You should post your best social content again and again

I’d wager your brand has posted content every single day for years now, if not a decade. That’s 365 pieces of content annually at a minimum—maybe nearing 2,000 posts a year if you subscribe to the five-tweets-a-day thinking. Multiply that by however many years your brand’s been tweeting, and you’ve got a colossal archive of content.

All that great content? Those evergreen pieces that performed so well?

You should use them again.

Every brand should dig through their content archives and re-use the top performers. I’ve got a whole slew of reasons for you.

Who says you need new content?

I’m being serious. Where’s the rule where every post has to be brand-new? Good content is good content, no matter how many times you’ve seen it. I’m pretty sure bands play your favorite songs night after night, and we both know how many times you’ve re-binged The Office. No, your organic Instagram post isn’t starring John Krasinski, but you get my point.

Your audience hasn’t even seen your content

Small brands tend to hit a 32% reach rate (number of people who’ve seen your post / followers), while brands in the 500k range generally strike a 12% reach rate. Take a look at Bazaar Voice’s handy chart.

I’ve got good news for you. That means somewhere between 68% and 88% of your followers haven’t seen any one post in particular. That post you thought should’ve popped off? Throw it back up. Give it another shot.

Everyone wants to hear your greatest hits

I did a little snooping through Microsoft’s most-liked tweets of all time. Got a kick outta these two nostalgia plays. Check out those engagement numbers:

Funny, right? More importantly, evergreen. These posts “won” because they touched on a familiarity with the brand and products. No, they’re not going to push whatever’s new from Microsoft, but they’re proven effective pieces of creative that support the legacy of the brand.

I’d go through your brand’s top 50 posts to see what’s evergreen, then re-use those top performers every year.

Everyone deserves a second chance

We’ve all written that tweet we were sure was going viral, only to nab a few nibbles. Take this ridiculous SEO dad joke I made in 2018:

Hey, it makes me laugh. And I figured it was better than 46 likes. So two years later after my following had doubled, I figured I’d try it again:

It’s now my most viral original tweet of all time (minus that time Chrissy Teigen retweeted me). Exact same copy. Just gave it another at bat. This can be just as effective for brands, and I promise, your social media managers have a few posts they wanna get back out there.

Put a little twist on it

We’re in the heavy hooks era of social. The first few seconds of your video arguably matter more than the content of the video itself. If that TikTok you believed in didn’t perform? That doesn’t mean it’s not the right idea—it means you should consider adjusting your intro. Maybe you needed bigger on screen text, or a human face looking back through the phone, or just a different headline. It’s worth testing again with a different hook.

You’ll lighten the load on your social managers

Your brand’s probably posting content every single day of the year. Imagine how much more time your social managers could spend on ideation, analytics, or literally any of the countless other tasks they’ve got on their plate if one day a week was a repost of previously posted content. That one adjustment lightens the original content load by 14%! That’s wildly significant for our overworked SMMs.

Like all social, it’s a test and learn

There’s no downside. Try it. Start with your all-timers, and work your way down. Then start scheduling years in advance.