My advice? Re-Post it.

I was just responding to a comment by Tom Resing on my last blog post, and thought it would be worthwhile to expand on the idea of re-posting content. The conversation was in regards to my third bullet point in that article:

Your old stuff is somebody’s new stuff. I can see some speakers getting sick and tired of doing the same topics over and over again. But what’s old hat for you is brand new (and much needed) for someone else. When I submit abstracts to speak at events, I include the old topics and let the organizing committee – the people who know the interests and needs of their communities – make the decisions about what they want. And then I am happy to provide that content.

Tom replied with:

I like your comment, "Your old stuff is somebody’s new stuff." I’ll try to take it to heart, because sometimes, as a speaker, I’m not as enthusiastic as I used to be about the old stuff.

To which I responded with the best practice of re-posting good content through different channels from time to time. Part of the issue with content is that it can become buried very quickly. We create and consume so much information, and unless we take the time to improve our personal filters (what we read, where we consume our content, who we follow) from time to time, good content can become lost in the noise.

As a regular speaker and author, I want people to be able to find my content (especially if I think it’s worth sharing). If all I do is post my content to my personal blog, that’s great for my 4 regular readers, but what about the rest of my target audience? To the extent that you own your content, you should find additional channels through which you can share it. Obviously, if you’re writing for a magazine or portal, they may own the rights, but you own the content on your blog, and the ideas that resulted in a post. Find other avenues for distribution.

I cover some of these concepts in my free ebook Inside the SharePoint Community: Four Strategies for Building Your Person Brand (no registration required – just a PDF download). Publish your valuable content to your company blog, to sites such as NothingButSharePoint.com and SharePointProConnections.com, and anywhere else it makes sense. For those who are concerned about SEO tracking, utilize the same concepts, but restructure the content so that it reads fresh and new. Or add it to a longer body of work, transforming it into a feature-length article, or a chapter within a book. The point is: don’t bury your content. Think of it as a rummage sale – it may be old and worn to you, but to someone else out there, its exactly what they were looking for.