There’s nothing wrong with reposting old blogs on social media – provided, of course, that the content is still relevant.
Which pretty much comes down to the way you write them.
We’ve covered this topic in an earlier post which looked at the difference between topical content and what I like to call ‘evergreen’ content.
With just a little care it’s easy enough to create content that will still remain relevant in the future. And when that becomes part of your blog ‘library’ it also becomes a valuable resource. Because it’s easy to reuse it in social media posts. Posts that will then continue to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of your subject. Which will continue to be seen by new audiences, creating new relationships online. And which will reinforce your continuing efforts to build up your most valuable asset – your contact database.
Of course, it’s only going to work if you have a reasonably substantial body of old blogs already available. If you only have three blog posts you may wish to write a few more before you start sending them out in a never-ending cycle on social media.
If you have 30, on the other hand, you can be reasonably sure that repetition won’t take the edge off their impact – especially if you continue to add new content all the time.
From topical to evergreen?
Sometimes current events can be the inspiration for a post – take, for example a blog post on marketing I wrote in the context of the June 2017 election. Events at the time gave a graphic demonstration of how, and how not, to run a political campaign. But the post, of course, was topical.
So I took a lesson from one of my favourite movies – Groundhog Day. (Which perhaps explains the image at the head of this post…)
If you haven’t seen it, it’s a delightful fantasy movie in which an obnoxious TV reporter, played by Bill Murray, is sent to a small town to cover the first appearance of groundhogs on Groundhog Day. And then finds himself living that same day, over and over again.
Until, finally, he realises that by changing his choices on that day, he can also change outcomes.
And, after a few hundred attempts, finally gets it right… and becomes a better person in the process.
With that in mind, I revisited that particular post, and rewrote it with the benefit of hindsight. (The original was put up while the campaign was still in progress and the results yet to be determined.)
As a result, I have no problem with reposting that blog on social media – editing has made the content evergreen. (Though whether that has made it a better blog I will leave to your judgement…)
Making it easy
So – you’d like to repost your old blogs, but you’re not sure how to do it?
If you have a WordPress site – as many do – it’s actually not difficult. The plugin you’re looking for is called ‘Revive Old Post‘ and we started using it here a few months ago. It has definitely improved our social media profile on Twitter (though we did have a few issues trying to link it to our Facebook account), and the Pro version gives even more control of what is posted, where and when. The beauty of it is that it does the job for you, quietly and in the background. And you can choose for yourself how old a post should be before it’s eligible for reposting, and how often you want to post.