In an increasingly fast-paced digital world, we are constantly bombarded with new content. News websites and platforms have created a 24/7 stream of content and constant access to social media channels, including mobile platforms, means that content is always in our pockets.
But for businesses, brands, and website and blog owners, keeping up with the seemingly endless and constant consumption of content customers demand can be incredibly challenging. Trying to figure out what’s new and what’s trending on social media platforms to grab customers’ attention can be a daunting task.
While it’s true that fresh content is a key component of digital marketing and customer engagement, many businesses, websites, and blogs get so caught up in this content vortex that it’s impossible to pause and take note. With the constant focus on new content, quality sometimes gets lost under the pressure of keeping up with everything new and the urge to create and publish endlessly. This often results in an inability to reevaluate and analyze what’s been published previously and understand how people received and interacted with your content.
This means that businesses, as well as websites and blogs, may miss out on valuable opportunities to learn about their audience and the content they truly value. Sometimes, a high-performing article, post, product, or piece of content will engage your audience better the second time around, and your most engaging content may be something your audience will appreciate again and again.
Revival and Re-InteractionStart by knowing your highest performing and most engaging content.
Work hard or work smart? You can exhaust your creative juices by coming up with new content every day—or you can rediscover and refine your best-performing content from the past. Let’s take a look at how to do it.
One of the most important steps to revive the content of your old website or blog, which achieved great success and popularity at the time, is through the following steps:
1. Leverage analytics
Leveraging available analytics tools can revolutionize and greatly engage your content if handled wisely and intelligently. Sometimes, dealing with social media can feel like a chore—and it can be incredibly frustrating when you post some hard-earned content only to find your audience overlooking it and not engaging with it. Analytics provides you with context and insight into how your audience is interacting with your post—remember, knowledge is power.
Google Analytics is one of the best tools available for exploring your content’s performance. It allows you to see which content or pages on your site are most viewed and most shared. Google Analytics isn’t the only option available, though, so if you want more specificity in how you handle your data, explore some of the other options.
2. Social Platform Analytics
Most social media platforms and sites offer their own analytics that you can access within your account options. For example, on Instagram and Facebook, businesses can see how many shares their posts have received, as well as the number of profile views and individual posts, and see which ones were a direct result of your engagement.
“Tracking your most shared content is a key way to identify your best-performing posts,” says Jennifer Irwin, content expert at Boomessays . “When posts are shared, it gives your engagement existential growth—a key driver of content marketing.” Use social media platforms’ internal analytics to identify which posts resonate with your audience and get the best reach. This will give you an archive and understanding of great, engaging content to leverage in the future.
RevivalOld contentYours
Once you’ve identified your best-performing and most engaging content in the past, you have the opportunity to re-engage with your audience and expand its reach across your social media channels. Sometimes, simply reposting your content with a simple introduction like “From the archives:…” can be enough to earn a share. But to get the most out of your content, you can revitalize it for a new audience. So, let’s explore the best ways to bring your content back to life. Additionally, you can always hire a freelancer to create custom animations, graphics, or additional copy to give your content more richness and variety, increasing its chances of revitalization and re-engagement, provided it’s within your budget.
1. Re-formulating content in new forms and styles
There are many ways you can share content, from text to video, from images to infographics. Different platforms encourage sharing information in different ways. For example, text content you’ve identified as performing well on Facebook can be reworked into a series of slides and images for an Instagram post, or you can even convert text content to audio for podcasting or use in videos for your YouTube channel. You can benefit from my previous article on the best free text-to-speech site .
Be creative in how you repurpose your best-performing content and you’ll give it a second chance at life. Even platforms that mostly encourage sharing in one form—like Instagram and photos—are ripe for disruption with alternative content. Look at how microblogging has taken off on Instagram. Your content can take many forms!
2. Leverage the reach of influencers and bloggers
Influencers are a big deal across many social platforms and have cultivated a unique, authentic, and highly engaged audience just waiting for your content. You can reach out to influencers via direct message to see if they’re interested in working with you, or take a more organic approach by engaging with them on their own accounts first.
By attracting the attention of those with a large following, you increase the chance of them sharing your content with their audience. If they like your posts, this can happen completely organically. This is a great strategy for bloggers who also have their own dedicated audience.
3. Discover new platforms for your content.
Every day we wake up to the news of new social media platforms, so there’s likely one or two you haven’t used yet. Even if they’re not as powerful as most of these platforms—Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter—you never know which one will be your next big success.
Furthermore, each platform will have its own demographic as an audience. From TikTok to LinkedIn, there’s always a new audience for your content.
4. Personalize content for key viewers
Whatever your industry, content niche, or product, there will be some significant discrepancies in your target market. Take your old content and tweak it to appeal to specific subsets of the demographics you’re trying to reach. Personalize your content to create personalized posts that increase engagement.
Reaction measurementYour content
Finally, it’s essential to measure and analyze the engagement your content receives. This will help you build your strategy for the future.
1. Comments
While it’s great when people like your content on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or if your Facebook posts get thumbs-up, comments take precedence over likes in the engagement hierarchy. If people are interested enough in your post to leave a comment, you know they’re engaged—check your blog posts and social media to see what your visitors and audience are commenting on, and which articles or posts.
2. Social shares
The most engaging content is likely to be shared widely. A shared post reaches the audience of those who shared it, so it’s not just your followers who see your content, but an ever-growing audience as well. Encouraging your followers to share your posts with offers and giveaways can take your engagement to the next level.
3. Number of page views
For blog posts, pageviews are an important measure of how successful your content is. To get a good idea of how your content is performing, you should know the average number of views your blogs receive—you can then measure whether certain content is exceeding expectations. It’s also important to know where these views and visits are coming from, which you can do through Google Analytics .
4. Organic Traffic
Tracking your traffic and visits and determining how much of that traffic is organic is important for understanding your post’s performance. Visits and traffic coming from free sources like search engines and content shares, as opposed to paid traffic generated by ads, demonstrate that your content is being widely shared.
5. Realtime Tools
There are great tools that allow you to record and replay how your audience and customers interact with your content on your website or social channels. These tools include Fullstory, Hojar, and LiveSession, which give you the ability to see through your customers’ eyes and can provide insight into how customers interact with your content. For example, you can assess which part or place of your site attracts customers most. If you have information-rich content with a mix of graphics and text, this analytics tool can show whether people are engaging with the entire post or just certain elements. Once you have this data, you can reuse popular graphics in your content rotation.
The problem with these tools is that they offer this service at very high prices, which may only suit companies and not individuals.
6. Dealing with targeted accounts
Does engagement with your content overlap strongly with the accounts you’re most interested in reaching? If you’ve identified niche target regions, you can measure your content’s performance both in absolute terms and by how these demographics interact with your content. Ideally, everyone who likes, comments, and shares your posts is a potential customer—once you maximize engagement with an audience tailored to your product needs, your business is ready to grow.
in conclusion
Sometimes the motivation behind new content can be misplaced, while old content can be revitalized using these strategies. By exploring new platforms and audiences and repurposing old content into new formats, you can find next-level engagement with your existing content. Don’t forget the value and importance of analytics to discover your best, most engaging, and most engaging content, as well as continually measuring your content’s performance and adjusting your strategies accordingly.
