Old blog posts are valuable currency for your website. Old content can still prove to be a precious asset to your search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media marketing strategy. As you attract more followers to your blog, social media profiles, and overall traffic, you’ll want to start re-promoting older posts that new followers might have missed. So here's our plan for how you can update & market old blog posts to get more traffic.
Any good social media plan involves regularly and consistently sharing content that is useful and relevant to your visitors. However, unless you have someone on staff who is regularly pumping out quality content at a high volume, it is to your advantage to repurpose old content whenever possible. As months or even years go by, old blog posts might just need a little freshening up to make them interesting and relevant again. There are many ways to update, re-use, and re-promote old content to keep it fresh or to remind visitors of your most popular and useful posts. You can easily breathe new life into old posts using Odysys’ simple and handy guide to Repurposing Old Content.
Find Your Most Successful Old Blog Posts
Start off by making an inventory of your more popular old blog posts on a spreadsheet. In addition to the title of the post and the date it was originally published, you should include categories such as:
- Which posts were the most in-depth
- Which posts were the most shared (use a tool like buzzsumo.com)
- Which posts received the most traffic (from your analytics)
- Which posts received the most links (try opensiteexplorer.org or ahrefs.com)
You may also identify posts that are more “evergreen” or those that will be relevant on a regular basis because they are seasonal or have to do with an annual event. Even if they didn't get a lot of traffic, links or shares before - they COULD if they were promoted properly.
This process will allow you analyze which posts are worthy of a re-post. By examining the traffic and social media shares of certain blog posts, you can easily determine which posts have been your biggest hits. On the same or separate spreadsheet, you can then make a schedule of when you want to re-share your most valuable posts. You can either do this on your own or by using the social media scheduling tool in Odysys (if you're a customer) or a tool like Buffer or CoSchedule or even Facebook's own scheduling feature that allows you to schedule posts in advance.
Re-Posting vs. Re-Promoting Great Old Blog Posts
If it has been a while since you posted a particularly interesting, effective, or thought-provoking post and think it has grown relevant again, you might be tempted just to copy/paste it and re-post it to your blog. However, this is not always the most beneficial or effective method. You can get much the same effect by simply making the necessary updates and then re-promoting the post.
Here are some tips and suggestions for re-promoting a post:
- Freshen up your post and then add the date updated to the beginning of the post, something like “UPDATED 05/22/2017.”
- In many blogging platforms, you can then easily change the publish date to today or the day you would like the post to appear and it will move to the front of your feed.
- Sometimes, you haven’t even made any changes to the actual post. It has simply grown relevant again due to the season or what’s currently trending. In that case, there is also no need to post it again or make any changes to the body of the post. You can virtually make the post new again by sharing it in social media with an introduction like “Hey, it’s that time of year again…” or “Back by popular demand…”
Add or Update the Call to Action to Your Old Blog Posts
As you look to freshen up your post to re-promote it, it is always a good idea to add a “call to action” at the bottom of your blog posts. Remember: the point of your blog is to draw more people to your property’s homepage and hopefully as a result, to your property. One of your main goals is to drive visitors up to your primary website - either your home page, a special offers page, or another relevant part of your website-at every chance you get.
Add a line at the end of all of your posts with an internal link that directs visitors to more information on your primary site. You can link to pages offering a relevant promotion, deal, or special. You can also link to do your “Things To Do” or “Check Availability” pages, depending on what makes sense based on the content and aim of your blog post.
Other Quick and Easy Tips for Updating Your Old Blog Posts
An easy and reliable way to attract more traffic to your blog is by doing some quick updating and refurbishment. When doing a run-through of your old blog posts, always make a note of which posts might be in need of a little freshening up. Even if the content is still useful, there are many easy and effective things you can do to update and optimize old blog posts.
- Add social sharing buttons on your blog posts.
- Update or add images to your post with captions and optimized text.
- Enhance the white space of each post to make them more scannable. You can do this by adding subheadlines and bullet points or re-crafting paragraphs so they are shorter and easier to read. An ideal paragraph is about 5-6 lines long.
- Proofread for any mistakes you might have missed.
- Trim out or update dead links. In addition, if your blog allows comments, delete spam comments. Too many spam comments can detract from your site’s aesthetics and credibility, so delete them and you will see an increased traffic to your site.
- Don’t forget to promote your blog content in your newsletter!
- Add a few links to “related posts you might like” within your refurbished post. These can be internal links to some of your newer posts or other posts/content on the same topic. For example, if you are updating an old post on “Best Hikes in Telluride,” you could add an internal link to a newer blog post you've written about “Best Sports Outfitters in Telluride” so visitors know where to purchase gear before a big hike. Internal links are one of the ways that help search engines (and visitors) understand your content and its relationship to other content your site, so adding one whenever possible is a helpful but often overlooked step.
Let’s work smarter not harder. If you’ve got good content - make the most of it. New followers might not have seen some of your best content, so leaving those old posts to rot in the archives is doing a disservice to both you, your followers/subscribers and your potential guests. Freshening up and re-promoting quality content is an essential piece of any thriving social media marketing strategy. By optimizing old content, you will drive more and more customers to your website and as a result, your business.
