Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop every once in a while to look up and look around you can easily miss the important things.
If you’re a parent, you are already aware of this. I mean, just yesterday I was a young mother and my little girl was running up a hill on our 10 acres of land wearing cowboy boots and white tights to hug a goat. Today she’s contemplating on whether to explore a career as an auto mechanic or pharmacy tech.
If you’re an online entrepreneur, then you know how fast things move. From technological innovations to social media marketing best practices to simply keeping up with all the places you can be to expand your business…there is a lot to do and learn. It’s all really exciting, right?
And a little overwhelming.
Do This Before You Create Any New Content
So before you jet off into the new year and fill up your to do list and editorial calendar (you have one of those, right?), I invite you to take a minute to breathe, look back on what your blogging and online content achieved in terms of results, and set your intention to create a year of purpose-filled content that will help you expand your business.
Specifically, I want you to consider repurposing your most popular stuff (as long as it’s still relevant). You can easily create a few weeks worth of content, get that “what am I going to write about” monkey off your back, and then concentrate on putting together a few months of purpose-filled content that will lead your readers to a specific action or product that ends up in a sale.
Yes, I know you already know you’re supposed to be doing this but the reality is that many smaller online businesses never get around to actually doing it. So what happens is that at the end of the year they have a hodge-podge of amazing blog posts but nothing in terms of revenue to show for it.
Note: If you already have an editorial calendar in place and have started creating your content…awesome! Keep going and you may find that you can use these tips for fillers.
What Worked?
This is all about re-purposing. Go back in your analytics for the year and see which articles on your blog got the most attention. With that information in hand, there are several things you can do to re-highlight and capitalize on those posts. Remember, posts can easily get buried in your blog archives so help your readers easily find your best stuff.
Here are a few things you can do with the best of the best:
1-Create a Top 10 (or any other number) list of best articles about a certain category. In your review article give the title of the post and a short description that includes the benefits for reading the information with a link to that post.
2-On those most popular posts, be sure you have a compelling opt-in offer. It would be a shame to have a good amount of traffic going to a certain article and forget to collect the names of the visitors to include in your autoresponder series. If you don’t already have a free gift to offer, create one and then set up your funnel and delivery system.
3-And speaking of autoresponders…do you have your series set up? Have at least 5 value-packed emails written and ready to go. Be sure to build up the autoresponder series throughout the year so you can build a relationship with your site visitors. Right now, I’m filling in the gaps on one of my niche sites and doing this exact thing. Yes…it’s a lot of work and writing up front, but the good news is that once it’s set up you don’t have to do it again.
Based on What Worked…What are your visitors telling you?
Next, take a look at your most popular posts with a new lens and ask yourself this question:
Can I create a product, service, or training that will help my future customers?
I know this sounds like a simplistic question…I mean really, aren’t you in the business to provide something of value?
But the catch here is that many of us get into the trap of creating something we think is cool, or we think our customers would like, only to find out they are not interested in that information at all!
But your analytics numbers may be telling you something. Let me explain with this example:
If you are in the business of Home Décor and sell high-end, ready-made curtains and pillows (I’m making this up) and you wrote a couple of popular articles about how to find the best fabrics, would it make sense to create a resource guide with affiliate links for places to buy the fabrics online, or could you create a DIY guide for how to create the top 5 best-selling valances at home complete with tutorials and resources? Does is make sense to create a video training series that demonstrates something with design and curtain choices? Heck, you may even be able to offer a paid training course for other businesses showing them how to increase their sales by suggesting window treatments and matching pillows to their furniture orders.
When you look at your most popular posts and really start to ask yourself why those particular posts were popular then you may uncover some hidden opportunities for additional training, products, and services.
For this site, I noticed that I had a lot of people interested in information about how to write and how to organize your research when writing a book. As a result, I recently added one-on-one coaching opportunities for those that just need a little guidance and motivation to get them on the writing path.
Benefits of a SlowDown…
Don’t stay stuck in the past and don’t rest on your laurels. This is just a slowdown. When you take time to look at what worked, capitalize, and build on that then you have an opportunity to work a little smarter, fill in the gaps, and go deep with your revenue and business building potential.
Have fun with it and remember, I would love to hear about what you’re doing and what’s working for you. Email me directly at: [email protected]
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