Content is king. However, a king cannot rule unless he’s one hundred percent active, committed, and consistent in his decisions and actions.

In the content marketing world, your blog content performs in a similar way. To outshine your competitors and keep your blog readers satisfied with your performance, you must constantly bring value to the table.

Blog readers expect fresh content. As a business, it is your duty to fulfill the demands of your marketplace, regardless of their nature.

In today’s post, we’ll discuss the importance of fresh content and we’ll explore strategies, tips, and tricks that’ll help you keep your blog content fresh.

Sounds interesting?

Let’s begin.

How Does Your Old Content Affect Your Business?

Forgetting about the blog posts that you’ve published a year ago is quite simple. Many webmasters and blog owners unconsciously perceive their old content as expired content. “Why focus on old when I can focus on new?”.

Well, neglecting your old content will generate negative consequences:

• Brand reputation: Once you publish a blog post and forget about it, you’ll create different effects. For example, if your old blog content is mediocre or outdated, your fans might start perceiving your brand as untrustworthy.
• SEO damage: Nowadays, search engines are much stricter when it comes to defining the quality of content. If your blog contains irrelevant and outdated content, you might risk losing a few positions in the SERP.
• Revenue loss: Your content is valuable. If you forget about it, it’s like you’re throwing it in the trash. Rather than ignoring your old work, make it work for you again. By following various techniques which I’ll soon explain, your old content can bring you a lot of noteworthy benefits.

The Basics

Here are four basic yet essential tips to keep your blog content as fresh as possible.

Establish Objectives and Create Systems Around Them

First of all, you need to establish what you want to accomplish. Your blog is part of a bigger picture, which is your content marketing strategy. Now. Your blogging strategy is part of the same content marketing strategy, so you’ll need to work on objectives to create progress.

Define what you have to do each month, week, and day in order to accomplish a specific goal. Some of the common objectives when it comes to blogging are:

• Increase brand awareness
• Improve search engine rankings in order to generate organic traffic
• Improve the brand’s reputation
• Offering fans and customers educational value to improve trust
• Acquire leads and customers

Once you establish a goal, you should create a system of habits and actions that will allow you to reach your objective. For example: if you want to improve brand awareness, define the minimum of blog posts that you want to publish each week. Also, define what type of blog posts you’ll publish – what combination of topics will you use? At what hour will you post your blog posts?

This is the “how.” You need to create a plan and then you’ll have to stick to that plan.

Create a Content Calendar

To simplify your job, take advantage of a content calendar. Rather than chaotically deciding what blog content you’ll create each day, take a few hours each week to plan everything in advance. You can do a monthly calendar or a weekly calendar, depending on your preferences.

Treat it as an outline: note down the title, three to five ideas, perhaps the documentation in case you have it, and the posting hour. Plan your days in advance and start working on a stable schedule!

Prepare and Schedule Your Posts in Advance

If you’ve created your calendar and you have most of your blog posts ready in advance, you can schedule them using various automated publishing tools. By automating your posting process, you can save time and make room for other important issues that require your attention.

Write Evergreen Content

As the last basic, you should create evergreen content. This is the content that never expires because the needs, the problems, and the solutions that evergreen content emphasizes are never going to disappear. Before writing a topic, go through this quick test.

If you believe that your audience will have the same issues and problems in 100 years, then you’re thinking of an evergreen topic. If not, give it a second thought before investing your time and energy into content that may not bring any value in several years.

Simple Strategies to Keep Your Content Fresh

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s tap into some of the most effective ways to keep your content fresh. In case you were running out of ideas, the following twelve techniques should get you busy.

Optimize Your Old Blog Posts

Rather than forgetting about your good old posts, you should bring them back to life. Start by optimizing and updating the following aspects:

• Update the references you’ve made in the past. Recheck every link and change the data that is outdated.
• If it’s the case, modify the statements you’ve made in the past, statements that aren’t actual or true today.
• Cut every time-based reference that is closely connected to past events or beliefs.
• Change the tense (e.g. instead of “is”, make it “was”)
• If you keep your blog posts organized by date, consider adding a blurb that notes the update

In case you run across blog posts that aren’t worth optimizing, you shouldn’t feel bad about deleting them. If you feel they’re poor quality, you shouldn’t hesitate to eliminate them from your blog because they can damage your brand’s reputation.

Optimize Your Posts for SEO

Optimizing your blog posts for the search engines is beneficial in more than a few ways. For example, as you add new keywords and key phrases that are relevant in the present moment, you’re letting Google know that you’re actively improving the quality and authenticity of your content. Secondly, your readers will enjoy reading up to date content that brings something new in their lives.

