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Researching and writing a blog post can be time-consuming, so you may not have the resources to consistently produce new content for your website. Luckily, you don’t have to create new content in order to keep driving traffic back to your website. With the right strategy, you can continue to drive traffic to your website using the content that you’ve already written.
Social media plays a huge role in this strategy, specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Post the first paragraph from one of your old blogs on Linkedin and share it with your followers. Include a link to the rest of the blog underneath the first paragraph so your followers will have to click through to your website in order to see the remaining content. Not only does this help you drive traffic, it also helps you establish yourself as an expert within your field.
Then, begin to promote your old content on Facebook as well. Be sure that you are careful not to post the same article twice within the same week. If you post the article more than once within a short timeframe, people who are visiting your Facebook page for the first time will scroll through your posts and assume you do not have much to say.
Finally, get on Twitter and start sharing these posts on this platform as well. It’s recommended that you send up to 10 tweets per day, so it would be helpful to use a tool such as Buffer to schedule the posts in advance.
Now that you know where to post your old content, it’s important to follow these tips to ensure your strategy is success:
Change the Copy
On Facebook and Twitter, you will need to write a few sentences of copy before directing followers to click on the link to see your old content. It’s imperative that you write fresh copy for this lead-in instead of reusing the same introduction over and over. Be creative with how you write this copy—use questions, statistics, and quotes from the blog to make each social media post look unique.
For example, let’s say you are promoting this blog on social media. One of your social media posts could say “How can you drive traffic back to your website using content that you’ve already created? Find out (insert link).” The next time you share this article, you could say something like, “It takes an average of 1 hours and 58 minutes to write a blog post. Save yourself time by driving traffic with old content: (insert link).”
Adjust the Copy For Each Platform
As you write the copy for your post, be mindful of which platform you are using. Don’t forget to include relevant hashtags on Twitter and if you’re using Facebook, don’t be afraid of writing a longer intro to the link to really get your point across. Don’t just copy and paste the same intro on Twitter and Facebook—think carefully about how you can optimize the copy to entice followers to click on your link and read your old content.
Change the Image
Followers who visit your Facebook page may notice that you are reusing the same content. How? When you post an article on Facebook, it automatically pulls in the image from the link and uses it as the image for your social media post. If you are posting the same content every few weeks, someone who is scrolling through your page may see the same image over and over again and realize that the content is being reused. Avoid this problem by swapping out the images in your blogs from time to time. This way, your social media posts will look different and followers may not realize that it’s the same article you just posted a few weeks ago.
Check for Relevancy
Before reusing old content, it’s important to skim through it to make sure that it is still relevant. For instance, a news website could not get away with reposting content with predictions on who is going to win the 2016 presidential election. However, a news website could get away with posting content about the best super foods to incorporate into your diet since this information is still relevant.
If you are reusing content that is more than one year old, you may want to update any statistics that you use to prove your point. Followers who click through to your website do not want to see statistics from 2013 when there is data available from 2015 or 2016.
Add More To Existing Content
If you feel as if you are reposting the same blogs on your social media pages over and over, you can always freshen up the content by adding to it. This is much easier than researching and writing a new blog, so it won’t take you nearly as long. Expand on areas that you feel weren’t touched on enough in the initial blog, or include more resources to support the information you’ve already written. Then, include the date at the top or bottom of the blog and note that the information has been updated. This will signal to your readers that even if they’ve read the post before, they may want to give it another look to see what new information has been added.
A Final Note
Even though you can drive traffic back to your website with old content, you shouldn’t give up on creating new content. Old content should be used to fill in on the days or weeks when you don’t have the time to write something new, but it should not be used to completely replace new content creation.
For more advice related to digital marketing, contact us today to schedule a free consultation.