The Art of Revival Marketing

It's common to feel like you've run out of ideas for engaging content for your website or blog. Fortunately you may not have to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to come up with creative ideas. Instead, consider reviving some of your old content that has already been published. There's nothing wrong with taking an idea you've already written about and giving it new life with a unique marketing strategy. Below explains how to determine what content is worth bringing back and the steps necessary to give it a fresh face.

When choosing content to revive…

Utilize SEO and Keyword Research

You don't want to go to the trouble of reviving a piece of content that won't do as well in today's market as it did when you first published it. One way to avoid making this mistake is to do your keyword research first. Figure out what high-level keywords are buzzing in your industry then determine what pieces of content can fit with these words. It's never a bad idea to increase your keyword usage when redoing your content, but make sure you're doing it naturally and not trying to force a ton of keywords into your writing. Using keywords correctly will help optimize both your SEO and your content marketing.

Evaluate Whether Your Content is Relevant for Today

After doing your keyword research, you should have a good idea of what content is relevant for today and what isn't. However, keep in mind that just because no one's talking about a topic doesn't mean it should be ignored (an idea marketers often miss). In fact, this might be a great opportunity to revive a piece. Say you published a blog post in the past about incorporating videos into your social media marketing (not that this isn't still relevant, because it is). This could be a great opportunity to update the piece with a section about all the "live" options that social media sites are currently offering. In general, just figure out how you can elaborate on old content with new information that makes it current in today's market.

Use Metrics

It's always a good idea to set goals for yourself before beginning any kind of marketing strategy, and reviving content is no different. Figure out what you want your end game to be and how you're going to measure your progress in that direction. Perhaps you want to judge your success based on how many people like, share, or retweet your revived content on social media. Using metrics makes it easy to determine if your work is paying off, and if it isn't then you'll know right away and can revise your strategy. In addition, when determining which content to revive, you should review your audience demographics again. Your audience might have changed in the time between published pieces, and it's important to take this into account when updating or revising a piece. You want to make sure you're speaking to the correct audience, so make sure you know who they are, where they hang out, and what they're looking for.

Poll Your Audience

One way to both assess your audience and determine which content to revive is to simply ask them what they're looking for. Send them an email or set up a poll on social media to find out which posts and videos they liked the best (or least) and why. Don't be afraid to ask them what they'd like to see in the future as well. Their responses should help you determine who you should be targeting as well as what to publish in order to best reach them. It's better to ask your current audience what they're looking for as opposed to relying on their responses in the past, just in case your audience has changed or they don't find a topic as important today as they once did.

Steps to make your content fresh:

Make Your Focus Unique to Your Business

While it's okay to look around and see what other businesses are doing, don't forget that your business is a niche market so your content should be unique to your product. Perhaps something you published in the past wasn't as successful as you hoped it would be, but that was because you were using a strategy that worked for other people but not for you. Go back to some of your less successful pieces and figure out how you can give them a makeover so that they're as original as the product you're offering. Your company's goals and values should be at the core of every content piece you publish, and if they're not then that's a good place to start with your revival.

Turn a Written Post into a Video

Written blog posts are a thing of the past. Everyone is looking for video nowadays as it's a quick and easy way to garner the attention of your audience. Video keeps them engaged and is much easier to produce than writing a long blog post. So if you come across a post you've written in the past that you believe is still relevant for today, consider turning it into a video and reposting it. Chances are you'll get a lot more viewers than you did the first time around, and the more people who view the video, the more likely they are to share it on social media.

Create an Infographic

You're competing with a ton of other businesses every time you produce content, and if your audience has to choose between a drab, boring post over one that's visually appealing, I'm sure you can guess which one they're going to pick. Taking information that you had previously written in a blog post and turning it into an infographic is a great way to give content a refreshing makeover that will catch the eye of all your followers. Not to mention, infographics are great ways to explain more complex topics in an easy-to-understand format. And it doesn't hurt that they're easy to repost and share online as well. Consider choosing a post to revive that may have been too dense to explain using only words, and simplify it into a colorful graphic. Your audience might just take note even if they had previously bypassed the post on your website.

Change a Video into a Live Session

It's not only old blog posts that need to be revived; it never hurts to put a fresh face on a video, either. Videos are slowly being outnumbered in terms of live sessions posted on various social media sites. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all offer their own ways for users to "go live" online, and businesses are taking advantage of it like never before. Go through your old videos and find one with a lot of comments then consider doing a live session on the same topic, but make sure to address the comments and questions that people had previously posted. Your audience will thank you for paying attention to their needs and taking the time to answer their questions.

Conduct an Interview and Get Someone Else's Perspective on a Topic

Struggling with how to revive a topic that's been covered a million different times? Why not step aside and let someone else in the industry give their perspective. Consider interviewing an employee, customer, or other stakeholder in your business to find out what they think about a topic, and then publish their interview in a blog post or video. Or, just conduct the interview in a live session on social media so your audience has a chance to ask their questions in real time. It never hurts to hear someone else's point of view, and your audience will be happy to hear from someone else for a change.

How do you go about choosing which content to revive? Can you think of another way to put a new spin on an old piece? Let us know on social media! Also, if you're looking for more information on how to improve your content, definitely check out this article by Search Engine Journal covering the latest trends and how to go beyond SEO to enhance your current content marketing.

Image Credits

Featured Image: lightsource/DepositPhotos

In-post Images: Screenshots taken by author January, 2017

Source: The Art of Revival Marketing