5 Ways to Create Second Chances for Underperforming Posts

  a second chance 
  Originally uploaded by heavin inc..

Have you ever written a post that you really loved, then published it only to see it flop with no comments or feedback?

Ouch--It's always kind of sad to see one of your favorite posts fall off the front page of your blog and languish in obscurity.

When you spend a good amount of time trying to craft a creative and helpful post, it's hard not to take the deafening silence personally, but the truth is it happens to even the most popular bloggers, including Darren Rowse at Problogger who writes about what he does to give underperforming posts a second chance.

In case you're like me and wondering "What gives? This is one of my best posts--why does no one like it?", Darren has some advice that is kind of consoling.

Reasons he cites that can account for a post that flops (his tips, my phrasing):

• More high profile stories breaking at the same time hog all the attention
• Your traffic fairy godmother was MIA (more about "traffic fairy godmothers here)
• Posting on the wrong day of the week (I am not sure what the "wrong day of the week" is, although my guess is that the most popular days seem to be Tuesday and Thursday, and the least popular are Saturday, Sunday and Monday)
  
• You wrote the post when you were still a newbie and didn't have any readers yet
• Or perhaps your post just wasn't as great as you thought!

I also want to add one to Darren's list:

• Posting too frequently--I'm starting to think that putting up too many posts has the inevitable effect of causing some of the posts to get lost in the fray. It could be that the post flopped simply because your readers didn't see it.
  

It does make me feel somewhat better to see that even Darren has these issues. He has some great tips giving your best underperforming posts a second chance which you can find here, but I wanted to share some of the things that I do to save my fave posts from dying a lonely death  .

Here are ways I give posts a second chance:

1) Blogging on a more popular blog. Sometimes I blog on bigger blogs than mine that get much higher traffic, and on a couple of occasions I have taken ideas from my favorite posts on my own blog, and have re-worked them to address the audience of the bigger blog. It's really rewarding to publish on a blog with much higher readership and see the comments and trackbacks start pouring in, especially if the post that I originally wrote for my own blog fell flat. Also, there is indirect traffic that comes to my own blog from my author link on the bigger blog.

2) Have a "Best Of.." section to draw attention to old posts. I put links to my favorite posts in my side bar.

3) Re-work posts and turn them into articles for online article submissions. Not all blog posts are suitable for online article submissions (the articles need to be more formally written and kind of timeless with minimal links), but when I write a post that is "article-worthy" I'll take some extra time and re-write it so that it's appropriate for article submissions. The article is reaching a completely different audience than my blog post, and it has the potential to get picked up for publication in an ezine.  I think I've had pretty good success with this, since at least one of my articles was picked up by an ezine with a big subscriber list, which resulted in a jump in RSS subscribers to my blog. Also a couple weeks ago someone contacted me asking if he could include one of my articles in a book he was writing (a book about archery, of all things!).

BTW--I always hear folks fretting about duplicate content with the online article submissions, but the submission service I use (www.SubmitYOURArticle.com) allows me to create unlimited variations of certain elements of my article (title, intro paragraph, resource box, and various sentences within the article) so that potentially each publisher will each receive a unique, well-written version of my article.

4)  Fewer posts, more fun. Another thing I've started doing on the front end to give posts more of a chance to take off and comments to develop is to post less frequently. I have decided that I would rather put up 1 to 3 posts a week and give conversation a chance to develop around the post than to inundate you guys with multiple posts a day every day of the week.

Now, this kind of goes against the problogging/SEO approach where you try to produce as much content as you can, but let's face it--I am not a problogger and I don't have the Hurculean writing stamina that those problogger guys have. It means more to me to produce quality posts and not kill myself with writing, writing, writing (after all, I have a life and a business besides this blog! ;-))

5)  Turn comments into blog posts. This is sort of a side topic, but another thing I do is re-work some of my more detailed comments that I leave on folks' blogs to be entire posts on my blog. In fact, the first version of this post you're reading here was actually a rather elaborate comment I placed on Problogger in response to Darren's post. I had written up such a detailed comment, I was like "This comment is "blog post worthy". I might as well find a way to use it on my own blog." I've also done this with a few other comments I've left of folks' blogs where my comment sparked the inspiration for a post.

These are some of the ways I give my fave posts second chances--I'm wondering if anyone else does this type of thing.

Do you recycle posts, and if so, how do you go about it and what success have you had?

I'd love to hear some other ideas! 

Update: I'm now realizing that I almost passed up a perfect opportunity to give some of my fave underperforming posts a second chance by posting links to them in this post. Here are my faves that are in danger of dying a lonely death:

• The Juggler's Rivalry--maybe it's just not a catchy title?

• Einstein: Creativity Trumps Brains--I've changed the title on this one a couple times trying to spark some interest, but no luck. I find the excerpt from the Daily Show to be interesting and hilarious. I've watched it numerous times, and was just waiting for someone to chime in and say they liked it too, but not one single bite so far!

One thing that these two posts have in common is that they are both based on videos, and I don't know if that has anything to do with the lack of interest. Or....maybe they just aren't as good as I think they are, and I'm more attracted to the idea behind the post rather than the post itself.

• And from over on 901am.com, I really thought the post Nomadic Web Workers Follow In Hemingway's Footsteps would go over bigger than it did. Remarkably, the same day I posted the Hemingway post over there, I also published a HowTo called "5 Ways to Work Less & Get More Done Online", and that one took off! Out of the two of these, I really liked the Hemingway one more and thought it was better writing, but the HowTo got far more comments and trackbacks. Oh well, what do I know?!!! 

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

Sometimes I fall in love with a topic and wonder why it never generates a lot of commentary. But then, I go back and look at it again ... and sure enough, my memory of the post is better than a renewed experience of it.

Sad but true ... sometimes my favourite posts just aren't as good as I think they are. But then, that becomes a good source of new ideas ...

So which are your faves?

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Oh yes, that's true, Gavin. Sometimes the *intention* or idea behind the post is actually more compelling than the post turns out to be! :-) And unfortunately, if we don't do that great a job on the post, then the reader doesn't know what the idea behind the post is, and it flops.

You've actually brought to my attention that I've passed up the perfect opportunity to highlight some of my favorite underperforming posts. I'm going to update the post with my personal faves.

I wonder which of your underperforming posts are your favorites?

[Gavin Heaton]

So far I have found that my underperforming posts are underperforming for a reason. When I re-read them I often find they are not so great -- or that my thinking has moved on from that point in time.

Sometimes it is interesting to try and map the evolution of your own thinking (no matter how embarrassing it may be). I guess that is what is so useful about a living scrapbook of ideas! Now, that is a good idea for a post!

[Sharon Sarmiento]

Hey, there you go--"a living scrapbook of ideas!"

Now I'll be looking for that post on Servant of Chaos. :-)