A good blog post is a significant time and resource investment, as well as a major repository of your subject matter expertise. So, what happens after you finish a post, post it on your website, and share it on social media? Hopefully, the number of hits, likes, comments, and shares will skyrocket... However, all of this activity tends to fade away over time. That can be a depressing sensation.

But what if there was a way to make your blog post more useful? To really get the most out of it? As it turns out, there are a few strategies for maximizing the return on your content investment.

Here are some of our favorite tips for making each blog as useful as possible.

Make a Video

If you have a popular blog post that has stalemated, one way to re-energize it is to use it as the basis for a video. To put it another way, once you've made a name for yourself on Google, move on to YouTube!

It also doesn't have to be a complicated video. Simply use the blog post as a framework for your presentation, going over some key points and possibly putting together some bulleted slides. It's a great way to extend the life of a blog post while also expanding your subject matter expertise.

Make it into a Guest Post

You've written about your experiences on your own blog, but there are still a lot of people who haven't heard from you. However, if you think the subject is interesting, you can always write a second edition, keeping the same points but changing the wording, and then submit it as a guest post to an industry blog or publication.

This not only helps you get a little more mileage out of your original post, but it also gives you a way to get some backlinks to your site, which is a big SEO win.

Turn it into a “Pillar” Article

A pillar article is a longer, evergreen piece of content that covers all aspects of a particular subject. After you've finished writing a pillar article, break it down into individual sub-sections, making sure to include plenty of hyperlinks from the pillar to the sub-sections and vice versa. This strategy can improve the user experience while also delivering strong SEO results.

Take a look at some of your most popular blog posts to see what they're all about. Could any of them be considered pillars? For example, perhaps you have a lengthy Top 10 list on your blog. Consider breaking down each point into its own post and using the pillar page as a starting point for more narrowly focused, supportive posts.

Update the Original

Finally, many topics will necessitate regular updates. If you have popular posts from a year or two ago, it might be worth reading them again to see if anything has changed. Are there any noteworthy new developments, trends, or technologies? Are there any supplementary materials you could link to? Have you changed your mind or perspective in any way? Updating an older post with new content can sometimes give it new life, and may even result in new SEO benefits.

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