Have you ever heard of people looking at a photograph or painting just once and throwing it away? Of course not, right? So, why trash a piece of content after publishing/reading it once. Writers put in as much effort to create a good article as a painter does to draw a painting. Then, why isn’t your content receiving the traction it deserves? What bloggers don’t understand is that re-sharing old content is important to keep the traffic coming and reaching more people.
Let’s take an example of an email sent out to a list of prospects. With advanced technology, now you can even count the number of people who opened your email versus who didn’t. It is foolish to assume that your email will be opened and read by each and every one, it was sent to. So, what do you do to increase the reach of the email or let’s say the big news you wish to announce through the email? You rephrase the subject line, rewrite the email and send it to the group of people who didn’t open your email. The process is similar, even in the case of an article or blog.
When is the right time to Re-share?
Every piece of content addresses a certain problem area or provides information about something that has not been explored enough. The relevance of the content doesn’t reduce unless the problem has been completely addressed or the topic is outdated, which in most cases is not possible. The ideal time to re-share, therefore is till the time you can add to solving the problem at hand. Re-sharing at a certain interval allows your content to stay discoverable, hence making it easier for those who are looking for your article or related articles, to find it with ease.
Misconceptions around Content Re-sharing
- Re-sharing is spamming: No, it’s not! Sending the same email over and over again might be termed as spamming, however if you are intelligently re-sharing your articles/blogs, it is only going to grab more eyeballs. In fact, it also helps ease the pressure of creating real time content by keeping the updates going out any which way. This technique also helps you keep your social media pages busy, increasing the traffic on your page consistently.
- It has nothing to do with SEO: Of course, it does! The more eyeballs your content grabs, the better is your ranking on Google. Ever wondered why you keep seeing the same old pieces of content on your Facebook timeline? That’s because, some of the famous brands use the strategy of re-sharing content, even though they don’t need to. Re-sharing makes your content visible to the people, who might have possibly missed it the last time you shared.
- Exact Re-share: Although there is no harm in doing so, it is always better to redesign your posts before re-sharing. You might choose to keep the blog content same, however while sharing on social media it is better to share it by adding a different heading to your post, using a different image from the last time and adding a different call to action button. Although a lot of brands simply repost the exact content they posted, probably a few months back, we still recommend adding a newer flavour to your posts.
Re sharing your content smartly
- Targeted Social sharing: A single piece of content can be appealing to multiple segments of audience, but the same catch phrase will not instigate them all to read and share your content. Technology advances now allows brands to target specific groups of audiences with specific content pieces. For example, Facebook allows you to target audiences based on designations, region, gender, age and more. This makes it easier for brands to design posts for a specific audience and make it visible only to them, saving you from seeming to be duplicating content or spamming.
- Adapt Automation: Wondering how you are going search for a year-old piece of content and re-share it? The trick is to automate the process. Social publishing tools nowadays come with an option to set your re-sharing preferences. If not that, the market is filled with tools which come with the option to schedule content and automatically trigger them at the given date and time. This not just reduces your effort and time spent on the same task twice, but also does the “remembering to post” part of the job for you.
If your content is of high value and better quality, and you are targeting it to the right audience, you can rest assured your content is going to receive multiple shares. However, the competition is tight and with multiple people trying to say the same thing in different ways, you might end up feeling like talking to a wall. The key here is to intelligently share your quality content and grab as many eyeballs as possible.