How to Generate 2,000 Pageviews with an Under-Performing Post Written 2 Years Ago
If you've been blogging for a few years, you probably have loads of old content just sitting in the archives. Today, your focus is on generating that next piece that's going to make a splash in the social media outlets and generate tons of search traffic. But what if that post could be one that you wrote two years ago? As a matter of fact, what if that post could be an under-acheiver that barely made a blip? Swanson Health Products made this happen through a series of steps that I'm going to outline below.
Step 1 - Find Your Diamond in the Rough
This first step is key if you're going to be able to identify which piece is the underperformer with real potential. There are several tools you can use to do this, but I like to recommend Outbrain to my clients. When setup on your blog, Outbrain can be configured to recommend other blog posts at the end of each of your posts. This tool keeps readers engaged with your content and makes them less likely to just bounce after they're finished reading. As a peripheral benefit, using Outbrain also reveals which posts your readers find interesting. Swanson started getting hundreds of visits to their under-performing post about diet tips which told them that the timing must be right to make another run with this post.
Step 2 - Test Content in One Channel
Swanson decided to test the waters on their post by including it in one of their weekly newsletters. You may decide that there's another channel you'd like to vette out before testing in your newsletter, so feel free to start with another channel. I recommend that most companies start with one of their social channels since their newsletter is typically reserved for only their very best content.
Step 3 - Launch Multi-Channel Promotion
Once you've seen another round of success with your newly discovered post, launch it to your other channels. For Swanson, this included promoting the post on their Facebook timeline. As a proven piece of content now, this post performed as intended and ended up driving a decent amount of traffic and social interaction.
You aren't likely to find this year's most successful post using this tactic, but you can certainly spin up some traffic and buzz from your old, dusty content. Here are a couple more ways to get more mileage out of your content:
- If your business is seasonal, pull out one of your best performers from last year and promote it in your newsletter and/or social channels. You're likely to get some excitement and activity from those who missed it last year. Pro Tip: Even if your business isn't seasonal, you may have great seasonal content. One client who sells baby supplies wrote a post about tips for summer pregnancies last year that got traction recently since we are heading back into summer.
- Search your archives for old posts that are on-topic for current events. Link back to your relevant, old posts in your social networks to get more mileage out of them.
Have some other tips on how to get the most out of your content? Share with us in the comments below!
