6 Ways to Get More Mileage from Your Blog

Janet Barclay

Janet Barclay

A former professional organizer, I now eliminate stress for my clients by hosting, monitoring, and maintaining their WordPress sites so they don’t have to worry about security, downtime or performance issues. When I’m away from my desk, I enjoy reading, photography, watching movies, and cooking.

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Whether blogging is your passion or something you feel you have to do, I’m sure you put a lot of time and effort into creating your content. No matter how good a writer you are, most people will only read what you’ve posted recently, but with a little creativity, you can repurpose what you’ve written and get it working harder for you!

Mix and Match

Have you ever missed out on an opportunity to submit an article or blog post to an online or printed publication, because you couldn’t find the time to write something new? That’s too bad! You’ve got a bunch of great material at your fingertips, and just because they asked for something original doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch.

Why not take selections from several related posts and combine them into a new one? You’ll need to do a little editing to make it flow properly, but it’ll take a lot less time than coming up with something brand new.

Reuse and Recycle

Your old blog posts don’t have to disappear into obscurity! Some, such as event announcements, may be time-sensitive, but organizing principles don’t change, so a list of tips you prepared two years ago will be equally useful today. All you need is a way to promote them once they’ve disappeared from your home page and your subscribers have deleted them from their inboxes or RSS readers.

The Revive Social WordPress plug-in lets you bring your earlier work to the attention of newer readers and revive the discussions on those posts by automatically posting links to your social media accounts. I’ve used it in the past, but stopped when it went out of control one day.

If you opt for this type of automation, take the time to configure it so you don’t annoy your followers by promoting posts that are off-season or are out-of-date, or by posting too often, and to engage properly on each platform you use. Otherwise, you’ll get very little value from this.

If you can’t or don’t want to install a plugin, there’s no reason you can’t share links to your older posts using a scheduling app like Buffer or Hootsuite.

Refresh and Renew

Some things do change. Maybe you wrote a really great post a few years ago, but some of the information is now out of date. There’s absolutely no reason not to take that post, remove the parts that are obsolete, and replace them with something new and fresh. But instead of keeping it buried in your archives, delete the old one and publish the revised edition as a brand new post.

The best way to manage this process is with the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin. Its Rewrite & Republish feature allows you to create a working copy of an existing post which you can edit and reschedule for a later date. The existing post will remain live until the new one is published.

Create a Compilation

Once you’ve been blogging for several years, there’s a good chance that you’ve touched on similar subjects from time to time. For example, perhaps every year you’ve written a post about getting organized for back to school, or getting organized for the holidays. This year, instead of scratching your head to come up with some new ideas, make it easy on yourself and make a list of your previous articles, with the titles linked to the original posts. Most readers won’t have seen them the first time, and those that did aren’t likely to remember and will probably enjoy reading them again.

Build a Book

Do you ever read your own blog and think, “This is great stuff. It’s too bad I couldn’t sell it!” Who says you can’t?

Much of the material in Geralin Thomas’ book, From Hoarding to Hope: Understanding People Who Hoard and How To Help Them, originally appeared on her blog. The same is true of Beth L. Buelow’s Insight: Reflections on the Gifts of Being an Introvert and probably a lot more books than we even realize.

Learn how to turn your blog into an e-book.

Create a Course

Years ago, ProBlogger Darren Rowse published a series of blog posts that made up a month-long challenge to his readers. He then packaged them as a downloadable e-book and sold tens of thousands of copies before he converted it to an online course called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

These are just a few of the ways you can repurpose your blog content. What others can you think of? Join the conversation by leaving a comment below!

For more blog-related conversation with peers, join the Blogging Organizers group.

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12 Comments

  1. Avatar Colette Robicheau on May 3, 2011 at 10:30 am

    Great info as always.

  2. Avatar Kathy Stinson on May 3, 2011 at 2:59 pm

    Ditto! (on what Colette said).
    And I’m not even a professional organizer!

  3. Avatar Janet Barclay on May 4, 2011 at 3:42 pm

    Thank you, Colette and Kathy! Come back soon to read about the other side of the coin! 😉

  4. Avatar The English Organizer on May 6, 2011 at 10:02 pm

    “Reuse and recycle” are great ideas, but I love the Compilation tip. Thank you!

  5. Avatar Janet Barclay on May 7, 2011 at 8:32 am

    I’ll be watching for a compilation post from you now, Pauline! 🙂

  6. Avatar Sue West on April 6, 2016 at 7:56 pm

    I was just thinking about older blog posts the other day. They are my work, so I don’t want to delete them. Instead of decluttering, I can update and reuse. Love it. You read my mind again, Janet.

  7. Avatar Seana Turner on September 12, 2024 at 11:21 am

    Wow, some great ideas here. I’ve started to update older posts. I didn’t know about that plugin. I was just “making a duplicate” and working on it until I published the updated one, and then deleted the old one. This can lead to broken links is the only problem.

    I’ve been working on spreading my content out across different platforms like your “mix and match” idea. For instance, trying to make Youtube videos of some of my written content.

    If only I weren’t so busy working, I could do this stuff full time LOL!

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on September 13, 2024 at 9:12 am

      I know exactly what you mean! I suggest that you start by identifying what you hope to get out of the exercise, then make a list of ideas and focusing on those that will give you the best ROI. If you enjoy the process, even better!

  8. Linda Samuels Linda Samuels on September 12, 2024 at 11:41 am

    Wow, Janet! This is chock-full of great ideas. The two that resonate most with me are “Build a Book” and “Create a Course.” Since I don’t have a WordPress site, some other suggestions don’t apply.

    While I haven’t created a course, I have used my blog posts to develop single one-hour workshops. That’s going great. I reread one of my posts this morning, and a light bulb went off. I got so excited and realized it was great content for a new workshop I’d love to develop.

    Creating downloadable books from old posts is something else I’ve considered. It’s one of those projects that I know I’d need help with. It’s not that I couldn’t figure it out by myself. But my gut tells me that having some guidance would be more than helpful.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on September 13, 2024 at 9:16 am

      That’s pretty exciting, Linda! When I read something I wrote years earlier, I’m often (but not always!) amazed at my brilliance 😀 .

  9. Avatar Janet Schiesl on September 12, 2024 at 1:09 pm

    I’ve been focusing on ways to reuse my blog posts recently. As you said, why reinvent the wheel?
    Many years ago I challenged myself to blog everyday. The result, years later was a DIY organizing subscription service. It took a little work but the content was mostly already there.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on September 13, 2024 at 9:17 am

      Your organizing subscription service is such a brilliant idea! I don’t think I’ve seen anything similar being offered.

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