Extending the Life of a Post
Written by Steven Snell from Vandelay Design on September 5, 2007
If you are a blogger that posts new content frequently you are probably in the habit of posting an article and immediately moving on to your next idea. Many times we forget that an older post (maybe even just a few days older) can still do some good for our readers and for our blog (in terms of promotion).
Why Would You Want to Extend the Life of a Post?
- A post has not drawn as much traffic as you would like, or you think it has more value.
- It produces money for you in some way and you want to maximize the income.
- It draws inbound links, which you want to continue.
- It effectively converts readers into subscribers.
How Can You Extend the Life of a Post?
- Remove the date from the post.
- Feature it on your sidebar. Many bloggers use a popular posts list or something similar to draw attention.
- Update it and announce the update. You can announce the update in the comments if you offer a subscribe to comments option (that way everyone subscribed to the comments will be emailed). You can also mention in an upcoming post that it has been updated and include a link.
- Turn it into a series. Following up on a post by adding new information on a related subject can be effective. Of course you will want to link all of the posts in the series to each other.
- Use social media. Even older posts can get some love from social media websites. My most successful experience with social media involved a post that was more than a month old and had received little attention on its own.
- Get some links to it. Links will create click-through traffic an can increase the search engine rankings of the page. Blog carnivals can be a quick way to get some links to a particular post, or exchange links with other bloggers.
- Promote it at the bottom of your RSS feed. Many bloggers effectively use the bottom of RSS feeds as extra promotional space. If you’re a WordPress user the PostPost plugin is an easy way to add content to the bottom of your feed without it showing up on your blog.
Any other ideas for extending the life of a post? If so, please share them.
Kevin | September 6th, 2007 at 4:29 am #
As long as you add a note of your edit and when you edited it, I dont think you need to remove the date from the original article
Social media is a good way to keep a post alive. I’ve recently linked to some good blogging posts which were 4-6 months old
Good post Steven
Daniel Primed | September 6th, 2007 at 9:47 am #
Making a “Best of” page or post on your site is also a great idea to ensure that people check back to see your older articles.
Steven Snell (Post Author) | September 6th, 2007 at 10:19 pm #
Kevin,
Good point on the date, I agree with you.
Daniel,
Yes, I think you are right. Many bloggers do this effectively at the end of the month.
Tay | September 6th, 2007 at 11:31 pm #
Steven,
This is a great post! It definitely made me realize that I do just what you said - after writing an article, I’ve already moved on to the next project.
I’ll use your advice and try to make the most of my older articles. Thanks!