• Add new keywords and remove the irrelevant ones
• Update your image alt tags, your title, and your meta tags
• Update your blog post’s thumbnail to offer a sense of freshness
• Add new relevant visual content like images, graphics, and videos
• Repurpose your text content into video or audio content

Repost Your Greatest Blog Content after Refreshing It

Once you’re done “refreshing” your old content, you should repost it on your blog post. Rather than stopping here, you should start to actively promote your fresh content on more content distribution channels.

Start with social media. Considering that you have a brand page, let your fans know that you’ve got something interesting for them. You can even place your old repurposed content into your email autoresponder sequence and integrate it into your email marketing campaign. Either way, don’t just update and forget about it. Instead, actively promote it to increase the exposure.

Make a Habit of Noting Down All Your Ideas

Coming up with wonderful blog post ideas is simple if you make a habit of staying sharp. Pay attention to every discussion, article, video, and content that you consume on a daily basis. Your inspiration may suddenly appear when you’re on the street, or in a busy meeting.

When brilliant ideas pop, you need to note them down immediately. Don’t count on your memory. Storing blog post ideas in your head is not beneficial at all, especially because you’re filling up mental space with details that can be easily stored on a piece of paper or on a digital document.

To conclude, the process of coming up with new blog topics isn’t limited to a brainstorming or researching session. By actively noting down your thoughts and ideas each day, you’ll have a lot of topics to choose from the moment you set up your content calendar.

Repurpose Your Content

Repurposing your content means changing the format of your content. If you’ve written a text article about “5 ways to lose belly fat”, you can turn that piece of content into a short video that explains exactly the same thing or a short audio file that people can listen while driving or while walking on the street.

The purpose of repurposing is to get access to different target audiences that consume your content in different ways.

Survey Your Audience

One of the most effective ways to generate good ideas for your future blog posts is to leverage your audience. Instead of guessing, stressing, and researching on your own, let your readers suggest ideas for fresh content.

You can get in touch with your audience through a direct email. Make it very personal and let your readers understand that you’ve taken the time to personally write them this message. If your fans and customers feel a sense of rapport, they’ll be glad to give you suggestions.

Another strategy you could use is to offer your email list and social media followers the chance to win discounts and exclusive offers in exchange for five minutes of their time. Send them a survey and let them know that they get the chance to win special opportunities!

Encourage Your Readers to Provide Suggestions

Encouraging your readers to provide suggestions can be done in different ways. One, you can do it through surveys. Two, you can do it by constantly asking for it.

Every time you finish a blog post, ask your readers to comment and provide feedback. By repeating this request over and over again, you’re improving the odds of receiving useful ideas and suggestions.

Research Forums and Q&A Platforms

Finding new ideas for fresh content is not that complicated if you know where to place your attention. Industry forums and Q&A platforms like Yahoo Answers and Quora are incredibly powerful inspiration sources because they contain exactly the type of information you need in order to generate relevant new topic ideas.

Start by identifying the most relevant forums within your industry. Create a profile on each, optimize it properly, and start engaging. Make a habit of reading the new threads every day to discover the most trending topics that people talk about. Pay attention to your target audience’s problems and needs and note down every idea that pops in your head!

Study Your Competition

As a wise man said, “There’s nothing new under the sun”. Originality is a very rare concept nowadays, especially in the content marketing world. However, uniqueness is easy to attain if you know how to add the right spins.

An effective way to generate new ideas for your future blog posts is to study your competitors. Look through their blog posts (even the oldest ones) and observe what they did right and what they did wrong. Pick some of their topics and add a few twists that will make you look like an expert.

Don’t be afraid to “copy” ideas. Ideas are not under any trademarks. As long as you write with a unique voice and add additional value, don’t feel bad for “borrowing” your neighbor’s ideas.

Find a Reliable Guest Blogger or Freelance Writer

Lastly yet very importantly, you can scale up the entire process by adding new talents to your team. When it comes to allowing other people to write on your blog, you need to ensure that their writing skills are compatible with your quality standards. Secondly, you’ll need to decide whether you’ll opt for guest bloggers or professional freelancers.

Usually, there are three viable options:

• Invite more guest bloggers to contribute to your feed
• Hire professional writers on boards and platforms like Pro Blogger or Upwork.
• Outsource more affordable writers. For example, a college paper writing service is the perfect place to look for young talents that have affordable fees.

Takeaways

Keeping your content fresh is not a bonus. In fact, you should treat it as a serious necessity that should never be neglected. If you take into consideration what you’ve learned today and follow the basics, you’ll have an easy time keeping yourself organized and prepared.

Running a successful blog isn’t easy. As you keep publishing fresh content, you’ll improve your knowledge, skills, and experience, and that will count a lot in the long run!