1 thing I do before every new launch now

Hey there!

Like I mentioned in my last email, I’m taking you through a series on how to remix and repurpose content during live launches, promotions, and marketing campaigns.

To start, we’re talking about one of my favorite elements of the content remix method framework:

The greatest hits series.

What’s a greatest hits series?

If you haven’t heard me talk about it before, here’s the definition:

A greatest hits series is a strategically curated series refreshing and repurposing your best or most important content.

The greatest hits series is one of my favorite examples of the difference between how most people repurpose content, and the way content remixers repurpose content.

It’s not just repurposing any content you create for the sake of it.

It’s not just reposting old content on social media without any changes.

It’s not posting the same thing to a dozen different platforms.

It’s an intentional, strategic project that involves…

Choosing the most effective pieces of content for your end goal.
Updating (or “remastering”) them so they’re completely fresh and represent your most up-to-date work, opinions, and skills.
Compiling a few of these pieces into a strategic “track list” for a “greatest hits album,” taking care of the order and flow of pieces, just as care goes into the track list of a musician’s album.
Promoting this “album” of yours just as hard as you would any other content campaign, if not harder (after all, it’s a celebration of your best work).

The 2 levels of greatest hits

Usually, when I’m talking about it, I talk about the basic version:

Having one set of greatest hits for your entire brand, business, body of work, whatever you prefer to call it.

I focus on that approach because it’s the quickest way to get your best past content working for you, so you can take a few things off you content calendar or to-do list.

But it’s not the only approach to using greatest hits series.

Who ever said you can only have one greatest hits album?

Cher has 10, all with confusingly similar names (there’s Greatest Hits, The Greatest Hits, Cher’s Greatest Hits, etc.).

Billy Joel has 18!

Although with more distinct names and themes, so as much as I love Cher, I like Billy’s approach here more.

And his approach, segmenting his greatest hits by things like song theme or vibe, is the closest to what we’re talking about today.

Using a greatest hits series for “prelaunch warmup”

Now, how does all this fit into a product launch campaign?

There’s a common piece of advice to “warm up” your audience or email subscribers ahead of your launch by increasing how much content you create the month or so beforehand, and starting to focus more on the topic of whatever you’re launching.

It’s not bad advice.

It’s just advice a lot of businesses my size (and likely yours) don’t have time or resources for.

After all, the actual launch itself is enough work!

Adding increased content creation for a month in advanced is even more, and beyond what a lot of us have the capacity for.

How I did it

For example, when I relaunched Work Brighter’s membership last year, I wanted to be able to spend the month ahead of “doors open day” finishing all the marketing content for the actual promotion.

That way, I could focus my energy during the launch itself on providing a great new member experience instead of finalizing sales emails.

However, I also wanted to ramp up my content output from just the brand’s weekly newsletter. It’s only half original content, with the other half being curated recommendations, so I wanted to have some extra “space” to talk with subscribers and followers.

I wanted to talk to them about the main principles and values of working brighter, how it came to be, and other things that I felt like they should know when deciding to join the membership once it opened.

So of course, content remixing was my answer.

I already had blog posts, videos, social media posts, and website copy about all of these things.

Because of remixing and the new greatest hits sequence I created in one afternoon, I was able to get the best of both worlds:

I could spend the majority of my time before the launch focused on the campaign itself, instead of creating new content.
But I could also still get my audience the information and stories I wanted them to have before starting the campaign.

The end product looked like a series of about 6 emails that linked out to the original blog post or video, but also remixed and summarized it for anyone who didn’t click.

I also ended each email with a call to reply about something related to the content topic, which started great conversations with people likely to be interested in becoming a member (and several of whom did).

If I had more time, I would have taken the same approach to Instagram.

And next time I do a bigger promotion for the membership, the greatest hits emails for it will already be taken care of, so I can focus on adding greatest hits Instagram posts instead.

Maybe the time after that, I can work on some YouTube videos or something.

Who knows?!

I just know that it’s such a relief having less new content to create each time I run a promotion.

And it’s not just about doing less work.

This is one of the situations where remixing and remastering content isn’t just easier and faster than creating new content, it’s often more effective, too.

For my personality, at least, the high-stakes feeling of a live promotion is not the time to start testing out new content ideas and experimenting with new messaging.

No, that’s gonna happen beforehand or after, so that when the stakes feel high, I know what works, and can lean into it.

How you can do it

Finally, let’s talk about how to plan your own launch-focused greatest hits series.

Here’s a brief rundown of what the process should look like:

Step 1: Do a content audit

Go through your content library (don’t have one? you’ll want one for this) and find any content you’ve already created that’s relevant to your launch campaign.

This might be a rundown of your unique approach to what you do, stories that your ideal customer for the launch can relate to, or pieces that talk about the problem the product or service you’re launching helps to solve.

For example, when I was launching Work Brighter’s membership, I picked out blog post and videos explaining things like…

My approach/definition of productivity, aka what working brighter is in the first place
Why I believe the “balance doesn’t exist” mindset is dangerous to anyone with health conditions that make them more susceptible to burnout, like neurodivergence or chronic illness
My story of going from an ambitious little girlboss, to a burnt out husk of a human too tired to feel or think, to the brighter unicorn I became once I started unlearning hustle culture.

On the other hand, if I were doing a launch for the brand’s energy management course, I’d be pulling the blog posts about why energy management is more important than time management, why energy management is crucial for the type of person in that audience, and the basics of getting started energy management.

You want to pick out the content that will get your audience thinking about the stuff you’re going to be talking about in your launch to get it “top of mind” and start conversations.

Once you’ve pulled all your options, it’s time to narrow them down to the most relevant and strategic pieces. Depending on what you’re publishing, when, and how often, you’ll probably need anywhere from 3 to 10 pieces of content for the series.

Step 2: Remaster your track list

Now that you know the track list for your greatest hits album, you need to make sure they’re up to date.

Depending on how long ago the original pieces were published, you probably haven’t touched them in a while. It’s time to change that.

If you’re going to be promoting it again, you want to make sure there’s nothing like…

Outdated information
Broken links
Promos for products or services you no longer offer
Old trends or references that now feel stale (or are referenced as current)

You also want to give it a general refresh, editing and optimizing it based on your current skill level.

If your content creation and marketing skills have improved since you originally created the piece, you’ll probably see tons of opportunities for making it better.

Step 3: Release the album

Once you’ve made sure the content you want to use for your greatest hits are up to your current standards, you’re ready to start republishing, repromoting, and repurposing them.

Let the greatest hits out!

Start sending the emails. Publishing the social posts. Updating the blog posts.

Yes, this process is simple.

But a lot of people forget about step 2, so I wanted to break things down.

Wrapping up

Your greatest hits are probably some of your most under-leveraged content, and your launches are probably some of your busiest and most stressful work periods.

Why not solve both of those problems at the same time and transform “prelaunch content creation” from a huge, weeks-long project (or one you don’t bother with at all) into an easy afternoon work session?

If you’ve done this already or want to try it, I want to hear about your ideas and what approach you took!

Click reply and tell me all about it.

And stay tuned for my next email, about how to remix old sales copy, even if you’re launching something new.