January 13th, 2025
Why You Should Review Existing Content Before Writing New Blogs
Have you decided to start publishing regular blogs? Maybe you’ve got your marketing team on board to help you. Perhaps you’ve even got a list of topics you want to write about. Now, I don’t want to put you off, especially as I’m all about making it easier to blog consistently, but before you write anything new, I want you to go off and review content you already have.
Why Should You Review Current Content?
Firstly, you might find you’ve already written about one of your planned topics. In that case, maybe you can update and refresh it, and share it again with your audience. It might also inspire you to create a whole series of blogs, with your existing blog as the first one.
Secondly, if you have any kind of analytics tools on your website, use the data to see which of your posts performed the best. You might be surprised by which ones were the most popular.
So, use that data to help you come up with blog ideas that are similar to those successful posts. It might take you off in a different direction to what you had planned initially, but you know your audience will be keen to hear more on those subjects.
Review Other Content too
Even if your primary focus is to produce new blogs, explore how you can us other pages on your website to inspire posts. For instance, look at your sales pages and identify ways to expand on them. For example:
• Create case studies on past clients who’ve been successful
• Describe the process of working with you
• Explain the benefits (outcomes) and how it will help the customer to buy your solution
And make sure you link back to the relevant sales page in each post!
You might write a post that explains more about how you came to be where you are today – people love to peep behind the scenes. That could even inspire you to a whole series of interviewing your peers to get their inspiring stories too!
Offline Content
What content have you created offline that you could repurpose into a new blog? Depending on what you do, you may have physical materials that you’ve used with a client, or you may have digital content that you’ve only shared with a small, select group. This can include things like:
Email newsletters: Although sent electronically, you can’t be entirely sure who has really read your newsletters – yes, data will show click and open rates, but that doesn’t mean the recipient really read it!
They might have forwarded your email onto one or more people, and you’ll never know who they are. So take some of the best content in your emails to create new blog posts. If readers reply, answer their questions or incorporate their comments into the post.
Workshops/presentations: Whether you’ve delivered them online or offline, both workshops and presentations will be full of valuable content to inspire new posts. Just make sure that whoever you delivered for gives you permission to repurpose the material.
Articles published in trade magazines: Have you contributed an article to a trade publication or local magazine? Share it as is or with some appropriate tweaks for your website readers. And again, ask for permission!
Review Guest Appearances Content
Finally, don’t forget to have a look at any places where you’ve been a guest contributor. We’ve already mentioned workshops and presentations – did you deliver one in a Facebook group that you’ve forgotten about?
And make sure you’re keeping track of podcast and video show appearances! Share these on your own website (the interviewer is normally happy with that if you give them a credit and a link back to the original episode).
Again, these can spark off ideas for new blogs, articles you could publish elsewhere or even a podcast of your own! And resharing the interviews is a good way to find new guesting opportunities, which will help you find new audiences.