A while ago, Google made a change to their algorithms. Google makes many changes such as the notorious panda updates that put half of the web out of whack. While Google makes panda updates that change the entire landscape, Google occasionally makes necessary changes that address different issues with content creation.
One problem with the web is that copying, pasting, and putting someone else’s blog post on your own blog is too easy. Some people decided to plagiarise content on other people’s blogs. Then, both websites would suffer because Google couldn’t distinguish the difference.
Now, Google can recognize the difference. If a blog post is published on your blog first, Google knows that your blog is the original source of the content. To be sure, give Google two weeks to index the blog post as your content.
What does that mean for us? First off, original content wins more than ever before. Even when people copy and paste your content onto their blogs, you still get the search engine traffic.
It also means you can copy and paste your own blog posts to different places on the web—and not get a search engine penalty. It’s your content. You can put it anywhere you want.
With this in mind, I look at my older blog posts that once got traffic but now get a small amount of visitors. While keeping those blog posts on my blog, I can also breath new life into those blog posts by publishing them elsewhere.
Are you looking for some ideas? Here are some places to publish your older content.
#1: LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the best place to publish your older content. Publishing an old blog post on LinkedIn only takes a few minutes, and you can get a good amount of engagement from this strategy.
One of my LinkedIn posts was viewed 19 times. I’ll admit the number isn’t big, but I was just starting out.
That same LinkedIn post—the one that only got 19 views—got seven likes and one comment. Let’s add some zeroes to show the impact of a highly successful LinkedIn post.
190 views —> 70 likes and 10 comments
1900 views —> 700 likes and 100 comments
It doesn’t take long to see the benefits associated with posting your content on LinkedIn. After my third LinkedIn post, I was getting more than a dozen daily visitors from LinkedIn. Not bad for a little over 500 connections—and a completely new part of my strategy.
#2: Tumblr
I won’t lie. Tumblr hasn’t brought in incredible results for me yet. The main reason that’s the case is because I have a little less than 10 Tumblr followers. Tumblr is on the list of social networks for me to optimize, but it’s deep down on the list.
If you have an audience on Tumblr, then Tumblr would be a good place for you to republish your content. More people would see it.
LinkedIn happened to work well for me because I already had over 500 connections. If Tumblr works well for you, then go for it.
#3: Guest Blogs That Let You Republish Content
Most guest blogs only want original, unpublished content. However, there are some guest blogs that make the exception and allow you to copy and paste published content.
One of the first blogs I started writing guest posts for was Business2Community. While the guest posts in the beginning were unique, I decided to use Business2Community as a platform to breath new life into my old content.
The idea sparked in my mind when I wrote a guest post for Jeff Bullas. For anyone interested, the guest post is called 5 Ways To Flood Your Blog Traffic Using Pinterest. A few days after Jeff Bullas published my guest post, I found it under my Business2Community author page.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that people were using Business2Community to breath new life into their old content and also spread their new content.
Thus I began copying and pasting some of my blog posts into Business2Community. I published over a dozen blog posts on Business2Community in just three days. The best part is that I didn’t do any additional work.
When I got the first two guest posts published on Business2Community, I got four extra visitors to my blog. While all bloggers look for more traffic, four extra visitors isn’t exactly life changing. However, new life was breathed into those older posts. Take a look at this one:
Three days later, traffic to my blog from Business2Community tripled to 12 visitors for the day. Again, these numbers aren’t large…yet. The very next day, the amount of visitors I got from Business2Community more than doubled.
That number continues to grow as I put more content on Business2Community. Even if I never reach more than 100 daily visitors to my blog from Business2Community, the impact cannot be questioned.
The first 10 guest posts I put on Business2Community got a combined total of over 2,000 shares. That’s over 2,000 people promoting my content on their social networks. All I did was copy and paste 10 of my blog posts into Business2Community.
Ever since I started guest posting like this on Business2Community, my Twitter engagement has also skyrocketed. More people are sharing the blog posts and mentioning me.
All of that from one guest blog. If I find three guest blogs like Business2Community, these would be the numbers:
Over 6,000 shares for 10 guest posts
Over 100 daily visitors to my blog from those guest blogs
Hundreds of extra mentions on Twitter every day
Those are some big numbers. When I publish enough of my blog posts onto Business2Community—20 more—I’ll get those same numbers.
In Conclusion
Publishing your content elsewhere should form a core part of your content marketing strategy. By publishing your content elsewhere, you get to tap into a new audience while connecting with people in your current audience.
Publishing my blog posts on LinkedIn allows me to build stronger relationships with my LinkedIn connections. Publishing my blog posts on Business2Community allows me to tap into a larger audience.
Your blog is not the only place where your blog posts can go. They can be put on other sites, and that will result in more traffic and credibility for you.
Which guest blogs will you implement this strategy with? Do you see yourself publishing anything to LinkedIn or Tumblr? Sound off in the comments section below!
I have a LinkedIn account which is for my profession and am in some groups which relate to my travel blog niche. If I post to those groups I presume this does not show up in my niche, as I don’t really want to mix the two?
Your posts in the group would show up in the group. My advice about having multiple niches is to put them under the same persona or start companies around those businesses (and in this case, a company can simply start out as a blog). It’s difficult to maintain multiple personas from the business standpoint and figuring out how in certain moments you can be one without being the other.
Thanks, Marc
My pleasure Darren.
I use Business2Community to syndicate my blog content and found it works amazingly well to reach out to a large, new audience that has never heard of you and your blog. Plus you get an amazing number of shares from their community. Great post, Marc.
Thank you Priya. I’ve got to look into syndicating my blog content from B2C. I’ve been copying and pasting my blog posts into the B2C New Posts part of the dashboard to create my content.