The pros and cons of reposting your content

Company 3 min read

The pros and cons of reposting your content

Last updated: July 31st, 2018

Last week we were chatting with one of our clients and the topic of reposting content came up.

Before we go any further, it’s important to point out that this client gets it. They craft thoughtful, useful, and relevant articles for their audience. They’re perceived as an expert in their field.

And for years they have diligently published these resourceful articles on their own domain.

Recently they noticed their competition reposting articles to Medium, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. They watched as these companies started to gain traction on these platforms. They were equal parts worried and intrigued. But more than anything, they were jealous.

Medium logo

Who wouldn’t be? The idea of reaching a slew of new customers on alternative platforms had them chomping at the bit.

But something didn’t seem right. They didn’t want to fall behind their competitors, but they were nervous they hadn’t thought things through. They had questions and concerns. Ultimately, they decided not to pull the trigger.

After having a few internal conversations, they asked us to help them analyze their strategy to make sure they were making the right choice. That opened up a dialogue that would lead to a lot of back and forth.

The timing of this conversation was uncanny. As luck would have it, we had been knocking around our own content strategy and had similar questions. This was a perfect opportunity to do more research and learn together.

So we started out the best way we knew how; a pros and cons list. Here’s what we came up with:

Pros of reposting blog content

  • Increase brand recognition through alternative platforms
  • Have an opportunity to reach a wider audience
  • Most of these new platforms have built in sharing and recommendations to help spread your voice

Cons of reposting blog content

  • You won’t be driving much traffic to your own domain because it’s siloed on another platform
  • Less traffic = less conversion. If you’re looking to turn readers in to customers, it will be harder on other platforms

After doing our research, we came to the conclusion that right now there are more pros than cons. We recommended that our client start posting to Medium and LinkedIn. However, there are some best practices for reposting so that you don’t get penalized by Google in the SERPs.

According to Ryan Battles, it’s imperative to post your article on your own blog first. You’ll have complete control over the presentation of your content and introduce your brand on your terms.

Once there, you can encourage your visitors to explore your content organically. This will lead to more activity on your own domain. Hell, you might even make a sale or two.

But the number one rule is…

If you decide to repost on alternative platforms like Medium and LinkedIn, we recommend that you wait a week after you’ve posted to your own blog.

There are several reasons for this, but the main benefit is your domain will rank higher in SERPs for your original content. If you post to your blog first, Google will likely rank your blog post higher for specific keywords. Bonus!

So what do you do while you wait? Twiddle your thumbs until next week? Don’t be silly! In the meantime, post older blog content to Medium and LinkedIn while you wait those seven days out. It’s a great way to stay active while giving Google time to do it’s thing.

We gave this advice to our client and we’re going to try it too. If done correctly, we expect to see an increase in growth and recognition on alternative platforms. We’ll keep you posted on our progress. Onward!

1 Comments

Chris Sanderson November 24, 2015

Great post guys. I’ve been thinking about branching out in to other mediums (pardon the pun) and this guide will be helpful. Cheers!

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