If you have the assets, you should use them!
There are plenty of articles on Medium that describe how to come up with story ideas.
I struggle putting this into practice, even now. When I get a reliable system up and running, I'll be sure to let you know!
In the meantime, I do have over 1,000 articles that I've written between 2005 and now that can be updated for present-day.
In the absence of fresh ideas — yeah, I know I have no excuse! — an old blog post that's on a topic close to what I write about here can serve as a decent rough draft of a new story.
At the very least, I'm not under pressure to think of a new topic for an article.
Here's what I do in practice:
1. I resist copy/pasting the old article as-is
I can't say for sure whether I've followed this advice all the time, but I try to do something with the article on my (WordPress) blog before re-publishing it.
Just like Google doesn't like me gaming things by “updating” a blog post without really doing anything, I can't see readers really liking that either.
2. I edit the old article in WordPress
Since the articles on Mighty Bargain Hunter go back to 2005, the formatting, content depth, SEO, and so forth is all over the map.
Here are the high points of what I do in WordPress to an old article I'm updating.
Convert to blocks
The block-centric construction of WordPress posts has been around for a while, but many of my articles don't use blocks.
Fortunately, the Convert To Blocks option works very well. The first thing I do is convert the post to the new paradigm.
Convert detailed bulleted lists to short paragraphs
A lot of my old posts have dense bulleted lists that I believe look better as short paragraphs. Usually I use H3 headings underneath the larger H2 heading for these lists.
Update the header image and remove pin graphics
At one point I was creating Pinterest graphics for my posts and stuffing them in the post layout. It looks weird and I don't think I really needed to do that anyway.
I've also updated how I use header / featured images so I find a 1200 x 600 header image and update the post with it.
I re-read the article and edit it for current time
I replace “last week” with “some time ago,” “14 years” with “21 years,” and so forth.
Even better: If I can, I remove the time references entirely, to make the article more evergreen.
I fix or remove broken links
Nothing on the Internet is forever so I make sure that I'm not 404'ing anyone.
I add details where it needs it
The changes I've mentioned so far are mostly cosmetic.
Adding to the content is where the value of the article goes up. It also justifies a republish on the blog, which counts as fresh content there.
I try to make Yoast SEO happier
This is the SEO plugin I use. I try to get green smiley faces for SEO, readability, and inclusive language.
I fix the category and add tags
I've been adding tags to my latest posts, so I update the post to include tags. I also pick one category for the post whereas prior I had been doing several.
3. I update the article on the blog
I either update in place (not a republish) or republish it with the current date, depending on the extent of the edits.
So even before I post anything on Medium, I have an updated blog post, which helps my blog out.
4. I copy the article to Medium and publish it
One slick feature I discovered is that I can select all of the blocks in my WordPress edit screen and just paste them into my Medium writing interface. Inserting all of the paragraphs, headings, links, and even pictures just works.
That's 90% of the work right there.
The rest is:
- adding the title
- adding the subtitle
- adding the header image
- adding the “Thanks for reading” text at the end
- adding the canonical link and topics
And then it's ready to publish!
Maybe you don't have blog content to repurpose. What do you have though?
I admit that this article may have a limited audience. I'm one of those old-school writers that has a lot of content on a WordPress blog.
If this isn't your first go-around at writing, though, chances are you have some content somewhere that you can dust off and refresh. Look around in your archives and see what you have!
Thanks for reading!
I love helping people achieve financial peace of mind by offering ways to spend less money and make more money, both online and offline!
(Header photo by Vlada Karpovich)