Content isn’t a minor investment for a small business, and the better the content is, the more expensive it’s likely to be. But unlike other forms of promotion — think PPC advertising — an investment in content produces an owned asset. Once you’ve paid for content, it’s yours to do with as you will.

Unfortunately, many businesses leave old content to languish on their blog, becoming steadily less relevant and effective. I’d like to take a look at seven ways smart businesses are investing in the content they already own to increase its value.

1. Keep it fresh

I’m a big fan of evergreen content: content that remains valuable for longer than the lifespan of a trend or news cycle. However, even evergreen content benefits from occasional pruning and watering.

I advise small businesses to regularly revisit old content, especially if it’s proven popular, to refresh stale details and ensure it stays relevant.

2. Don’t be afraid to repost

If, in the process of revising old articles, you add substantial new content or if the topic of old content becomes relevant again, reposting can be an option.

You should be careful not to repost identical content as a new article because it can cause duplicate content issues. One way around this difficulty is to change the date of publication so that the article moves to the top of the blog stream.

Don’t go overboard with reposting. No one wants the see the same ten articles endlessly recycled, but keep reposting in your bag of content marketing tricks.

3. Share old content

If you only share content when it’s published, you’re likely to miss out on a big chunk of its potential audience. I advise businesses to share content on social media platforms several times when it’s first published over the course of a few days, and at longer intervals thereafter.

For older content, if it becomes relevant again, reshare with new content attached to the social media posts indicating that the post isn’t new. WordPress plugins like Revive Old Posts can help automate the process.

4. Leverage analytics data

Analytics data can tell you which of your older posts still generate substantial traffic and often the exact search terms that are leading users to your site.

To increase the traffic these posts generate, you should consider editing to make the content more relevant to those search queries. Edit the article’s title, meta description tags, and headers as appropriate.

5. Repurpose content

Blog posts are chunks of content that can easily be repurposed into other formats. A couple of favorites are infographics and ebooks.

Infographics can be built around the content of popular articles to generate additional traffic and social media sharing.

Several blog posts can be tied together to make an eBook. Don’t grab random articles and publish them as an eBook with no editing. Take related content and edit it: add transition material, make sure the tone and language are consistent, and write a new conclusion and introduction.

6. Surface old content in Related Articles widgets

Related article widgets — like WordPress Related Posts — are a great way to increase engagement with older content and to keep people clicking on your content rather than heading back to Google.

7. Internal linking

Linking from new articles to relevant older articles increases the likelihood that readers will see them. It can also be great for SEO because it improves the number of paths search engine crawlers have to the linked page.

This is another of the practices that can be overdone. If an external site has a more relevant source than your site, it’s best to link to it rather than your own content.

Content is an owned resource that, with a little care and attention, can remain valuable to a business for many years.

Photo by Rajesh Appalla / Unsplash.