Perception
Rewriting feels productive. You’re updating headlines, refreshing intros, tightening copy. Content is being renewed to align with your strategy. Or at least that is what you tell yourself.
Reality
You’re putting new wrapping paper on old thinking.
Rewriting existing content without a clear strategy of why you’re doing it, who’s it for, and what impact will result, and more importantly, whether the content should still exist at all, isn’t a content refresh. It’s recycled (and wasted) effort that creates the illusion of productivity and progress without delivering compensatory results.
Strategy isn’t updating old content. It’s about deciding what should exist next.
Why It Matters
- Rewriting without a supporting strategy wastes time and budget that could have been spent on content that provides impact.
- Not assessing content for value and relevance before reusing it reinforces outdated messaging.
What Most Teams Get Wrong
- Thinking and treating rewriting as a standalone fix rather than part of a strategic decision
- Not assessing whether the asset to be updated even fits within the current strategy before updating it.
- Believing rewriting is equivalent to, or worse, replaces new work.
What to Do Instead
- Before updating anything, audit your content for ROT (redundancy, outdatedness, triviality). Ask for each piece: Does this align with the current strategy?
- Then, after you determine what passes muster, decide whether you will reuse it as is, rewrite it purposefully, or retire it.
- Use the rewriting process as part of, not instead of, a more comprehensive strategic review.
Seventh Bear Take
Strategy isn’t rewriting history; it’s writing what’s next.
If your team gets stuck in a rewriting cycle that doesn't seem to make progress, you might need to pause and examine the strategy behind it. That's where we can help.
Deeper Dive
Want more on this topic? Check out: Can A Smart Content Strategy Be Sexy Again?