If the idea of refreshing your company’s content seems not to make sense to you, you should consider your wardrobe. Go ahead and put on your bell-bottoms and that polyester shirt with the huge collar and… yeah. You have already lost three-quarters of your customer base, even without the platform shoes.
The fact is that you cannot expect to rely on wardrobes that have seen better days, and the same is true for your content. With an eye for content fashion and a good writer for hire, you can keep a few classic pieces for use in other purposes, without people thinking your website just wears the same outfit every day.
Why Reuse Content?
When you talk to some people in the industry, you might come to the conclusion that reusing your content from one form to another is a bit like wearing the same pair of underwear every day. This is untrue. Yes, it is a problem if you give your website content a complete refresh once a year and leave it unedited otherwise. Unfortunately, when you wear the same content month after month, you start to feel like the person who dons the same suit or dress for every party. Reusing content is not the same as leaving the site as-is. Instead, you take a piece of content that really shines and brighten it up for a sparkling new day.
Identifying the Fads
First you have to figure out which content has the true staying power. The Huffington Post recommends that you sort your website’s content for the items that are evergreen, and those that are season or event-specific. This does not mean you have to purge the blog post you wrote last September about your enjoyment of sweater weather. Rather, you should identify which pieces are so dated that you could not possibly find another purpose for them. This goes double for content created as part of a fad. Look for rich content written by a writer for hire that is as true now as the day it was written.
Recycling Content For a New Season
Now that you have a few classic pieces that worked well for your business, you can consider how best to repurpose them. Don’t you dare just copy and paste a web page into a blog post. That is not going to increase your rankings. Consider a new content form for the existing piece. Perhaps your blog post could be shared in a new social media format. Or, build a longer eBook full of the how-tos that you put on your website, as a PDF that prospective customers can download and read at their leisure.
It’s OK to admit that you have some content in your closet that was part of a bigger trend a few years back. When you are ready to take your best pieces and give them a new life, aim for the basic black that will never go out of style.
Holly S wrote this blog while wearing a pair of jeans she’s had for five years. They go with everything.
