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If you’re a regular blogger, you know how much work goes into planning, writing, and marketing your blog posts.
Typically, these efforts pay off within the first couple of weeks of a post’s life. As soon as you hit publish, you normally start seeing a spike in traffic and engagement. That’s great, right?
But what about a week, or a month later?
Sadly, this spike in engagement often starts to decline as new posts push your old content further and further back on your web page.
This pattern is completely normal and is somewhat to be expected. But this doesn’t mean you have to sit back and watch your hard work go to waste.
There are lots of ways you can recycle and repurpose old blog posts to keep your brand at the forefront of people’s minds.
Here are 6 of our favorite strategies:
1. Write a round-up post
Once you’ve got a decent amount of content on your blog, you can begin to write weekly or monthly “round-up” posts.
A round-up post does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a post that aggregates your best content on a particular topic into one, easy to read, article.
Round-ups are popular with readers as they love finding rapid-fire lists of resources they can bookmark for reference.
Let’s say you’ve written a handful of blog posts about various aspects of marketing. You could round them up and include links to each blog you’ve already written within a post titled “10 Must-Read Marketing Tips”.
This brand-new post will direct readers to ten of your past articles that they may not have had the chance to read.
Not only does this introduce visitors to more of your content, but it also helps decrease your bounce rate as you’ll be encouraging readers to view more than one page on your site. It’s a win-win.
2. Re-imagine your content
Every blogger knows they have a handful of posts that really knock it out of the park.
If those knock-out posts are getting dusty, it’s time to reimagine them in a different medium to reach a whole new audience.
The truth is, not everyone loves to read- but they might be really interested in the topic you discuss in your blog post.
So why not take those killer key messages and repurpose them to attract other audiences?
For example, you could turn your best content into a podcast, Youtube video, infographic or presentation. You can then share this to your social media channels, or post them in response to questions in forums such as Quora.
You can also post your infographics, podcasts, and slideshows in medium-specific sites such as Visually, SlideShare and Podomatic.
You’ve already done the heavy lifting by researching the post and writing the content. Therefore, it should be super easy to repackage it in a new form and start reaching out to new audiences.
Struggling to get your content out on social media every week? MixBloom writes and schedules social media posts for you.
3. Submit guest blog posts
There is a huge audience out there waiting to be discovered- an audience that is sometimes way beyond your blog’s reach.
One of the best ways to promote your blog is to access the existing audiences of bigger websites who share your target market.
By writing a guest post on a big site like The Huffington Post or Medium, you’re putting yourself, your brand, and your business in front of millions of readers who might not have found you otherwise.
Writing a guest post may seem like a lot of extra work at first. However, many sites allow you to submit content that has already appeared on your blog.
This way, you can literally recycle old posts by placing them in front of a huge audience. What’s not to like? Just make sure to check each website’s submission guidelines before submitting a previously published piece.
4. Turn a series into an E-book
Writing and publishing an e-book is a breeze for bloggers who (a) have been writing consistently and (b) have a healthy amount of old blog posts they want to repurpose.
The idea of an E-book is to give readers somewhere they can find all the resources they need for a particular topic in one place.
Just like your round-up post, start by putting together a series of posts you’ve written on one topic. You can then compile them into chapters for your E-book.
Creating an E-book is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Not only this, you can use them as lead magnets and extra revenue streams. For example, you could offer a short E-book to your readers to build your email list, or sell your full E-book on Amazon. The possibilities are endless!
5. Re-share evergreen content on social media
There is no reason why you can’t continue to promote old blog posts on social media. In fact, you should!
As social media moves at such a fast pace, it’s very unlikely that all your followers will see every one of your posts. With all the effort that goes into creating your blog posts, this is a real shame.
To maximise your reach (especially if you have audiences across different time zones), you want to be scheduling several re-posts throughout the month. We suggest sharing the same piece of content at least 3-4 times a month.
Many of your posts are likely to be what is called “evergreen content”. Evergreen content is simply material that can be read at any time and isn’t tied to a particular event or timeline.
This evergreen content will always be relevant and useful to new readers. So don’t be shy about promoting them again and again!
An easy way to schedule re-posts throughout the month is with the help of automation tools such as Buffer or HootSuite.
Pro tip: make sure you always re-write your social media update/title every time you re-post to (a) test out different approaches and (b) avoid repeating yourself!
Here at MixBloom we use Buffer to schedule our clients’ professionally written social media content. Find out more about what we do here.
6. Create a newsletter
Whether you have a newsletter already or not, your old blog posts should definitely be a part of it.
Email marketing is widely considered to be the most effective form of online advertising. Why? Put simply, it places your brand directly in the lap of your target customer.
If you’re creating a newsletter specifically to promote content, think of a weekly topic. Then you can go through your library and select the best-performing posts within that category.
We would recommend taking snippets from your blog post and re-purposing it in newsletter form. You can create easy newsletter templates (as well as track your emails’ performance) using tools like MailChimp and Canva.
If your business does already have a newsletter, consider adding a section specifically to promote and recycle your blog posts.
As with social media promotion, you don’t have to worry about the post’s publish date. Simply find the evergreen content you think your readers will value the most. Even better if the post relates to that week’s newsletter topic.
Looking for tools to help you create content smarter? Here we share the only 3 content marketing tools you need.
Key takeaway- what you can do today
Your archives are a mine of valuable content.
Even if you wrote a blog post months ago (as long as it’s still relevant to your audience), there is nothing stopping you from recycling and repurposing it.
For today, start by doing a quick content audit. Make a list of your best posts and brainstorm how you could get them out there again.
Are there any posts you could recycle/combine with other articles to create a round-up post or E-book? Maybe you could turn a blog post into an infographic?
If, after reading this post, you’re worried you don’t have enough evergreen content, don’t forget that you can recycle seasonal content from year to year too. For example, does your blog have a great holiday series from years gone by? Consider reviving it this year as a series of Youtube videos.
Have you tried any of these strategies? Do you have other ideas for how to recycle your blog posts? Let us know in the comments!
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