This post was originally published March 2017 and was recharged for optimal value in December 2020.
You created it, sent it out, and watched with pride as the views began to flow in. Then, like turning off a faucet, that traffic starts to trickle, before stopping entirely. You watch as your content starts to lose its reach.
Instead of letting the energy that goes into creating great content dissipate, you should update the content you already have. Good marketing advice is timeless, the only thing that changes are the tech and the tactics.
It’s good for your brand and budget. But according to a survey by Curata, only one out of three marketers say they have a systematic process in place to reuse or repurpose content.
You likely have a whole lot of pieces of content that no longer get any views. That shouldn’t be something you accept. Use these tips to reuse and recharge the content you already have.
GIVE IT A NEW SPIN
It hurts your rankings on Google to repost the same page word-for-word with the same metadata. Google rewards older content that has been updated and is very detailed about the whole of a subject. But if you completely rework and re-spin an old article, you do half the work without having to do all the research again.
This works particularly well for articles that might have not done so well before. It’s also a great time to update an older article. If you write an article where you report on a new idea/event/product and make prediction, don’t just let that article sit there and become irrelevant.
A new angle, language refresh, and perspective update might be just what that piece needed to become a hit.
REWORK AS A SERIES
Maybe you have a great post that could be broken into a couple of smaller posts or pretty social media posts. Or maybe your post just scratched the surface of a topic you want to cover in-depth.
To update some content areas, it may be best to convert the post into a series. This can easily be used for a daily email campaign or daily social posts. This format lends itself to giving your customers a lot of value in an easy-to-digest package.
CREATE COMPILATIONS
The HIPBlog team has been making a reader’s choice list blog post for the year. It includes all the most popular posts from that year, creating more traffic for those posts.
Compilation posts are helpful for categorizing your offerings. You can curate the selections of your best posts to fit into a theme and this new content will have the side benefit of driving more traffic back to those old posts. Additionally, when you compile similar posts, readers are likely to read more than a single post in a sitting.
BUILD OFF THE COMMENTS
Sometimes, you will be surprised by what you find in the comments section. While a lot of comments are spam, there are often interesting and insightful ideas contained within the legitimate comments.
Don’t just let them go to waste. Create content based on those comments. Obviously, this is what your readers want to see since they mentioned it in the comments. Just make sure you stay on strategy and don’t let an interesting comment pull you from your niche.
CHANGE THE TYPE OF CONTENT
When you look to revive old content, consider giving it a new life in a different medium. Create that video using the same angle as the blog post. Or create an infographic from a blog post that had a ton of original research.
What’s old can be new if you start reimagining how you present it. Be creative, figure out what your audience enjoys most, and reframe your content to match.
REVIVE EVERGREEN CONTENT
Sometimes, all a piece of good evergreen content needs is a fresh round of promotion.
Reshare evergreen content onto all your channels. This will give it the breath of fresh air it needs to make the rounds again.
When you do this though, make sure that all your information is up to date. Tweak lines that would make the content dated so that they stay good no matter when someone reads it.
TRADE GUEST BLOGS
We give this tip in almost every post and for good reason; it works.
You could write up a smaller, less in-depth version of an old post. This then goes on another organization’s blog and traffic leads from that blog to yours.
Simple as that.
Create a process for accepting guest posts. Ask for them personally. Start conversations. Plan for them in your blog process.
Don’t just accept that the number of eyes on your content will ebb. Implement just a few of these tips and a steady stream of viewers will continue to enjoy updated old content you worked so hard to create. But that isn’t to say that you can simply recycle the same content over and over. Injecting fresh, new, timely content is just as important as keeping your evergreen content alive. Balance the two and you’ve started to create a content strategy that works.
We’d love it if you’d answer one of these questions:
- Have you found a way to keep your old content on the grid?
- What strategies do you use?
