The amount of content, information and words that is now on the internet is immeasurable. With the number of people blogging, the amount of blogs they write, the frequency with which they write them and the enthusiasm with which they produce them, have you ever wondered how you are going to get your voice heard? It seems that you spend time and effort writing a post but because of the cacophony of noise, it only takes the blink of an eye and it has been lost or forgotten and all that hard work has been wasted.
For those people who have been writing a blog for a few years now, this can be frustrating. Of course, I know that there are some blog posts I wrote in 2007 which I am probably not so proud of now, but there were a few which I was really pleased with. But how is anyone going to find them?
One way is to rely on your SEO. If you had a quirky, eye-catching heading when you first posted your post so it would stand out in people’s readers, you could change the heading to something keyword heavy and (more) search engine friendly.
Another way is to do a Best Of…Summer Season.
Christopher Penn describes how to do that very well, giving tips on ensuring you choose your best posts according to statistics. He then suggests you go back over the popular ones re-read them and re-edit them. If there are things which need updating, do so. Ensure you don’t break any links. Then shine a spotlight on to it
There are several ways you can do this:
1. You can tweet it out, making clear that this is a ‘best of’ post, not something brand new
2. You can write a ‘Best of…’ post with links to all of your old gems
3. You can write a new post which references the old subject matter and link back to it
All of these things (and others, I’m sure) will help some of your newer audience members to find some of the older content which you might have written before they discovered you. Just because you have seen it before doesn’t mean the rest of the world has. Give them a chance to read it if you are really proud of it.
It is difficult to continually come up with new ideas (although the Chris Brogan’s of the world dance around that statement and prove ever day that it isn’t impossible). Sometimes reviving an idea can be just as valuable to your audience and give you a little bit of inspiration.
Thank you to Stuck in Customs for the image
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Tags: inspiration, old content, reruns
