Many website owners will create a continuous stream of content in order to keep visitors coming. What happens when the creative well runs dry? It can be quite discouraging to suffer writer’s block. You may have followers and fans waiting for the next post. Luckily, a lack of ideas doesn’t have to be your site’s undoing. In fact, you probably have all kinds of content you can share right now. It’s the old posts in WordPress that can help increase web traffic through social sharing.
Keeping the Flow Going
Studies show that a large number of people who visit any given website are doing so through social media. As you can add links to each of these posts, you can take something that was created years ago and repurpose it to seem like new. A lot of developers will use tools to schedule posting these linked messages months in advance. This allows you to keep the flow of content going on social media. Each of these older post has potential to reach thousands of new visitors and engage the ones you already have.
Choosing the Right Content
Before you schedule those old WordPress posts, you need to consider the content. Something that is time sensitive could be detrimental to the site and the reputation of the company. You would want to use content that is “evergreen” in order to help increase web traffic.
Evergreen
Evergreen content is material that stays the same regardless of the date. It is usually purely-fact driven and based on information that is less likely to change. If the material has somewhat time-sensitive text, many authors will add in “As of…” before the year so readers know that the content was based on period-specific information. Developing content such as, “Studies prove that exercise is good for health” would be considered evergreen because it’s information that is concrete and timeless.
Low Visits
Many website owners will use content that has experienced a low number of visits and are of a certain age. For example, what if you have a post that had five visits inside the last three months? By repurposing these pages, you can determine if the topic itself is weak or if the content was just not marketed well. This could also happen if you’ve developed time-sensitive content that is no longer relevant.
Easiest Way to Share
One of the easiest ways to repurpose your older posts in WordPress is through the use of sharing plugins. Many of these will allow you to schedule when the post will automatically be placed on various social media platforms. Once you install and activate them, you can alter the settings to allow the plugin to update your social accounts without input from yourself. Here are a few of these plugins that can be beneficial:
Revive Old Post
The Revive Old Post plugin lets you share new and old content as well as integrating hashtags to use such as those in Twitter and Google+. The Pro version of the plugin takes the sharing further by allowing images and more social accounts. Updates to social media can also be done at random intervals.
AccessPress Facebook Auto Post
This plugin only centers around Facebook, but has great potential for sharing your content. Once you configure the plugin, it will automatically send posts and pages to your Facebook account. You can also define which posts and categories to avoid.
NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
NextScripts is a fine addition to WordPress as it covers a wide scope of social media. It includes URL shortening and customized settings for addresses. This plugin will convert your tag or categories as hashtags in corresponding social platforms.
Integrating YouTube
Virtually anyone can create a YouTube channel to increase web traffic. One method that many WordPress owners use is that of using old content to create new videos. Depending on how much content you have on the site, you could have ideas to last a long time. Once the videos are created, don’t forget to add them to your WordPress posts. It may help retain visitors for longer periods of time. This is done by copying the “embed” code that is provided by YouTube and pasting it directly onto your post. It probably wouldn’t hurt to share the video on your social profiles as well.
Old content not only helps facilitate domain authority and boost website rank performance, it can also be used to engage new visitors. As long as you’re sharing the right content, you could enhance traffic without writing a new piece of material. Even something that was created a long time ago can have potential to drive an audience. Look through your old posts and see if there is anything you’d like to revisit.
How many posts do you have that can be repurposed? How often have you suffered from writer’s block when creating new content?