repurposing content

After blogging for a year or two, you likely have a rich library of evergreen content. Your blog is just bursting at the seams with these high-quality posts, but what gets the most attention? Whatever you’ve posted most recently. Some of your best content might never see the light of day again.

This content is gold. Older blog posts can be absolute treasures, helping you create new content and drive new readers to your blog. You just have to dig it out, dust it off, and repurpose it in the best way possible.

The Inspiration Bank

Since new content often gets the most attention, maybe it’s time to repurpose some of your old content into brand new posts. I keep a list of the very best posts I’ve ever written, and this is my inspiration bank. Even posts that are timely (i.e., not evergreen) can be part of your bank. What was most popular in the past and why? How can you replicate that success? Think about the topic matters you’ve covered and consider doing an update on them to create a brand new post for readers.

For example, let’s say you’re a political blogger. You probably covered the 2012 U.S. Presidential elections pretty closely. A year from now, it probably seems like those posts aren’t relevant – but they are! Posts that discuss candidates’ promises or predictions from yourself and others can be turned into excellent follow-up posts on the topic.

You can also use this kind of “updating” technique to produce high-quality guest posts. With guest posts, people are often more likely to visit specific posts you mention in the text rather than a general link in your bio at the end.

Build Your Mailing List

Old content – or should that be gold content – can also be extremely helpful in building your mailing list. Instead of writing a free ebook from scratch, are there post series that could be combined, edited, and formatted into a short ebook to give away in exchange for mailing list sign-ups? Or, you might be able to expand upon a post, breaking down your advice into more detail so you can turn the post into a longer format giveaway.

You can also look to see which posts were most popular and then offer a free webinar or e-course on the topic. Use your older posts as a jumping off point for this kind of education. It’s much easier than starting from scratch.

Reshare Instead of Repurpose

If a post is truly evergreen, repurposing it might not make as much sense as simply resharing it. The key is to share it with a new audience. For example:

• When you first published the post, were you active on Pinterest or Google+? If not, share them with these communities.
• Have you ever shared the post with your mailing list? Maybe it’s time to promote it in one of your newsletters.
• Was the post shared at a certain time of day? Change things up and share it at a different time of day to hit different time zones.

Breathe some new life into that old content!

Of course, to have great evergreen content in your library, you have to be adding new evergreen content to your blog regularly. For blog content creation tips, check out our upcoming Blogging Track at NMX in Las Vegas 2013!

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