Continue to generate a great return on your time investment, writing for your agency’s blog, by recycling older content.
As you write your posts, learn to write “ever-green” to give the content a long shelf life. I recently wrote a post, 50 of the Best Insights from Ad Age’s First Ever Small Agency Conference, the first ever small agency conference sponsored by Ad Age. Even though this was a one-day conference, I purposefully wrote the post in a way that would allow the content to be used for a much longer period of time.
My recycled posts continue to generate lots of blog traffic and fresh comments from readers who have just discovered them for the first time. The date of the material shouldn’t matter. What should matter is relevancy. Is the content still of value to your audience?
Here are 5 simple ways to repurpose older content:
- Twitter: This isn’t like your email inbox. People are on and off Twitter rather quickly. Often they are scanning for helpful resources to their advertising/marketing challenges. That the majority of your followers would see a post that you published at 11 am on a Thursday is remote. It’s about reach and frequency. SocialOomph is a great program to assist with repurposing content through your Twitter account and allows you to control your publishing schedule knowing what post is being published when.
- Email Newsletters: Posts from your archive will find new life by way of your newsletter. You can group older posts around a particular category or theme. Highlight the “best of” your online content. Here are a couple of examples: Fuel Lines, Convince and Convert’s Vault
- Facebook and LinkedIn: Another way to repurpose content is through other social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Just not with the same frequency of posting as you would with Twitter.
- Through other posts: Do the work on behalf of your readers and at the end of your new posts include links to additional content that is relevant. Check out my ‘Additional articles of interest’ at the end of this article. This makes it easier for your readers to find relevant, older content on your blog.
- eBooklets and Whitepapers: After you have been writing awhile, you can easily pull together content to create eBooklets or whitepapers to share with your audience. I have also pulled older content together for SlideShare presentations. You can even recycle your blogs content into a book. An example is Bob Hoffman’s The Ad Contrarian.
I would also suggest revisiting older posts that may not have generated very much traffic. With the proper edits and revisions you can breath new life into them as well.
Additional articles that may be of interest:
- Recycling Older Posts and Articles for Ad Agency New Business
- 50 Blog Post Ideas to Fuel Your Ad Agency’s Blog
- 10 Tips for Writing for the Web for Ad Agency New Business
- How do users read on the web? They don’t … they scan
- 5 Ways Ad Agency Blogs Can Produce Significant Traffic for New Business
photo credit: Dave Goodman via photopin cc
