There is one thing that Google and its assorted trawling bots love, and that is fresh content. If that fresh content is also linked from established websites, then Google has every reason to believe the content is quite good, assumes it has some kudos, and will rank it higher.
This, of course, is brilliant good for the content creator, and the website where the content is housed. Fresh content is the key to this process – the oil that keeps the engine running if you like – and is critical in a healthy inbound marketing strategy.
But often, creating bespoke singular content is an expensive process. So how do you get the most out of new content? Hopefully this blog will go some way to identifying new content opportunities from old or existing content:
1. Switch the format up
As an example – if you’ve run surveys of your clients or market then reformat them. Oh and tweak for SEO as you go. Here’s some options:
- Video summary of the findings to YouTube
- Press release
- Segment the full report – show industry cuts
- Social media sharing of research nuggets. Social Media B2B do this very well embedding tweetable nuggets into an article. Like this article on content marketing stats.
- Create an infographic from the summary
- More social media sharing and discussion
- Micro poll your users as to if the results still stand true
- Publish results from the micro poll
2. The Friday roundup / in depth piece
Give followers a lean-back post to digest on Saturday or Sunday. Branding Magazine sends out a summary listing of their hot posts of the previous five days. Good for those relaxing on a Saturday morning with bacon and coffee. In contrast to a round up – the economist has a lean back section for a more in depth read on existing topics and themes.
3. Get all analytical
Find out which of your posts were the most popular in terms of traffic from various search terms. Promote them on social media. Rework those that are off target.
Use Topsy to compare trending hashtags, or trending phrases and really target your next article.
4. Think of your old posts
Continuing the analytics theme – give your old posts will little traffic a tweet or a share if there’s something relevant in the news related to that post. Use this one sparingly though as it could annoy your close followers. And tailor it to each audience!
If your blog is on WordPress, you may even want to consider the plugin Tweet Old Post which will automate it for you.
5. Newsjack
Your products or services might not be famous yet but helping out someone in a broadcasted bad situation can be powerful content. Oakley sent a new model of sunglasses to those leaving the Chilean mines a few years back – it was global news and everybody saw it. It gave others the chance to create loads of content around them.
It could also be a way to reassure your clients that this won’t happen to them – like password protection. A great example of newsjackking was Lastpass providing a tool to check if your LinkedIn password was stolen. They re-purpose this piece each and every time a new website is hacked or comes to the limelight for security breaches.
6. Croudsource an article from your comments area
I love when people point out an idea you’ve missed on a comments section from another article or blog. Use those ideas and expand on them in another post.
Your Turn
Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments section. I’d love to create another post!
Nick Allen - Marketing, Growth & Running 
I would say, doing the search to make it more up-to-date since it’s already old and the world updates itself from time to time. Nice one, I loved it 🙂
Great point Eslam,
Thanks for stopping by to comment.
Researching the topic on a regular basis to make sure it’s still relevant is a great idea. It might be a way to ensure buzzwords are incorporated too. Nick