7 Ways You Can Repurpose Your Old Blog Posts to Get More Traffic
7 Ways You Can Repurpose Your Old Blog Posts to Get More Traffic
As a blogger, you’re in the business of sharing thoughts.
You ought to constantly come up with new thoughts and flip the ones ideas into weblog posts that dazzle your readers. And you need to hold those readers happy and engaged, so that you paintings your butt off to put up new posts on a normal basis.
But if you’ve been blogging for a while, you need to have a treasure trove of ideas buried deep to your archives. The longer it’s been because you began a blog, the deeper your files cross, and the greater gems are buried there.
Most bloggers are so centered on handing over new ideas that they neglect to assist their readers find out the vintage ones, and lots of the ones oldies are nonetheless relevant these days. Many of them simply haven’t been discovered with the aid of your newer followers but.
So why no longer dust them off, and put them the front and center again? Why no longer repurpose the ones old gemstones for a emblem-new target audience?
Below, you’ll locate some approaches to do just that.
#1. Produce a Bunch of Spin-Offs
Back within the 90s, when I become a young youngster — you understand, zit-infested, hormones raging and desperate to find the secret code with which to talk to women — one in all my favorite TV suggests was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (It become wonderful.)
When Buffy ended its third season, the manufacturers did something that allowed me to spend even greater of my precious children in my preferred fictional universe. They took one character and gave him his own display, Angel.
In other words, they took an concept from Buffy and created a brand new display round it. See in which I’m going with this?
You can do the same with your list posts. You can take a single concept from one in all them and expand it into a whole new put up.
For example, permit’s take Glen Long’s publish, 20 Rules for Writing So Crystal Clear Even Your Dumbest Relative Will Understand.
The first three points in that post are:
You have to sincerely define your audience before writing.
You have to be able to outline the topic in one simple sentence, or it’s too complex or unfocused.
You should make a clean connection among the headline and the introduction.
Do you think these could make true topics for a blog post?
You’ll locate that now not all listing factors in a post could have sufficient substance to create a full article around. Sometimes they come up brief — but different instances you can nevertheless give you an amazing submit idea after a few quick brainstorming.
For instance, I’m not positive if you can devote a complete article to the 1/3 point in that list, however you can surely dedicate a blog publish to writing intros, or one approximately the need to your blog publish to satisfy the promise in the headline.
And that’s not the simplest choice you’ve got for spinning off a submit. Another manner is to really take a blog post and explore the topic from a exceptional angle.
For instance, we may want to take Glen’s article approximately writing truely and flip it into:
10 Blogging Mistakes That Leave Your Readers Dumbfounded
And then you simply flip the factors from the original article on their heads:
You’re writing without a clean picture of your target audience.
Your subject matter is too unfocused.
You’re now not connecting your advent in your headline.
See how smooth this is?
These spin-offs are a breeze to create, and you may then pitch them to different blogs as visitor posts. Easy peasy.
#2. Showcase Your Masterpieces
Okay, you’re manifestly a really gifted author and — I know, I recognize — each publish you write is a masterpiece.
But let’s be sincere, each remarkable artist has pieces that stand out extra than the rest.
DaVinci had his Mona Lisa, and Michelangelo (the artist, now not to be confused with the ninja turtle) had his statue of David. Like them, you have got stand-out portions which are a notch or more higher than the relaxation.
But after you’ve been publishing content for some time, a number of your fine posts gets buried in the information.
Wouldn’t you need to put these the front and middle, so that they’re easy to discover for brand spanking new site visitors? When someone is new in your web page, wouldn’t you want them to locate your masterpieces first? I suggest, that might make one helluva first influence, proper?
So provide them a little nudge in the right route. Create a web page committed to showcasing your first-class paintings.
See Smart Blogger’s Start Here web page related in the menu bar? You can discover 30 portions of this blog’s cornerstone content all compiled in a single location, in order that they’re smooth to discover. You can spend days studying up on those on my own.
Another excellent instance is Fizzle’s Best of web page, which in addition lists all its most famous content material.
Note also how these pages don’t simply provide traffic a long listing of hyperlinks. Nope, the page segments the hyperlinks into separate lists in some of classes. This doesn’t simply look nicer — it also makes it easier for readers to locate the posts so that it will hobby them most.
Creating a “begin right here” or “first-class of” web page places your satisfactory posts in an smooth-to-discover spot, so your readers can spend hours devouring them one by one.
#3. Put Your Old Posts in a New Jacket
This may also come as a big shock, however did you already know a huge number of people just don’t like analyzing that a great deal?
They would possibly make time to read a chunk-sized Buzzfeed submit now after which, however in case you provided them with Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, they’d ask you for the audiobook or will let you know they’ve already seen the film.
What meaning is there’s a big variety of those who might not be that into your written content, however would like it if they may pay attention to it or watch it. That manner there’s a large audience out there which you’re in all likelihood not tapping into but.
