Five Ways to Recycle Your Old Blog Post Content to Attract a New Audience

3037E055-1E89-41FD-8BDB-3116A0A741DA.jpgSome bloggers say the average lifespan of a blog post is 90 days. I disagree. I see the average lifespan of a blog post to be no more then 30 days. Usually, once the post is off the “front page” of your blog and buried in the archives, it stays there. What we have to do as bloggers is find a way to bring these post to the attention of our readers and potential readers.

This is also why we have to write on a regular basis “evergreen” content or “pillar” content. Content which is just so damn good people keep reading it. We also need to take steps to make sure all of this great content we are writing stays in front of our readers. We need to figure out ways to recycle it.

Here are 5 ways you can repurpose some of your older content.

1. Publish some of your posts to EzineArticles

We actually did this recently with one of the series I have been running on BFP. What is great about publishing to EzineArticles, it is free and you are exposing your content to a new audience of possible readers and customers.

Take some old post, either individual or series post, give them a bit of a make over and submit them. You should also think about a new title and make sure to include a link back to your blog. Your reason for doing this is to not only get your content exposed to the EzineArticles audience, you want to get those readers to visit your blog.

After we submitted some of our post we did see some good traffic sent our way. While the approval process can be a bit of a pain in the butt sometimes, the time and effort is worth it.

2. Turn older blog post into email newsletter content

One of the tools I tell all my consulting clients to use and something I write and talk about a lot is using a newsletter. An email newsletter to be exact. And usually the first thing someone says to me is “Griffiths you are freaking crazy if you think I can write all this content for my blog and turn around and create great content for a newsletter.” And, they may be right.

What I tell them every single time is not to write all of the content for your email newsletter with new content. Yes, you need to include at least one new featured article in your newsletter. But, a great way to get content for your newsletter and a great way to recycle some of your older content on your blog is to include it in your newsletter.

You can do this at least two ways:

  • Provide links in your newsletter to some of your older content on your blog. This will get your newsletter readers to click through to you blog and get them back there checking things out.
  • Simply copy and paste one or two of your older post into your newsletter. You can also do some tweaking to these older post when you put them in your newsletter. And you can update them too. The key is to remember is the fact a lot of your newsletter readers may be new readers of your content. And they may have never seen some of this content before. Why not feed it to them.

One other way to use your newsletter list to get your post out is to use a service like Aweber and send out a blog broadcast. I do this after I have posted a set number of post. My subscribers will get an email with the title/link and the first couple of sentences of the post. This is not only a great way to keep you content in front of your email list. It is a great way to get them to visit your blog. And if you want to take it a step further, Aweber has a feature which allows you to also send things to twitter.

3. Recycle an old post into a slideshow

Do you have one of those how-to blog post. One of those post where you try to explain how to do an action or steps to take to make something work. Take one of those post and do a screencast or a slideshow on exactly how to do it.

While you are at it, post the screencast or slideshow to YouTube or even Slideshare. Not only are you recycling some of your older content. You are pushing this content to sites that just might take the post viral and get you some serious action.

4. Send post to twitter

One of my favorite twitter tools is EasyTweets. I use EasyTweets do to a lot of actions with this blog and my content.

Here are just some of what you can use EasyTweets for:

  • Post brand new content to twitter when it goes up on your blog
  • Feed some of your favorite blogs you read to twitter (great way to help out a blogging friend of yours)
  • Time a series of tweets to go out at any time during the day
  • Feed older content to twitter to generate some traffic to those old post

The last one is really the biggie for this conversation. If our readers are not going to visit some of our great older content. Feed it to them by sending it out to your twitter followers. One of the best at doing this is John Haydon. I have been watching John on how he uses twitter to build buzz about his content. I have also been watching how he uses the tools available to keep his older content in front of his audience.

Another practice John has been doing lately is sending some of the older content of the blogs he reads. Not only is this helping out those bloggers. John is showing first hand why he is a great source of information in his particular niche. John is recycling not only his older content. He is recycling the content of these other bloggers.

5. Turn those older “pillar” post into an ebook or report

One of the most overlooked and under utilized ways to take advantage of your older content is turning it into an ebook or downloadable report. Usually people balk at this idea for one reason. They usually say, “Why would anyone want to have this content in an ebook or report when it is right there on my blog?” That is a great question, but really an unwarranted concern. The reason falls right into why we are recycling our content in the first place. Remember your content has a short shelf life. We want to get our content back in front of our readers.

Taking this older content and making it into an ebook or report is a great way to recycle and a great way to get it in front of our readers. What I have found from doing this myself is the fact our readers appreciate the fact we have taken the time to put a selection of our content into one easy to use location.

The decision to give this content away or sell it is really up to you and depends on what your goals and purpose are with this content. One way to use an ebook or report from recycled content is as an ethical “bribe” to get people to sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your blog.

Remember to tweet about and put the word out when you produce this ebook or report from your content. Tell the world so it goes viral.

Share your own ideas on how to repurpose older content

Make sure to jump in and leave your own way you repurpose some of your older content. I would love to see how others do this as I am always looking for ways to get our readers to dig deeper into the content.

