Old content is not old news.
In this post, you learned a method that helps you generate a bunch of new ideas for a solid content strategy that’ll support keeping your business visible and relevant.
Today we’re going to tackle an untapped resource in your content arsenal. We’re talking about your content archive, those pieces you published a long time ago that deserve a second look, and quite possibly, new, fresh eyes. Creating content requires lots of time and effort; you might as well make all that count by breathing some new life into it!
And why is it important to reuse your old content into your current plan? As you probably know by now, your content marketing strategy is a long game, meaning it takes time to build an audience and followers that regularly engage with you on your channels.
A lot of your potential clients may not see some of that old content the first time around. And even when they do, most of them won’t interact with it, not because it’s not good, but most likely because “they’re not there, yet” in the sales hierarchy.
What does that mean? When you break down your entire potential audience, only 3% of those are ready to buy right now. How about the remaining 97%? About 7% might consider buying with enough arguments. 30% are not thinking about buying, and another 30% don’t believe they are interested in buying. And then the final 30% is definitely not interested. This buyer’s pyramid is one of the fundamental principles in the late Chet Holmes’ book “The Ultimate Sales Machine.”
Reusing old content is one more strategy to implement on your content plan to keep yourself visible for those prospects in the 3% and to potentially accelerate the buying timeframe of those in the other stages of the sales process.
1. Revamp
You published a great piece of content and shared it with the world. Is that it? Not so fast.
Revamping your published content is a great way to keep your content machine fine-tuned and always running.
Revamping is the simple process of transforming that previously published content into a whole new format. For example, you can turn your blog posts into slide decks or LinkedIn carousel posts. Or do as I did and transform your videos into a written format!
This method works best with what we call “evergreen content.”
Evergreen content is that type of material that’s timeliness. It will always be relevant, no matter the season of the year, nor current events. Learn more about a practical way to convert event-specific content into evergreen here.
2. Republish
Sometimes, it only takes one step.
Content is not static, and while it often takes leaps and bounds to produce great material, other times, it’s the smaller things that make the most significant difference.
Republishing your content is a fabulous way to get fresh new eyes to pieces you posted before. And what does republishing mean exactly? Find a new home where your content can live!
One way to do this is if you originally posted an article on LinkedIn, move a copy to your blog page and share it away (it also works the other way around).
An example of this approach is how I took one of my weekly newsletters and republished it as a LinkedIn article. The newsletter I used was one I had sent weeks before, so by putting it on LinkedIn, it got a nice new home.
What’s your published content’s new home?
3. Revisit
You may be sitting on a goldmine, and all it needs is a little dusting to uncover.
Revising old content is a great way to create a whole new buzz for your topic or subject matter (whether it created it or not when you first published it).
Take some evergreen content you publish six months or more ago and check how you could improve it.
You can fix typos and grammar, spruce up some sentences, and perhaps even add new visuals. Incidentally, this is also a great SEO strategy.
That’s what I did with a blog post I wrote five years ago about social media. It was supposed to be a sort of “tongue in cheek” piece I wrote when every social media platform you looked there was a fight in the comments section (I guess not a lot has changed in that department, am I right?).
How will you incorporate your old content into your current content strategy?
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