There are many reasons why it is a good idea to refresh or reuse your blog content from time to time. First off, updating content takes a lot less time than creating an original post from scratch. Second, if your audience as grown over the life of your blog, most people haven’t seen this earlier post so it’s brand new to them. Third, if you’ve changed your mind or new research has come out about your topic, it’s always wise to update your previous thoughts. Because of the way SEO works, people searching specifically for the topic(s) mentioned in your blog may still stumble across it even if it is years old. It’s in your best interest to make sure that the article is accurate and reflects your true feelings.
Some of the best posts to refresh are the evergreen content, which is to say the posts that are timeless, that got a lot of social shares, and is considered canonical in your area of expertise. These are the posts that people turn to often and benefit the most from an update.
Now let’s take a look at 7 ideas to update your old content.
- New Research—As we said, if new material about your topic has come out or you’ve changed the way you feel about it, it’s always a good idea to update the old post. You can then repost it and share it with your annotations.
- Infographic or Slideshow—Another way to update old content is to take the information from the original post and create an infographic and slideshow for it. For example, if your original post was on how to talk to your stylist to get the best cut, create an infographic that lays out the questions you should ask systematically. Easy to follow and even easier to share for your audience.
- Series of Emails—If you wrote a longform post or a series of posts on a particular subject, break them down into smaller pieces for an email series. Perhaps you answered a common, but tricky question for your industry—these make great email series because everyone wants to know the answer.
- Host a Podcast—Who says you have to write to update older content? Just about everyone likes to watch a video and you can break down complicated subjects with ease using charts and graphics. If it’s a more in-depth topic, you could do a series of podcasts too.
- Publish an eBook—Gather all your similarly-themed posts for updating and then create a free eBook for your audience. Make sure to share it on social media and link back to the content on your blog.
The next time you are stuck on what to post, take a look back at what you have accomplished so far. We are sure you have some diamonds in the rough that could use a little polishing.
Have an idea for refreshing old blog content? Talk to us in the comments.