Julia BorginiIn a benchmark study of HubSpot customers, they found that ones that blog 15+ times per month get 5 times the traffic than the ones that don’t blog at all.
Five. Times.
While part of that is because they’re putting out a lot of great, valuable content for their audience, the other reason is a little more subtle. The more blog posts you publish, the more you have in your archive. And your archive can produce just as much, if not more, traffic to your blog and site as your fresh content.
Wait, what?
You read that right: your archived blog posts can give you just as much, OR MORE, web traffic than your new content. Especially when you’re publishing valuable posts every time.
You want to create recurring, lasting value with each and ever blog post, offering insight and information that your audience craves.
How to create recurring value from your old blog posts
Without any extra effort
Start with the search engines. They constantly send you traffic regardless of when you published the post. Each business blog post is a considered as a new page on your website, which gives it another chance to be indexed by the search engines.
If you’ve optimized each post for SEO, and included some nice images + ALT tags with keywords, you’ll enjoy the benefits of your blog post long after it was first published. That goes for both regular posts and evergreen ones too.
Add in social media sharing buttons to your business blog and your older content gets out there even more. Readers who like your content and appreciate its value are going to share it regardless of when you published it.
With minimal effort
Promote your older content any chance you get. Schedule a quick series of social media messages to blast out links to the old content on a regular basis (I do this every Friday on Twitter with my “From the Spc-Files” tweets.)
From the Spc-Files: Uncover the hidden #leadgen potential of your #B2B website with these 5 tips. http://t.co/ecKSHh5np4
— Julia Borgini (@spacebarpress) November 14, 2014
Ideally you should use different compelling headlines with each message, but you could even just use the same one. Much like the syndicated sitcom on TV, you’ll just be sending out the same message every time. It works for them, so it can work for you.
With a bit more effort
If you’re in the groove and really want to mine the value from your old business blog posts, then how about using it to build your email list? Simply take one of your post headlines and turn it into the opening line on your email sign-up form. Once the reader’s handed over their name and email address, redirect them to the blog post, where they’ll get the great content you promised if they signed up.
There’s still life in the old business blog
You don’t just publish blog posts and then forget about them. Use them to your advantage and wring every drop of value they have. Whether you just want to do the minimum for your old posts, or really go to town on them, they’ll deliver for you forever. Start them off right and they’ll be the gift that keeps on giving.
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