I used to wonder how top bloggers published articles so consistently.
I suspected they had a secret process that I wasn’t privy too.
How do they generate content ideas? What were they doing with their writing that I wasn’t doing?
Then I visited Thailand for the first time, and noticed signs with that said “SAME SAME, BUT DIFFERENT” everywhere.
Little did I know this phrase would inform my current approach to content generation:
> Write about the same damn things over and over again.
If you’re into goal-setting, don’t be afraid to keep writing about goal setting.
If you’re an expert with WordPress plugins, keep pluggin’ away.
You can even create articles that seemingly repeat themselves, with slight variation.
Look at these two headlines:
- “The Ultimate Guide to Eating Tacos in LA”
- “10 Pro Tips About Taco-Eating in LA”
These two could essentially contain the same information, with minor differences in formatting or content.
And people will still read it.
Why?
I call this approach the “Same Same But Different” approach to writing, and these are 3 reasons why it works.
Reason #1: Your readers don’t read every article you write.
Think of your favorite blog or author. Have you read every single work they put out?
Only superfans do that, and most people are not superfans.
(Even I don’t read everything from my favorite writers. There’s a backlog of Mark Manson and Wait but Why articles I’ve been meaning to get through.)
I used to assume my email subscribers read every campaign I sent. Until I bothered to look at open rates:
For these very reasons, we can take one topic and write about it again and again with variation.
This not only relieves the pressure of generating “new” content every single time you write, but actually helps your audience understand a topic better. Which leads us to the next point…
Reason #2: We all process information in different ways
If you’ve ever read multiple books on the same subject, or opened 100 tabs for one topic you’re researching…then you instinctively know:
We’re often exposed to the same idea more than once, but the idea doesn’t “click” until it’s communicated in a certain way.
Example: I understood the concept of privilege intellectually, but didn’t feel it until listening to WNYC’s podcast series on poverty (which is amazing btw).
I often need to get the same information from different angles until I “get it.”
The same thing happens to your readers.
If you’re prone to writing cumbersome articles that try to cover every angle of an idea, try creating multiple variations from one topic:
- The first article might introduce the idea.
- A second article could dive deeper into one point.
- A third article could argue against the original idea.
Break up one piece of work into multiple to generate more content AND help your audience understand the information better.
Reason #3: Grow your online brand
You can’t help but develop depth when you write the same things over and over again.
It forces you to dive deeper into a topic and do more research.
It also helps you build your brand online.
A brand is simply what you repeat.
By producing content of a similar vein, your audience will begin to associate you to those topics.
We do this naturally in our day to day lives…
- We go to certain colleagues for business advice because they love to talk about online marketing strategies.
- We talk to certain friends about love and dating.
Draw a smaller circle with your writing, and it’ll help you build a niche around any topic.