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How to Maintain High Readership for Your Best ‘Old’ Articles
Breathe new life into great articles you published long ago, now covered in digital dust and cobwebs
Those of us who publish regularly on Medium (or in our own personal blogs) have spent hours and hours over weeks, months or years publishing what we hope will be perceived as fantastic content. When an article is newly published, we proudly promote it to the world — usually via our social media channels or newsletters — and hope it will be well received, build up momentum and get as much exposure as possible.
Sometimes we get lucky and it goes viral (if not by industry standards, then at least by our own, in relation to how much traction our articles usually get), and sometimes the interest is minimal and short-lived.
But often, there’s no rhyme or reason as to why some articles do better than others. Sometimes articles we spend a great deal of time on don’t do as well as articles we whip up in no time at all, most likely because we’re at the mercy of the algorithms in the various platforms we’re promoting on, and who the hell knows how they really work.
So once the momentum from our initial promotion for a newly-published article dies down — what happens then? Are they done and dusted, never to see…