platforms? That’s what content repurposing is all about. It’s not being lazy, it’s being strategic.

And honestly, it’s one of the smartest things that you can do. Because let’s face it, most of us did not become authors because we love spending all day creating marketing content. We became authors because we have a message that we want to share. And content repurposing helps you spend less time creating and more time serving your audience, and it can prevent burnout. One of the biggest reasons that authors quit marketing is that they try to maintain an unrealistic pace.

So, they are constantly creating, constantly posting, constantly trying to keep up, and eventually they get tired. And then you’ll notice they might disappear for weeks or months, and then the guilt sets in, and they start over, and the cycle repeats itself. But when you learn how to repurpose your content, you create a system that’s much more sustainable.

Rethinking Your Content Management Mindset

And instead of asking yourself, “What should I post today?” You start asking, “How can I reuse what I already have?” And that is a completely different mindset, and it’s one that’s gonna save you both time and energy. And as we continue through the series, I’m going to show you exactly how to do that. We’re gonna talk about how to turn one idea into a week’s worth of content.

We’ll discuss the different types of content that work well to repurpose, and I’ll even share a simple workflow that you can use to make content creation easier for you. But for now, I wanna leave you with this thought: You don’t need more ideas. Let me repeat myself. You don’t need more ideas. You probably already have plenty of them. What you need is a better way to use those ideas.

Your action step for this week is simple. Look back at a piece of content you’ve already created. Maybe it’s a podcast episode, it could be a blog post, or maybe it’s even a chapter from your book. And then ask yourself, “How could I use this again in a different format?”

That’s it. Start there. And if you need help to create a simple content repurposing system for your business, I wanna invite you to grab my free training, Content Repurposing 101. Inside of it, I’ll show you how to create once and reach more people without spending all of your time creating content.

If you’d like support in building a simple, sustainable marketing system for your book or your business, you can connect with me.