Life span of content may be far shorter – or longer – than we imagine. The platform it is published on can is decisive. According to a recent study, a typical blog post’s life span is 24 months. At the other end of the specter are (expectedly) tweets, lasting around 20 minutes. Pinterest post visibility is about 3 months, while Facebook posts are good for 5 hours on average. A LinkedIn post will show up well for one day, and a YouTube video – just over 3 weeks.
As you can see, the variation is huge. The results of this study offer valuable insight into the time one should invest in developing different types of content and the frequency, with which they should be posting it. In this article, we’ll focus on blog posts.
Life Span of Content: Blog Posts
Blog posts are reusable and can last for two years. This is why you shouldn’t put one together hastily. Invest time and effort into your work and post regularly so that you have options to select from and continue repurposing it. 2-4 blog posts weekly are an optimal way to stay relevant and searchable.
It is quite challenging to create compelling content on a regular basis and to find the time to create and distribute it on top of that. Repackaging and repurposing published content is an effective and efficient way to achieve goals and increase ROI. Here are some more tips on how to do that.
Define Your Objectives and Target Group
To extend the life span of content, outline what you want to accomplish right from the start. Setting explicit, clear objectives will give any strategy structure and help you use your time and funds efficiently. It’s also possible to align targets with metrics, letting you measure your repurposing plan’s effectiveness more easily.
Defining your target audience is a necessary and frequently overlooked step. This will give you insight into the content types and topics in highest demand by your audience. It will have an impact on how you create, repurpose, and revive content. Any effective content marketing strategy rests on the engagement to create content that addresses a target group’s needs.
Give Creativity Free Rein
Let’s say you have a 1500-word blog post. You can choose from different formats to transform it beyond recognition. A guide can be uploaded to SlideShare, a popular educational resource, as a presentation. You can also make it into an instructional video. By incorporating different formats, you capture users that are more likely to click on a video than a blog post.
Tools like BuzzSumo are a good way to analyze content to make sure it resonates with your target audience. You will establish which the best-performing pieces of content for your brand are and identify trends. Focus on topics that age well and will stay relevant over the long term as a result. This way, it will be easiest to repurpose content at a later time.
Most Versatile Types of Content
Videos, how-to guides, or webinars on technique and strategy are highly versatile, practically timeless. On the other hand, posts about tools or products that tend to become outdated quickly or news articles will be hard to repurpose.
The tactic of creating content that revolves around a certain theme is also worth considering. It will enable you to create a series of posts that can be repackaged together or separately, perhaps as a PowerPoint presentation or e-book.
The Effect of Blog Post Count on Traffic
A blog that has 400 or more posts will get twice as much traffic as one with 300 to 400. It is possible to create 400 blog posts over a few years if you post 10 to 15 a month. Do not delete old posts. As more information becomes accessible, simply update them to prolong the life span of content.
Effective Outreach
On a final note, influencer outreach is one very effective approach you can apply to extend the life span of content. Identify influencers or industry experts and email them. Provide a list of questions that they can respond to and ask how to attribute the responses to them in your content.