Frequent blog posting is good for SEO, your audience, and your website and those that post more than 15+ times a month may see the biggest return in terms of SEO and online searches. The more content you post, the better your chance of being found during an online search.
Blogs are credible, viewed as trustworthy and accurate. Trying to build likes and comments on the posts on your Social Media platforms may help the blogs stay around longer and be viewed by more people.
But coming up with new relevant content daily/weekly is an overwhelming undertaking. While we love to see fresh pertinent content, we do encourage our clients to repost old blogs, but not just by cutting and pasting without considering these guidelines. Why should you repost old blog content?
Memory and New Faces
Remember that you may have posted a blog on your SM site a while ago and it may or may not have been read. Our news feeds are busy and it’s easy to miss something that has been posted, let alone someone regularly going to your blog on your website. Reposting content jogs people’s memories. After all how many times have you read something, forgot to save it, and then couldn’t remember where you saw it?
Reposting a blog may also drive new readers to your site. Most new readers to your site might not go back and read everything you’ve already published on your Facebook timeline or your blog. We love those new readers that do delve into your website and SM platforms though, don’t we? Plus, as Facebook continues to grow and the content that appears is never ending, what are the chances your readers saw it the first time? Depending on how long they’ll sit and scroll, it might get missed, especially if you didn’t promote it financially.
Repost With a Message
Let your readers know you are reposting the blog. You could write something like, “You might have seen this before, but…” and explain why you’re reposting it. This is a good time to clean up the language, be sure dates and links are correct, and verify the relevance. Can you change up the photo but keep it relevant to the article. Maybe your new message is as simple as a quote that adds some new interest and energy to your blog. Reposting a blog that was liked and saw positive traffic is a way of validating the post. When reposting, always keep the URL the same but consider changing the title/headline (but keep keywords the same) if nothing else, so that it doesn’t appear to be the same content to your viewer. Most times this won’t matter since you may have new people looking at it, or more often, if it’s been a while since the content was published, people may not remember reading it (as much as we’d love them to).
Has the Topic Changed?
Is there something new and different about the topic that you can add or change? Has a perspective changed or is the relevance of the article different? Will it add new insight or another side to the original topic?
Oh How Times Have Changed
Does your previous blog promote a way of thinking or an idea that you now see might be wrong or now invalid, or have the times dictated changes in your thinking? This is a good time to revisit that blog and add a new or different viewpoint or just recognize that times have changed and so must your blog. Another way to demonstrate a change in thinking or idea is to write a response post that is attached to the old post. Now both sides, or the new information, or the changes, can be seen and commented on.
Does it Make Sense?
Don’t just repost to take up space on your Social Media page. Is the topic relevant right now? Are you getting inquiries about the topic? Are you answering the same questions that the blog could answer for you, freeing up your time to move forward in your business?
Takeaways
- Don’t over post the same content. It might be seen as spam, or the same viewers will be the only ones viewing it.
- Post it at a different time and day than previously posted to potentially engage new folks to your site.
- Target a new audience for the repost. Even organic posts have different target audiences, so this may work in your favor. What’s old to some is new to others.
- Vary the post if you can so that while technically it is a repost, it doesn’t look or read exactly the same. However, the content and idea is still the meat of your blog.
- Do you have a new blog that can be linked to an older one? If you have some related topics, link the blogs and you could gain some traction to your site just by linking the old with the new. The more blogs you’ve written gives you more options to link articles.
- Don’t publish reposted posts more than new and fresh posts. Your readers will recognize this and may stop frequenting your site.
Reposting an old blog will potentially bring new traffic, and that new traffic might just spend some time reading other blogs you’ve written. Win-win, right?
