Your Content Is Valuable, Use It

Aug 24, 2011 by Stephanie

As I’ve been slowly transitioning this site and my business from Stephanie Schwab Consulting to Crackerjack Marketing, I’ve been thinking about all of the content I’ve created over the past 15 months. Though this blog is young by my blogging standards (I started my personal blog in 2005), it’s already got a number of “classic” posts which attract fresh traffic every single day. My friend Jason Falls did an analysis of his blog (to which I’m a contributor) earlier this week, and he also found that some of his older posts on key topics consistently generate the most traffic.

So how to optimize all of that valuable, though older content? I recently read a great post from Pat Flynn titled, “10 Ways to Bring New Life to Old Blog Posts.” In it he outlined a number of really smart ideas on how to keep useful content front-and-center and generate traffic and engagement from it. A few of his ideas include:

Link To Older Posts That Are Relevant to What You’re Writing Now

This seems so natural. If you’re using a newer version of WordPress, it’s also really easy. When you insert a link, WordPress asks you if you want to link to an older post. You can even search to find one right there in the linkbuilding window. Go on, try it out – and do more of this in your upcoming posts.

Do a Followup Post to an Older One

Duh. I’ve got to do this. According to Jason, my post on Five Social Media Trends for 2011 is the #2 post of all time on the Social Media Explorer blog. So why haven’t I updated it mid-year? What a no-brainer. I’ve got to get working on that, even if it’s nearly September.

An Oldies But Goodies Roundup Post

Another great idea. In my case, I’ve written a lot on both this blog and on Social Media Explorer about blogger outreach and brands working with bloggers. I’m going to write a post bringing all of that content together here.

Utilize a Good Archive Page

I seriously need help here. So when I redesign this site (coming Fall 2011!) I’ll make sure a simple, easy-to-use archive page is part of the build.

Syndicate Your Older Content on Social Media

This is interesting. I tried this for a while and had great results. I was using the WordPress Tweet Old Posts plugin, and excluded all of my old content that was tied to a specific event or timeframe, leaving only “evergreen” content in the Old Posts queue. But I started to get outrageously snarky, even slightly menacing, anonymous comments on blog posts that I tweeted out that way (as well as a few ugly Twitter remarks) from some unfortunate person who has nothing better to do than complain about good content in someone’s Twitter stream. Rather than waste energy taking down the comments (or responding to them, as I tried to do at first), I just deactivated the Old Posts plugin. But you know what? My content is too valuable for that. I’m going back to Tweet Old Posts because I love getting “attagirl” comments on old posts too, because it makes me happy when people find my content useful. So there, commenter. Go back under your anonymous rock.

So there you have it. My plan for increasing the usage of the content I’ve already created – because if I’m going to write for three blogs, I should get the most out of all of that effort.

Are you using Pat’s principles and making the most out of your old content? I’d love to hear what resonated with you.

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