Most of us already know by now how hard it can be to create content that is fresh and of high quality for our blogs. Writing is not the hard part; being creative is. You can’t just produce new and enticing content on the fly; you have to have time and patience for it.
But did you know that some of your best work has such a long shelf life that it stays relevant for years or even decades? It is the same thing when one reads books that were written centuries ago or seeing movies that are half a century old – as in, they will appease a new audience of a new generation.
Apart from reaching a new audience, writers usually employ this tactic to tackle their writer’s block. It is a phase when you are unable to come up with a new article of new and appealing content. You could get far better exposure with recycling then you did when you first published your post.
Sending the same message in multiple ways reinforces the main idea of your business. It helps validate your message and gives your audience different perspectives and strengthen your relationship with them. So now, let us look at some of the best ways for you to recycle evergreen content.
1. Make A Few Changes To Your Old Post
When you republish your old posts, don’t just simply copy and paste them. Instead, you should refurbish it with new updated information stats. If it is a tip post, then you should consider adding more tips and also change the date of the post so that it appears on your site’s homepage.
Just ensure that you don’t set the date to sometime in the future as WordPress will republish the post with a new permalink. The old link will also start giving a 404 error.
2. Using Social Media
When it comes to reposting your old posts, there is no better solution than that of social media platforms. Many established users make use of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ for promoting old but evergreen content. WordPress allows you to use a plugin called “Tweet old post”.
However, you must update your post before you publish it. The reason for that is because no one likes to see a repeat of the same content. However, you need to keep in mind that when you do edit your post, you take care of keyword research and On-page SEO optimization to improve the traffic for that post.
You can also post your old stuff on newer platforms like Snapchat, Periscope, and Instagram for even greater visibility.
3. Focus On The Meaning Than The Happening
Think of topics that can connect with people on a deeper level. You also have to ensure whether the content you are about to write is timeless or not. As in think of whether this article of yours will be viewed again in a year’s time from now. Evergreen content is brief and mainly focuses on facts and information on what really happened.
To make your content more timeless and differentiate yourself, you have to add extra value. To be frank, you have to share your secrets, share insights and focus on the meaning of what just happened rather than the happening itself. You can provide refreshing views and opinions on the story.
What we are trying to imply is that you should provide some context or give a bigger picture of what you want to share with your audience and why they should care about it. If your story has value, then it will very likely stand out.
4. Link It To A New Post
If possible, you could try to link your old posts with your new ones. When do you this, be sure that it is a related topic. For instance, if you are going to recycle an old post titled “How to use Twitter to increase your blog traffic”, then you can write a new post titled “How to increase Twitter fans” and then place a link to the original post.
Not only will this improve your internal linking structure, but it will also lower the bounce rate as well as your site’s exit rate. What’s more is that it will also help turn those one-time visitors into regular readers. If there are too many posts, say over a hundred, then you can benefit from using the SEO smart link plugin.
5. Keep Away From Using Time-Specific References
Do be careful in avoiding to use specific times, dates, or any other time-specific references in your content as much as you can. For example, saying that something has happened ‘today’ or will happen ‘tomorrow’ will only be relevant for a few hours for that day.
It does not matter if your article is valuable, the people who read it will deem it as irrelevant, inaccurate, or even outdated because of the dates that you have mentioned.
6. Use ‘Related Content’ Approach
You may have noticed how often sites promote their old posts by adding a related content widget right at the end of the post. For WordPress, YARPP is your best bet for showing related posts. If you want to use any other platform, then a third-party service like Linkwithin will suffice.
For better click-through-rates, you can show a thumbnail to your related posts. However, before you get to use Linkwithin or any other third-party widget, you should try to experiment with a plugin that is self-hosted. To clarify further, we meant that you should link your old post directly instead of a 3rd-party widget.
It will provide maximum SEO value to the link. If you have a multi-author blog, then you should put in more posts with an author widget after post, which in turn will get you more views for your old posts.
7. Repurpose Your Old Content
There are plenty of great ways for you to give your old posts a new coat of paint and the works. We’re talking about how you can give it a new format and put it on various new platforms. Here are a couple of ways on how you can do just that:
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Turn Webinars To Video Tutorials:
Hosting a webinar with tons of attendees will do you wonders. It works wonders, at least for those who attend it. Not everyone will be able to make it to your webinar, and then you will soon get new visitors and leads, who won’t know what they have missed.
Don’t just host a webinar and be done with it. You can retool it in the form of a YouTube video so that your content can live on for years to come.
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Turn Old Blog Posts To Guides:
If you have blogged about a set of topics with a common link in them, you can gather all of them together and fresh new guide out of it. For example, if you have old posts about how to upload images, use hashtags, and cover pics on Instagram, then you can make it into “The Complete Guide to Instagram”.
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Turn Your Powerpoint Presentation Into A Slide Deck:
You have made a beautiful presentation, showed it to your team the next day and you don’t know what else to do with it. Now you can repurpose you’re the slides of your presentation into a slide deck with the aid of SlideShare.