Also don’t forget to subscribe to the Blog For Profit Newsletter. We include information in the newsletter we don’t feature here on the blog. And when you subscribe, you get a free copy of our eBook , Blogging Tips to Help You Blog.

About The Author
Grant Griffiths is founder of Blog For Profit and co-founder of Headway, a premium WordPress Theme/Framework. You can follow Grant on twitter at @grantgriffiths
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View Comments to Five Ways to Recycle Your Old Blog Post Content to Attract a New Audience
  1. mmangen
    January 30, 2010 | 8:55 am

    I recently downloaded a plug-in that will do the “slide show” at the top – though I haven't played with it yet. I do include the goodies from time to time in my newsletters and I also write a weekly round-up that adds all of my posts into a new post.

    And every once in a while I'll tweet a pillar article. :-)

  2. Grant Griffiths
    January 30, 2010 | 9:01 am

    The “slide show” way of showing off and recycling older content is a great idea. Thanks for sharing.

  3. Tinh
    January 30, 2010 | 9:53 am

    That is good experience. That is a great way to refresh our old content and drive more traffic

  4. remarkablogger
    January 30, 2010 | 11:45 am

    Awesome ideas, Grant. You can also update old posts and then send out notice through all your channels (email, twitter, facebook, etc.) that the post has been updated and worth a look.

  5. Grant Griffiths
    January 30, 2010 | 12:02 pm

    Thanks man and appreciate you adding to the list. Updating an old post is certainly a great way to recycle some of the old ideas to make them new again.

  6. Catherine Caine
    January 30, 2010 | 4:56 pm

    Great idea. I'm planning to package a series I wrote (http://www.beawesomeonline.com/category/vital-q...) and release it as an e-book.

  7. Grant Griffiths
    January 31, 2010 | 8:24 am

    Catherine – That is exactly what I and others have done. What a blogger can also do is do a series with the full intentions of turning it into an ebook. Plan the series as an ebook and get the best of both worlds.

    Whether you give away the ebook or sell it really depends on your goals and at what stage your blog is at.

  8. Kaye Swain
    February 2, 2010 | 5:17 pm

    Great tips. I'm saving this article and tweeting it. Thanks for the terrific food for thought. :)

  9. mkakan
    February 6, 2010 | 12:05 pm

    great ideas …never thought about them…i think it is also possible to rework your old post and put them back on the front page of the blog…thanks

  10. Patrice
    February 13, 2010 | 10:01 am

    These are all great ideas. I just started retweeting some of my old posts. I definitely need to check out the EZineArticles and Easy Tweets. Thanks for sharing.

  11. Paul Cunningham
    February 14, 2010 | 4:14 am

    Great tips there, I've been meaning to rewrite some of my older posts for article sites.

  12. John Haydon
    February 25, 2010 | 9:41 am

    Thanks, Grant! I actually have CoTweet open in one tab, and Feedly open in another. As I read and comment on posts, I'll schedule a tweet about that post in CoTweet. I also have one or two blogs that I tweet out automatically with TwitterFeed. :-)

  13. Grant Griffiths
    February 25, 2010 | 10:01 am

    I do the same with EasyTweets which is a great tool you can do a lot of things on twitter with. I have not tried Feedly yet.

  14. John Haydon
    February 25, 2010 | 10:10 am

    Feedly basically makes Google Reader easy to manage.

  15. Grant Griffiths
    February 25, 2010 | 10:19 am

    Ah, I use NetNewsWire for by blog RSS feeder.

  16. John Haydon
    February 25, 2010 | 3:41 pm

    Thanks, Grant! I actually have CoTweet open in one tab, and Feedly open in another. As I read and comment on posts, I’ll schedule a tweet about that post in CoTweet. I also have one or two blogs that I tweet out automatically with TwitterFeed. :-)

  17. Grant Griffiths
    February 25, 2010 | 4:01 pm

    I do the same with EasyTweets which is a great tool you can do a lot of things on twitter with. I have not tried Feedly yet.

  18. John Haydon
    February 25, 2010 | 4:10 pm

    Feedly basically makes Google Reader easy to manage.

  19. Grant Griffiths
    February 25, 2010 | 4:19 pm

    Ah, I use NetNewsWire for by blog RSS feeder.

  20. John Haydon
    February 25, 2010 | 11:24 am

    How is that different from GR?

  21. Grant Griffiths
    February 25, 2010 | 11:52 am

    Works on Mac only and I find it cleaner in how you can organize your reader.

  22. John Haydon
    February 25, 2010 | 5:24 pm

    How is that different from GR?

  23. Grant Griffiths
    February 25, 2010 | 5:52 pm

    Works on Mac only and I find it cleaner in how you can organize your reader.

  24. John Haydon
    February 25, 2010 | 2:45 pm

    That's good enough for me. Thanks, Grant!

  25. John Haydon
    February 25, 2010 | 8:45 pm

    That’s good enough for me. Thanks, Grant!

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