There are many ways to jog your brain into coming up with new content ideas, but sometimes when the well is dry it’s dry. When I’m in those situations, one of the things I’ll often find myself doing is going back to blog posts that I wrote years ago looking for something worthy of an update.
This isn’t too uncommon, especially in industries where things change quickly. Sometimes you can take an old post, update it just a bit and republish it, just to keep things current. But that doesn’t help you with the dry well of new content development.
One thing you can do to overcome writer’s block and get your creative juices flowing again is to do a full-on rewrite of an entire post from the past.The idea is to use your original post as a jump-off point and allow the creative juices to take you wherever it wants to go.
By the time you’re done, you may find yourself in entirely new territory. Even if you tried to follow the outline of the original post, you can end up with a lot of really great unique content, thoughts and ideas that were never hashed out in the original. In some cases, the post may have gone in a completely new direction, leaving little resemblance to the original.
Not every old post you’ve ever written is worthy of a rewrite, so be selective. But looking back through your history, there are probably plenty of opportunities waiting. Take a post and turn it into multiple new posts, take a series of posts and turn them into one longer, more valuable post or just do a hefty rewrite.
Regardless of which way creativity takes you, the end result is a new post for a new audience, not just an old post updated. You’ve created something new and valuable for all your readers.
The idea is to never let good content die. If it was valuable once, use it to create something valuable again. Just be sure to keep the new post is fresh and valuable. You’re sure to have new information, thoughts or ideas that you can convey that can make your new post even more valuable than the original.
To learn more how you can use your old content and ideas to create something brand new, view my presentation, “Mine Your Own Mind for Content Ideas” from PubCon Las Vegas 2015.