How to Keep Your Website’s Content Fresh

When thinking of how to keep your website fresh, don’t underestimate the value of evergreen content, especially in a world where the pace of consumption moves as fast as it does.

If you publish on a weekly basis, you know it can be hard to keep up. Some days you’re strapped for time or resources or maybe the creative well has just run dry. But new content is what’s expected of you and your website, right?

Well, instead of fretting over the task of creating something from scratch every day, put some of your older, more popular pieces back to work.

Here are three ways to get more out of what’s already on your site:

1. Update and refresh.

I like to think of this as “content-riffing”. Dave Matthews has probably played Crash more times than he cares to think about, but I’m willing to bet he performs it slightly differently each time, and it’s still just as good. How can you do the same with your content?

One of our most popular blog posts is about the best times and days to publish on social media. It did well when we first published it, and we’ve continued to promote it on outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. But, while still applicable, it doesn’t necessarily count as a fresh piece of content that we could promote in, say, our weekly newsletter.

So, what’s one way to riff off this post? One thing we did was create a winter holiday edition. Posts that are styled in list form easily lend themselves to this strategy. Have a rundown on your Facebook best practices? Facebook is always changing, and there’s probably room for what you’ve written on the subject to as well. You could also expand and do a deep-dive, etc.

2. Think about how your content works on different platforms.

In a space that started with just a few players is now full of different platforms for you to share what you’ve created. And most times each of these social networks requires different tweaks. Think about how what you create on one platform, or even the different media you’ve used, can play to the strengths of other platforms.

For example, if you have a podcast, consider how you could take a show and put together a 300 word blog post summary. Break that down further by pulling out some quote-worthy lines, make it into an image or graphic, and now you’ve got great fodder for social media. Do these a few times, track your increases in engagement, and you have a blog post about how you improved your strategy. These types of micro-content can be easily digested by your followers.

3. Use content recommendation tools.

You’ve refreshed a post, promoted it on social media, and it’s brought visitors to your site. Now you want to keep them there. Content recommendation tools are a powerful way to do this. It’s also a way to surface older content. In addition, you can even use a Welcome Bar or Marketing Overlay to promote a particular post if you’re looking to drive traffic to a page.

These are just a few ways to start reviving older content. What issues are you facing with your content marketing and what’s your fix?

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