You can attain that audience through offering your vintage blog posts in a brand new format.
You can use content from a pre-existing weblog publish and turn it into a podcast, video, infographic or slideshow. That not handiest allows you to provide your old content a clean spin, but you could publish it on various websites with a hyperlink again for your site, delivering thousands greater eyeballs in your content.
Now, I get it. The prospect of dabbling with video or audio is daunting — I hate taking note of my recorded voice. Ugh!
But no concerns if this appears miles out of your consolation zone because you don’t need to do it all your self. You can hire human beings to repurpose your weblog posts for you.
For example, you may lease a voice actor on Fiverr to relate your weblog publish, and growth — you have your podcast episode. Likewise, you may locate a person on Fiverr to turn your submit into a PowerPoint presentation, and growth — you’ve got your slide show. Then you can integrate the audio of your podcast with your slides, and increase — you have got your video.
And you can then submit those variations of your content on various structures devoted to hosting people’s infographics, videos, podcasts, and slideshows.
The following are just a brief bunch of examples:
YouTube (Video)
Vimeo (Video)
Visual.Ly (Infographics)
Daily Info Graphic (Infographics)
Amazing Info Graphics (Infographics)
iTunes (Podcasts)
Podomatic (Podcasts)
Digital Podcast (Podcasts)
Slide Share (Slide suggests)
Slide World (Slide shows)
And on pinnacle of those platforms, you can additionally get different bloggers to characteristic your infographics or movies on their web sites.
All of this combined can you get you a ton of latest exposure, and you may attain an entire new target market who opt for looking motion pictures or taking note of audio over analyzing blogs.
#4. Pass Your Posts Around
Another manner to get a surge of site visitors from vintage blog posts is to virtually republish them on other running a blog systems with a bigger audience than yours.
Whoa, whats up now, wait a minute! Won’t Google slap you with a reproduction content material penalty for that?
Nope, that’s just a specifically popular fantasy in the blogging global. Matt Cutts himself has established that there is no penalty for reproduction content material except it’s specially spammy or key-word-crammed.
So, in other words, don’t worry about it.
But still, although there’s no penalty, don’t all the massive blogs ask for authentic content material handiest?
Well, now not precisely. One popular venue for republishing content is Medium. If you’ve already examine our manual to publishing on Medium, you realize it could be an awesome source of site visitors. Just take Benjamin Hardy, who went from 0 to 50,000 subscribers via republishing on Medium.
But Medium is sincerely no longer the handiest website online that lets in republished content.
Other web sites that do consist of:
Business Insider
Entrepreneur
Fast Company
Vox
Mashable
LifeHacker
The Good Men Project
Elephant Journal
See? You don’t need to create unique content to get featured on massive courses. Some of them will take articles which you’ve already published for your weblog. They have a tendency to be picky, but you’d be a fool now not to offer it a shot.
#five. Give Your Posts a New Lick of Paint
When you’ve been using your vehicle for some time, and the paint process starts offevolved to go through, do you’re taking it to the junkyard and buy a new one?
I think now not. You simply provide it a new paint process and hold riding it.
Likewise, you may re-use among the posts in your archive after giving them a touch paint activity.
Take Backlinko’s Brian Dean, who once received an e mail from a reader who used his techniques to upward thrust to the #1 spot in Google. Brian may want to have created a logo-spankin’ new submit to proportion this reader’s case look at, however instead, he selected to add it to an current submit.
He no longer handiest delivered the case observe, but he up to date the pix and brought some additional guidelines. The result — after re-promoting the submit — turned into a 111.37% increase in visitors to that web page.
You don’t always want to create brand-new content material to satisfy your book quota. Sometimes you could snatch an antique put up and deliver it a brand new lick of paint. Change the book date, and it’s going to seem to your the front page over again.
And you don’t need a case observe to add for your web page, both. You can refresh it many other methods.
For example, you may:
Add new images, screenshots, graphs, or different styles of visible content material
Remove and/or replace any previous records (which includes visual)
Create a content material improve that provides new value to the put up
Re-layout the submit to make it appearance nicer
Improve the overall readability
Add clean examples
Add new statistics or hints
Remove “great practices” that have stopped being first-class practices
Give it a new and stepped forward headline
Sometimes a publish received’t even want an update (even though you need to constantly take a look at earlier than re-posting it). Sometimes you have got a traditional put up that’s nonetheless distinctly applicable today and you could re-publish it with out changing some thing.
Because in case your weblog has grown from 500 to 5,000 subscribers because you first posted that put up, that’s four,500 subscribers who can also by no means have visible it and might nonetheless like to examine it.
That’s an smooth manner to lighten your workload for per week.
#6. Draw the Kindle Crowd
Many bloggers submit ebooks on Kindle to make a few candy passive profits, however publishing on Kindle can also be a extremely good supply of site visitors. Some Kindle readers are simply ready if you want to lure them for your site.
