If you’re like me, you have a lot of old posts. And if your old posts are like mine, they are not exactly beautiful but do have great potential. Not all of us start our blogs looking amazing and wonderful and perfect. Some of us, like me, learn as we go and our first posts leave much to be desired, but nonetheless are full of great content! So how do you Repurpose Old Blog Content?
Did you know you could bring those old posts back to life with little effort? There are a few ways to get them noticed; but you have to do a bit of editing first.
If you have been blogging for a while, you know that you have evolved through time, learned some things and made some mistakes. If you open an old post right now what is the first thing you notice? Go on; try it!
Why would you even want to Repurpose Old Blog Content?
It is extremely probable that your readers now were not your readers two years ago, or even six months ago. It is also quite likely that when someone arrives at your site, they read one post and at the most three or four.
You have no time to for writing new posts and you don’t want to let your blog stagnate.
Let’s review the kinds of posts that exist on everyone’s blog.
- The evergreen posts full of value that can stand the test of time, these need minor links and information tweaking to make sure they’re up to date.
- The time sensitive posts like giveaways, events or time-sensitive reviews.
- The story telling style posts that need no time stamp at all because they are full of personal experience.
Now let’s find out how to pick the best posts to repurpose. You can do this with Google Analytics. Check your top 10 or 15 posts and pick an old one that could use some loving!
You will notice that the most popular posts are most likely evergreen posts or story telling posts. Giveaways and reviews don’t get that much repeat traction so you’re better off just leaving those as they are.
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Go into your blog and your Google analytics, pick an evergreen, or story telling post that is at the top of the popular list and is at least 6 months old. Get ready to get a lot more views and traction on that post! Don’t forget to add a new call to action with a link to your email subscription!
Here is a checklist of things you need to fix on your old post so that you can repurpose old blog content.
- Is the content still up to date? There might be links that need to be checked, information that needs to be updated.
- Are your photos optimized in terms of size? If they are huge, they are making your posts load slowly. Do they have alt tags?
- Does the post have a featured photo for FB and Twitter? Is there a pinnable image?
- Is there anything in the content that you might have learned more of and you can add to give more value?
- If the post is about a plan you had or something happening in your life, can you put an update at the end? The post could turn into a progression of events. You could even turn three posts into one.
- Is the Search description the best it can be? Use your keywords wisely.
- Are you using headings to break your content?
- Can you add any bullet point lists?
- Can you include a shoutout with link to another article in your blog or to an article by another blogger? Make sure it works with the content; don’t just plug in random links.
So you have revived your old blog post, now what do you do?
There are few different ways you can repurpose old blog content and bring it back to life.
How to Repurpose Old Blog Content?
Inside your blog:
- Republishing: Change the date of publication of your post to the current date, but do not change the url. To do this, go to the editor and revert the post to draft and then publish again. Make sure you went through the checklist mentioned above! If you really want to change the url, then you will have to create a redirect so that you don’t have a broken link.
- Repurpose old content into a different format: After going through the checklist and republishing, you could add an infographic, make a video, add a how to section, add a recipe.
- Put together an E-Book: If you have written over 6 posts about different aspects of the same topic then you could put all those posts together into an E-Book and give it away as an opt-in on your site!
- Strategic Linking: Are your old posts categorized correctly? If they are then you can find a pattern. Link old posts into newer posts about the same topic. For example, if you posted a recipe about a cake, link up an old post of another baked good. You can do it in a little button, at the beginning of the post or at the end. With a text like; “if you like this recipe, why not check out this other one” be specific, though. For example, “If you like this red velvet cake, why not check out these red velvet muffins.”
Outside of your blog:
- Get your old posts syndicated: After putting your post through the checklist, start submitting it to pages that publish syndicated articles. Check out this post to find out how some of our members are getting syndicated. One piece of advice, don’t send the same post to various sites, you don’t want to get into a pickle if more than one site wants to publish it. Did you know that you could even get syndicated here on the IBA website? Click here to learn more!
- Republish it yourself on community sites: By community sites, I mean the ones where you post your own content, like BlogHer and Medium. When republishing in these sites, the best way is to publish the first two paragraphs, a good photo and then a “read more” link to your original (and fixed) post.
Now it’s your turn!
Here are some ideas in an article by Robert Lee, about things you might want to edit in your posts before reposting in any way.
How are you going to repurpose old blog content today?