If you blog, my guess is you produce posts, pimp them and then pretty much forget about them.
Most of us do.
Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to put old posts out to pasture.
Here are 3 reasons to remember, and occasionally re-pimp, your old posts:
- Evergreen content that garnered solid attention awhile ago probably will again. Sure, we all write “reactive” posts that broadcast our thoughts about news in our industry or the world. However, most advice-y or tipster posts can be recycled to great effect, bringing valuable traffic to your site. You created the content once, who says you only get to reap the benefits of it for a short period of time?
- The discussion that flows from reusing older content can spur new ideas. If you have writer’s block, send out a few tweets of your old posts. You never know how people’s reactions will effect your thinking on a subject. Discussion is so often the basis of inspiration and your popular old content is liable to spark dialogue that can lead to new creation.
- News and events may conspire to make your old content relevant again. Let’s say you wrote a post about crisis comms during the BP debacle. Guess what? Someone will probably screw up again a la BP. When they do, your old post is “timely” a second time.
Whaddaya think?
Good advice, Jackson! Now that I’ve been blogging for a year, I can probably dig into the archives and see what might be useful.
One good use for old posts is to think of a complementary post or a “sequel” post, as I did for a post about media relations. I re-read my old post and thought of more tips to share. So, maybe try perusing your own “old” content for any additional ideas that didn’t make the first cut to share.