21 Dec How to Keep Your Content Relevant
So you’ve written the perfect post, short story, comic, etc. You’ve marketed it successfully and garnered a number of hits in a matter of a few weeks after posting it. Now what? How do you maintain that post’s online presence? You want to maintain a conversation and keep news media interested, but how do you keep that news relevant? We’ll discuss that in this article.
Tip #1: Let Readers Share It
When your readers can easily tell others about your posts, it can quickly become free advertising for you. With most content management systems (CMS), it is relatively easy to add social media share links to your posts. The scenario here is; reader #1 shares your article, which leads to reader #2. They share it, which leads to Reader #3 and so on.
Tip # 2: Paid Promotions
Another option is to continue paying for ads or pay to have another brand promote your material on their site or YouTube channel. This option isn’t always favorable however, but it can get you some new readers. You will have to be careful about who you pay – always do your research and make sure whatever site or channel you’re paying to promote your material has its own steady stream of consumers.
Tip #3: Use Syndication
There are some critical advantages of syndication and guest blogging, which can give your content access to audiences who would otherwise be unaware of who you are and what you do. While there’s no direct SEO benefit from guest blogging/syndication, the opportunity to extend your influence is hard to pass up. The biggest downside of this approach is that you’ll have to decide which of your ‘creative crown jewels’ should be handed over to a third party (instead of running on your own site).
Tip #4: Plan for Reuse
Inbound marketing relies on trading access for someone’s content in exchange for permission to re-message those who seek access. Consequently, having an inventory of long-form, high-quality assets such as e-books is critical for inbound to work. But producing such works can mean a lot of effort. If you (or your team) is stretched in this area, you can cut e-book production time by planning each blog post to serve as an individual chapter in a longer work. Once the series of posts is completed, compile them into an e-book, add appropriate graphics, an intro and outro, and TOC, and you’re done.
While some social media uses of content are short-lived, content can last forever thanks to strong SEO. Even if you haven’t written the content with the idea that it is evergreen, you never know how it may rank down the road. A CMS that allows you to adapt navigation surrounding older content is a great way to reroute visitors to fresher, more relevant content.
I hope this article is found helpful. Content can truly live forever online; it just requires a healthy amount of upkeep to do so. If you can keep exposing new people to your content, it will never fade away.