Experiencing some writer’s block? There’s nothing to be ashamed of – it happens to the best of us.

It’s only natural that every now and then you just can’t come up with something to write about, especially since you’re probably expected to come up with new materials on a daily or weekly basis. Don’t start panicking yet, there’s a simple solution for it– recycling content!

Producing marketing content is not an easy feat and it is certainly not cheap. If you hire professional content writers then you are well aware of the fact that quality content does not come cheap.

If on the other hand, you’re the ones writing the content yourselves, you know that it takes a respected amount of time – and as we all know, time is money.

In addition, releasing a lot of content in a short amount of time might come at the expense of the content’s quality, which is unacceptable in the marketing world- all of the content you release to your readers must be of the highest quality – informative, interesting, and to the point.

There is a solution: recycle your old content.

Old Content – New Goals

Your most popular articles have already gained momentum, earned a spot in the search engines, and received likes, clicks, shares and comments. When you add new content to your website or blog, you’re also pushing your old content off  your home page and out of your readers’ view. Retrieve this old content from the attic, brush off the dust and bring it back to life.

Spend some time with your analytics software in order to create a list of your most popular articles. They will serve as an excellent starting point – they bring traffic to your website, they are of the highest quality, and are among your most popular articles, all of which proves that your readers enjoy reading them.

Note: If you’re using the same exact content as you did in the past, then you should promote the old page itself as opposed to creating a new page. This is because Google has a tendency to ignore duplicated pages in website promotion. If you prefer not to do so, you can always re-write the text in a new page and delete the old one.

You can do a lot with these old articles:

• Titles – Change the old title to make it more attractive, interesting, sarcastic or serious and then promote the article again. For example: “10 Advantages of Internet Surveys” is a good title, but why not tweak it to “You ask, they answer: Advantages of Internet Surveys”?

• A Different Angle – Use the same content, but this time use a different perspective. For example, if the title of the article is “How not to market your startup,” change it to “How to market your startup.” Much of the article’s content will still be usable and with the addition of some new information, it becomes a new and important article for your readers.

• Comments – Sometimes our best ideas come from those who comment on our content. Take the time to read these comments- which ones created a discussion? On what topic? Was something that you wrote in the article not clear? The readers that take the time to respond to your content are giving you free insight and you should definitely take advantage of it. Write the article over with the adaptations you accept and advertise it again.

• Cut and Paste – Long articles contain a lot of information that can be useful to your readers. Go over your most read articles and choose specific, interesting paragraphs that you can then compose to a new article. True, we’re talking about producing new content, but hey, you already have the idea and the opening paragraph – it’s basically a picnic from there.

Make sure that you promote both the old content and the new adapted content.

• Home Page – Promote your new articles on your home page, even if we’re talking about the same past content, only with a tweaked title. There are definitely some readers that have yet to come across the article and for those that have already read it, this is a reminder for them to freshen up on an important topic.
• Social Networks – Share your old posts in your social networks. It’s possible that some of them were never promoted and even if they were, there are always more creative, interesting ways to promote them, so that they reach more potential customers. Tweet in twitter, share in Facebook, add new pictures to the article and post them on Instagram.
• Newsletter – Add links to old articles in your upcoming newsletter. Don’t be afraid to expose the fact that this articles are old, in fact it can serve as an incentive for your readers (for example: This is one of our most read articles, you don’t want to miss it), chances are some recipients never got a chance to read them.

We often tend to miss what’s right under our nose – try not to do that with your content. Remember, words hold a lot of meaning, especially when they’re promoting and serving your goals.

Want to learn more about the power of word? learn about personalizing your emails according to the sex of your recipients.