Reviving Old Blog Posts – 5 Tips for Making Past Posts Popular
What Do We Do With Old Blog Posts, Old Pal?
Learning ways to revive old blog posts is part of being a successful blogger! These five tips for making past posts popular will help you figure out what to do with that pile of blog posts languishing in the cellar, all dusty and cobwebby.
Before the tips, a quip:
“Genius is the art of taking pains.” – Claude Hopkins.
Isn’t that great? Taking pains will make you a successful writer – if not a genuine genius! Part of being a genius is not letting things go to waste, which is what these tips for reviving old blog posts are all about…
5 Tips for Making Old Blog Posts Popular
Share new news in the comments section of the post
On my other Quips and Tips blogs, I’ve started using my comments form on old blog posts to describe related research, press releases, etc. For instance, on The Benefits of the Mediterranean Diet Plan, I added an excerpt of a current press release describing why this diet is so healthy. Commenting on your old posts pulls the post to the front page of your blog, where readers can find it. Plus, extra comments make the post more “weighty” in Google’s eyes, which makes it easier for readers to find. And, the easier it is to find, the more chance it has of being a popular past post!
Ask friends and fellow bloggers to comment
I talk about my blog posts to my friends, spouse, writer’s group, book club, etc – and people often share their opinions about the topic. So not only do I ask them to comment online, I actually send them the link to make it easy for them. This is a great way to revive old blog posts popular and involve people from your “real” life in your “cyber” life.
Ask a question on an old guest post
One of my favorite posts here on Quips & Tips for Successful Writers is 10 Tips for Achieving Your Writing Goals, by guest author Mark Richard Webb. To make that old blog post popular again, I could ask a question in the comment section, send Mark the link, and ask him to respond. This way, I get two new comments – and I increase the potential for the old post to become popular again.
Tweet your old blog posts
I’m revitalizing some of my old blog posts on Quips & Tips for Achieving Goals, and I found one I love — 10 Tips for Improving Your Luck. So, I tweeted it as one of my “oldies but goodies” (another Twitter benefit for writers). Unfortunately no readers commented on it – I’m chalking it up to July 4th holiday absenteeism – but a Twitter friend did RT it (thanks, @suzannelilly of TeacherWriter.net!).
Submit old articles as guest posts
Dig up one of your favorite old blog posts and ask someone in your blogging community if he or she is interested in posting it (don’t have a blogging community yet? Read 5 Tips for Building a Strong Writers’ Network). Make it clear that you’ve already posted it on your blog, and give the blogger a reason to post it. Why would his/her readers like your old blog post? Learning to sell your writing by explaining why readers might benefit is an important habit for successful writers; it’ll keep your skills strong for pitching article ideas to magazine editors or book proposals to agents or publishers.
To learn more about blog and web writing, read Web Content Rx: A Quick and Handy Guide for Writers, Webmasters, Ebayers, and Business People
by Wayne English. It’s brimming over with great advice!
If you’re interested in rewriting your past articles to make them popular again, read Tips for Repurposing Old Blog Content.
If you have any thoughts or comments on making past posts popular, please comment below…
Category: Blogs and Websites, Increasing Website Traffic, Online or Web Writing
That’s great, Clare, that you found a great way to revive your old blog post. Nice!
Thanks for the tips! I tweeted this old post about Darth Vader to someone styling themselves @DarthVader on Twitter because it was Star Wars Day…. and got more than 2000 visits when he retweeted it!!
Thanks for your comments — I appreciate your help in keeping this old blog post popular
One of the things that I have done to keep old posts alive is to set my home pages rss feeds to change all posts randomly instead of newest to oldest.
I am also working with a RSS include now and any RSS feeds can be randomly posted too (and PHP so the spiders can read them)
Not that I have got millions of visitors yet btw
Another way is to encourage community with commenters and making sure they are acknowledged and rewarded properly. I believe in dofollow for this but not everyone does.
If you have a community of commenters then once someone comments on an old post the others often follow suit. ( Wishful thinking?? ha ha )
Hi Laurie!
I am part of a “community” of bloggers and one of our last initiatives is exactly to revive old posts. Bloggers will send me the link for the post of their preference, saying why we would like to read them. This information form a new post in our list-blog.
We work as a meeting point for people who once had their blogs reunited in a newspaper that decided to disolve the community. The solution we found for not to be disconected from each other was to leave links from our blogs in a list-blog http://enjeitadosdogo.blogspot.com/. It is in Portuguese, but you can get an ideia.
I’m loving your blogs!
.-= Vicky´s last blog post ..On Babysitting and screaming babies =-.
Laurie,
Recently I’ve had newcomers to the blog comment on some older posts. It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed my archives and I’ve realized there is some stuff there from my early days that apply even today!
Thanks for these tips, I’m going to work on this today!
George
.-= Tumblemoose´s last blog post ..Inspired Writing for any Writing Project =-.
From the list on Making old blog posts popular I act on 1, 3 and 4 from time to time. I do find that I am bringing them back to life in a sense, and it helps to point them out to users too.
.-= Ana´s last blog post ..Choices of energy in rhythm =-.