Before I dig into this too deeply I wanted to point out that I said reusing and NOT reposting. The idea here is to freshen up your old(er) content and bring it back to the readers attention.

Step 1: Find it!

• Define “old content”. I base it on number of posts since, but you can use whatever you like
• Anything that isn’t old ignore
• Go through all of your old content and find the three that were the most viable determined by:
  • It almost took off the first time around
  • It is relevant today. An article about Cheney shooting his buddy while hunting isn’t relevant anymore
  • Your regular readers enjoyed the post as evidenced by the comments
• Check your social media logs to see which one of the three got the most traffic from at least two different sources and set that aside as your article to reuse

Step 2: Change it!

• Determine what caused it to fail the first time around and correct the problem. Some things to pay particular attention to are:
  • Grammar and spelling
  • Overabundance, or lack of graphics
  • Too many ads or inappropriate ads
  • Bad timing for the topic (example: An article about Christmas decorations won’t normally do too hot in August…)
  • Not written to your niche (if you have one) or not written for your audience

  This is NOT a full list by any stretch of the imagination. Just something to get you thinking.

• Update the graphics. Move them around, new graphics altogether, whatever just make it different
• If appropriate change the title
• Consider changing the post slug, but keep in mind that doing so will effectively break any existing links to that article
• Tweak the main content of the article as needed

Step 3: Promote it!

This is the final phase to reusing your content. It is also the most difficult to accomplish. Some things will simply not take off no matter how hard you try. Be prepared for that, but to give it a better chance of going viral consider the following advice

• Use more than one social media outlet (point #2) to get your name and brand out in front of the masses
• Make it your “featured” article for a day or two
• Promote it to a few of the bigger bloggers who have written related content in the past few days
• Ask your readers to promote it on their blogs/sites
• Comment on other blogs linking to the article in question not the general front page
• Comment on forums as well in the same manner
• Email the link to your friends and family. Don’t spam only send it to people who won’t get upset

There you have it. Three simple steps to take in order to make an old post effective again. Do you ever reuse your old content?

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Tags: Blogging, marketing, promotion, viral marketing