We’ve all been there – hours deep in researching, writing and editing the perfect blog post. It’s the cherry on top of your constantly-growing website. But days after you finally hit “publish”, visitors still aren’t engaging. All that hard work and there’s nothing to show for it. You like how your post turned out – why doesn’t anyone else?
This is incredibly frustrating. But the good news is, there are tons of techniques to get more out of your posts. Here are some of the most effective approaches around:
Repurpose your content
Maybe the information is great, but the package isn’t working for people. A 12-minute read on the arboreal locomotion habits of South American mammals is a harder sell than a 30-second clip of a sloth climbing a tree while facts scroll across the bottom of the screen. With that in mind, start to think about the different ways you can turn your blog post into something more engaging. Shifting your written blog post into video content is just one example of repurposing.
In this case “repurposing” just means taking the meat of your content and sharing it in a different form. Maybe the language will stay the same or maybe the repurposed content will just use the bullets of your original post. Maybe there won’t be any text at all in the new content. It really just depends on what you’re doing.
One example of repurposing your blog post might be you pulling 4 strong quotes and turning them into images.
After that you could share them as a series of tweets that link back to your post.
You can take this same principle and apply it across multiple social media platforms. Maybe you wrote a blog post that argues that Delta Blues paved the way for 2017’s rise in popularity of K-pop bands in America. Repurpose your blog post as a playlist and share that with your network.
Whatever the post may be about, remember that you can always find a way to take all of that solid work and create something new to engage with your audience.
When it comes to repurposing, make sure you use your personal accounts as well as the accounts associated with your website or company. Using your personal brand as a tool to help your site grow and get more value out of your blog posts is often overlooked, but very powerful.
Update Your Content Regularly
In addition to using your blog post as a starting point for a video, images, playlists, presentation, etc – we also suggest that you add to existing posts. To capture more engagement, look at past blog posts that have great engagement metrics or relevant topics. You can easily add a paragraph or two with updated information, or your own evolving opinions.
When reviewing older posts, consider adding this:
- New data/studies
- Complementary media
- New quotes from industry leaders
- Links to relevant posts you’ve written since then
- Updated references when citing examples
While you don’t have to update all of your posts every month, pay particular attention to your most popular posts and those that could relate to current stories in the news.
Gain traction with technical tweaks
Now that you know how to get more out of your posts by updating the content and reconfiguring them in different mediums, it’s time to get technical.
- Post and share your blog on social media at the right time.
Unfortunately, there is no universal “right time” for either of these things. While you can look at general trends for what time of day people are more likely to check their Facebook accounts or read what you posted on Medium, this may vary for your particular audience. That means that you need to do some research into general trends for engagement, but also track your posts and social media activity. What time was it when you posted your most popular article? What day of the week was it? Did anyone with a huge social media reach repost it? These are the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself to figure out the best times to post or share your blog posts going forward.
- Do some basic keyword research
Identify the kinds of keywords and long tail keywords people are typing into search engines about your blog post’s topic. Use a free tool to find relevant keywords that you could get your post to rank for. Re-read your post and add in keywords where necessary. Ideally you do this before you publish any new posts, but we recommend you go back to existing posts as well. By succeeding at this, your posts can drive some serious organic traffic from search engines to your posts.
- Use a custom CTA that is associated with that blog topic
There’s strength in numbers – especially when it comes to getting more out of your blog posts. Come up with a CTA (call-to-action) for all of your posts associated with one particular topic. The CTA could be anything from following you on social media to subscribing to your email newsletter. The idea here is that your CTA is relevant to the people reading about this topic and that over time you’ll generate some activity around that call to action.
- Use a smart internal linking strategy between posts.
Keep visitors engaged with your blog by linking to other relevant posts. This passes more traffic and SEO value to other pages on your blog.
The easiest way to get value out of your blog posts is to tweak them from a technical standpoint, update them and repurpose them. If a great blog post doesn’t do well the first time around, try one of these strategies the second time.