Promotion Tips to Breathe Life into Older Content

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Remember that blog post you wrote six months ago that was so popular or the one from when your blog was just a baby that failed to gain traction? Of course you do. Unfortunately, your readers might not or missed it completely.

That's OK. Older content doesn't have to instantly die as soon as you hit 'publish' on another piece. You can promote content year-round, even if you're a busy freelance writer like Lana Bandoim.


"I try to promote older content if it is still relevant or comes back in the news," Bandoim said. "The biggest problem is finding time to promote older content with new content."

Indispensable Hootsuite

Bandoim, like many savvy writers on social media, uses Hootsuite as her go-to method for scheduling promotion. Hootsuite can be used to schedule updates to post at a later date on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. A tip to try is changing the headline into a question, so it gives your followers something to interact with.

Try not to send all of your Facebook updates from the application, as the social behemoth has lately been collapsing posts from here as similar. This causes only the most popular or recent post from Hootsuite to show, with a link underneath to expand to view the rest.

Scheduling for Sanity

Freelance writer Theresa Leshmann focuses on promoting seasonal content and uses Hootsuite. She also takes another organizational approach that would benefit writers stressing about promoting across multiple social accounts.

"I also keep a spreadsheet with titles, links and article categories so I don't have to search everything I've written to find them," said Leshmann. "Otherwise it would be a nightmare trying to find the pieces I'm looking for."

You could take this a step further and create a separate spreadsheet or calendar for the year and insert the links on all the days you want to promote that article. Don't over-schedule, though. Social networks should be primarily used to be social and not many pay attention to the person who is constantly link spamming them. The rule of thumb is to promote your work 20 percent of the time and engage and promote others the remaining 80 percent.

Pinterest Phenomenon 

Pinterest not only refers more traffic to sites than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, but a new Shareaholic report shows that it is now sending more visitors to sites than Twitter. That's huge.

The quality of the photograph you use is important on Pinterest, so make sure it is something other people will want to share. You can change the photo on your posts or edit another photo you have the rights to use to input the url. Use related keywords when filling out the description, so users can find it in search.

Turning Labels into Topic Pages

If you are utilizing labels or tags on your site--you should be--turn a handful of your most covered subjects into category pages. I do this with my political site and posts with the same tags as popular ones always receive an uptick in views. Just refer the page to the label url. Visitors can then browse the page to look for additional reading.

Utilize Your Blog

Our own sites can also be powerful promotional tools.

"I believe that we should promote older content as long as it is evergreen content or content that is still valid in some way," shares Professional Content Creation owner and writer Rebecca Livermore. "The primary way I do this is through linking to related blog posts in my new blog posts."

This is fairly simple to do if you tend to write about the same subjects. Just link a relevant older post to contextual words in your new posts. You may also want to create a short list of three to five related links at the end of your article. I use LinkWithin on my sites to offer readers thumbnails and titles of other posts they may be interested in reading.

Don't overlook creating useful posts with the purpose of linking back. You can do this by responding again to the issue, offering an update or doing a roundup post on the topic that links back to several posts--even if these are on multiple sites.

Sidebar Slideshow

Make the most of your site or blog's sidebar to post slideshow that links back to your posts. Use a plugin that allows for separate links on each slide. Use quality images that aren't too busy and use photo editing software, or just Paint, to overlay a catchy title over the image. Don't forget to share the slideshow on your social networks.

Do you use any of these methods or different ones to share older content?

Photo Credit: Original by LibandJustice/Wikimedia Commons, Remixed by Tamara McRill