Repetition is the key to learning. Everyone knows it. All the academics say it. It’s in all the textbooks (not that that necessarily matters).
But it’s true. Very rarely is an Aha moment due to seeing something for the first time. Much more often, it’s because the information finally broke through. It was presented in a way that was different. Something about the message finally made sense.
When I hear people rail against recycled content on twitter, I think they’ve missed the point. New ideas and methods are important, but they’re built upon foundations and principles that deserve constant reinterpretation.
Why? To connect. New ideas are exciting and they connect people in very specific and highly specialized ways. But they’re built on concepts that everyone can imagine or identify with.
Having an understanding of those concepts allows us all to connect in the arena of new ideas. So what if you’re saying the same thing over? Are you making it sound new? Are you using a new metaphor to describe it?
Another reason why recycling content is important is because teaching makes us better learners. It might be enough to say that, yes, social media is about having conversations, or that good web content follows certain structural guidelines. But does anyone get anything out of that?
If online communication is about sharing ideas, how can you know too much about the common ground? I don’t think that you can. People spend their lives studying the bible, the torah, or the koran- those are the same principles, revisited over and over.
Also, recycling content is the language of inclusion. A lot of message boards become stagnant when the old pros don’t want to discuss what’s on the mind of the young bucks. They’re not willing to recycle content, and the tribe ends up suffering for it.
If you come to this blog regularly, you’ll read about plenty of new information. But you’ll see a lot of the same themes running through it.
Do you think that it matters?
Tags: Ben Curnett, business relationships, content marketing, getting started in social media
