Since I started blogging in 2004, I’ve recognized that certain topics are perennially popular among the people who read my blog. And after I began podcasting in 2005, and creating written content about the topic of podcasting, I’ve certainly noticed that about a dozen search terms drive the vast majority of traffic to my site.
What’s hot?
For your own marketing and content creation efforts to succeed, you need to know what your audience’s hot topics are. What search terms are they using to find your content?
You can use Google Analytics or other web analytics tools to get this important information. Although I have Google Analytics running on my various websites and blogs, I really like Statcounter for its simple interface; it also serves up the information I need without a lot of extraneous data.
For example, today I could see that some of the most popular keywords driving traffic to my Trafcom News blog are:
Why? Well, I’ve written on these topics several times. And every so often, I revisit an old post, update it, and post it again. This meets the needs of my readers, who want this information, and it also serves me by lifting my site up in the search-engine rankings. You’ll notice that I’m on page one for most of the query terms shown in the graphic from Statcounter.
Look around for content you already have
Your own old blog posts are not the only source of “recyclable” content. Look in your outbox. Have you written up any advice to clients lately? (Today I’ve answered three client questions that could be spun into short blog posts.) Of course you don’t want to blog about proprietary information, but I’ll bet that if two or three clients are asking similar questions, other people are clamoring for the same information.
Have you crafted any studies or reports for your clients recently? You don’t want to republish them verbatim, but can you take any of the insights from them and craft them into a series of blog posts?
If you’re a podcaster or video producer, there may be some topics that you’ve covered in your multimedia content that could also be suited to textual treatment, perhaps with graphics.
Don’t forget your client newsletter. (You are producing one, right?) I try to remind myself that some people read both my blog and my newsletters, but they don’t see every piece of content, as much as I would like to believe they do. So if you have something important to share, don’t be shy about publishing it in more than one place.
What other ideas do you have for repackaging content?
Related posts
Copyblogger’s infographic on 22 ways to create compelling content when you don’t have a clue
Content marketing for small business
Content marketing defined
How to get started with content marketing
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Visit the Trafalgar Communications website for information about how we can help your organization to tell its story through traditional and new media.
This was great information that encouraged me that it is okay to re-post some of my content. I also think that it is a great idea to respond to certain topics that clients are talking about within your blog, because it will direct more traffic to your blog.
Posted by: Mikelle | February 27, 2012 at 09:28 AM