Do You Republish Your Posts?
Posted by Mike | Filed under Blogging
Republishing a post simply means that you edit a post’s publish date to put it on your blog’s front page. You may also change some parts of the post to make it better. I’ve been doing this for a while and I can say that republishing can have good effects (and sometimes, bad) on your blog.
If you’re still thinking why you should do this, then stop looking for reasons. I’ll give you good reasons to republish your posts.
Your post will get more exposure. Have you ever written a post when your blog was still very new? Now that you’ve got a number of readers, it’s time to put that post up to tell the whole world about your thoughts. You can’t expect your readers to dig up your archive to look for a post which talks about something that they don’t even know!
It’s a good method of having new posts when you’re completely out of ideas. Did you run out of something to say on your blog? Then just get one post from your pile of archives and republish it. Your readers will gain information, and at the same time, your blog will have a new post. How cool is that? Just make sure that what you’re “recycling” isn’t outdated.
The post might be good for certain times of the year. Did you write something about Christmas last year? Why not republish that post to create that Yuletide season feeling? You may have to edit some parts of the text, though.
If you have something more to add here, leave a comment. Though republishing is a nice idea, here is one reason why you SHOULD NOT republish your posts.
Your blog will have broken links. This will only happen if your posts’ URLs are in the “http://www.yourblog.tld/year/month/post-title” format. For example, you decided to republish one post today. You chose your post that you wrote on August 9, 2006. The post’s URL will change, and chances are some people will not be able to find that post any more.
If you have a pretty URL structure, then you will have no problem with broken links. 
As I said, I’ve been doing this for a while and I received positive comments on republished posts. You don’t have to worry about people who will say “This post again? You’ve got nothing to write any more, eh? You suck!”. You will have more supporters than flamers if your post is good. They’ll thank you for giving valuable information to them. 
What about you? Do you republish your posts?
I have yet to republish any of my posts, but the idea has always been there.
I’d re-write the posts along with updates in the post. This way the original one was there, and you could put a link in the new post to the old post. I don’t have enough content yet on the site to do this yet, but will be doing it occasionally. A blast from the past type post.
Generally, I don’t re-publish posts. However, if I do want to pass on an idea stated in an earlier post, I would simply rewrite it as another post (and add some other stuff to it).
Republished posts…why not? Long as the post is fresh and relevant.