And if you have numerous posts on a specific topic, you have got enough (or near enough) cloth for an e-book.
Honestly, you don’t want as a good deal cloth as you may suppose — just 10,000 phrases is lots for an e-book, which should be about 4-6 posts. You’ll want to connect the chapters, add an creation and conclusion, and in all likelihood rewrite some elements, but with those 4-6 posts, you have got most of your book already written.
But earlier than you get beforehand of yourself and submit your e-book all willy-nilly, you have to do some prep work to ensure your launch is a fulfillment.
Here are some short recommendations:
Assemble a assist group: Ask your subscribers whether they want to enroll in your group and get a loose copy of your new book. Ask them to examine the e book and provide feedback. If important, edit your e-book to encompass any adjustments your crew suggests.
Publish your ebook on Kindle and set the charge to $zero: You need to set the fee to $0 so your crew won’t ought to pay to down load the e-book.
Ask your crew for evaluations: Make certain you ask them to download the e-book before they depart their evaluation. This is critical because when they don’t, their critiques received’t be tagged as validated.
Promote your e-book: When you have a great wide variety of critiques (20 is sufficient, but the extra, the merrier), sell your ebook using promoters of free Kindle books like Book Marketing Tools, Freebooksy, and Bknights on Fiverr. These include a price tag, but they could ship heaps of readers your manner.
Create content material enhancements: The whole concept is to get your e book readers back for your site, proper? So, incentivize them to achieve this by linking to a landing web page that gives supplemental cloth in exchange for his or her email. Think cheat sheets, checklists, resource lists, worksheets, templates, swipe files, or every other form of bonus content. (If you’ve got an upsell in which you could make cash, of path, direct them there as well.)
Once your advertising closes, you might enhance the rate of your e-book and increase your profits, or you could depart it unfastened and keep the usage of it to attract visitors on your site.
In any case, throughout your merchandising, you can anticipate a surge of site visitors.
(Note: Amazon does have a minimum rate of $zero.99 for Kindle ebooks, so that you’ll need to enroll in KDP Select to run a loose merchandising. To maintain your ebook completely unfastened, you want a little more of a workaround.)
#7. Set up a Throwback Sequence
A few years ago, I were given the possibility to work on the Spanish island of Mallorca for six months. Having grown up within the always-rainy Netherlands, I grabbed this opportunity so difficult, that I made it cry crocodile tears.
The problem? I had a yr-and-a-1/2-antique weblog with a developing target audience. I could spend all my time in Mallorca operating, or I could select to abandon it for a touch whilst.
Forgive me, however I selected the latter. I sent my current subscribers a notice that I wouldn’t be around for a while. I figured I’d lose a few along the way, but it became worth the threat. At the identical time, though, I didn’t need my first impression on new readers (who subscribed even as I was long past) to be, “Hey, see you in six months!”
So I set up an autoresponder that might periodically send them considered one of my older blog posts. That manner, by the time I got lower back, they’d have received phrase from me on a constant foundation.
And once I got again, I found out this wasn’t a half-horrific concept. I realized this was a fingers-off way to constantly send visitors to my older content. Once you’ve installed your autoresponder, it’ll promote your posts on autopilot.
So I simply stored it walking. To nowadays, every new subscriber gets a link to an vintage weblog post once in a while.
I like to call this a throwback series.
We all know how effective e-mail advertising is, so why now not use it to promote your older posts as well? You can set it to trigger at sign-up and installation it to send a month-to-month or bi-weekly e-mail.
Your best process it to update it now and again. Since the throwback sequence can run for a year (or years), you can just maintain including posts as you put up them.
Just make certain that when you upload a brand new post, you add a provision for it no longer to send to subscribers who signed up before its ebook date, or it will ship your posts to subscribers who’ve already read it.
Keep Your Classics Alive
Imagine if you had by no means heard musical classics like Bohemian Rhapsody, Thriller or Hotel California actually because you weren’t around once they had been first launched.
That could suck, proper? Because they’re excellent songs that sound just as epic today as they did back then. They don’t prevent being treasured simply due to the fact they’re not modern-day.
And it’s the equal on your weblog posts. Many of those you debuted months or maybe years in the past are still precious these days, so provide them the eye they deserve. Help new audiences discover the treasure trove of ideas buried in your documents.
Update and re-submit them. Write a few spin-offs. Set up a throwback collection. Step out of your consolation region and positioned them in a new layout. Whatever you do, don’t let them disappear into obscurity.
Keep playing those golden oldies. Because human beings obtainable nevertheless want to hear them.
About the Author: Robert van Tongeren is the Associate Editor of Smart Blogger who enables our writers get their posts in tip-pinnacle shape. When he’s off-responsibility, he also runs a weblog that allows guys get dressed a bit sharper at Restart Your Style. And in his spare time, he likes to journey, watch Game of Thrones and is official BFF’s together with his 6-yr-antique niece (she made him a certificates.) You can locate him on Twitter.