Friday Buzz: Make Your Old Content New Again

That magazine content you created in the predigital era doesn’t need to just sit in some backroom, value atrophying by the day. All you have to do is make it fresh.

According to RealMatch’s Mary Hiers  (opens in a new tab), there are ways to bring it back to life with the help of digital content. Hiers notes that this content often has significant value long beyond its print shelf life, something many newspapers and magazines have taken advantage of. The New York Times and The Guardian each feature online archives that date back more than 100 years, and many magazines have content that goes back decades. It may be old news, but that age just means that the value proposition has changed.

“Why are readers drawn to content decades or even centuries old? The answer is a simple one: Articles that were once popular as cutting-edge news are now highly valued for their historical content,” Hiers explains.

And this content has value in the way that many current online news publications often don’t have. You can monetize these old publications separately from your current digital efforts, or you can even build up ad revenue by opening up the old content to current readers—as the Times once did.

“Take a look at your own publication’s back issues,” Hiers says. “Do they contain important historical or cultural data that might encourage readers to pay more for digital access and/or increase your status as a desirable venue for advertisers? If so, you may be sitting on a very profitable time capsule indeed—and it may be time to dig it up!”

Don’t Be Too Nice

Association professionals are too nice (and why this is bad) http://t.co/6HzImdyyK0  (opens in a new tab) via @AssocMarketer  (opens in a new tab) #AssnChat  (opens in a new tab) #ASAE  (opens in a new tab)

— Amanda Lea Kaiser (@AmandaLeaKaiser) May 8, 2015  (opens in a new tab)

“Quick to please” is a key mantra for association executives looking to help their members and others in their industry, but there are limits to this strategy: If you try to please everyone, you’re going to end up incredibly overworked.

Don’t be afraid to show your limits, Smooth The Path‘s Amanda Kaiser says.

“We dash from meeting to meeting. We try to keep up but often find ourselves hundreds of emails behind. We come in early and stay late and still the mile long list continues to be well, a mile long,” she explains in an Association Marketer blog post  (opens in a new tab). “The problem is we are doing to much and often when we are doing too much it is hard, no impossible, to start doing more things we should be doing.”

Kaiser suggests staying focused on just a few goals as a way to solve the problem. (ht @SmoothThePath  (opens in a new tab))

Other Links of Note

Don’t overmanage your volunteers, says David M. Patt. It could look like you’re not grateful for their help if you give them the third degree. “Take advantage of their offer, make them feel welcome, and make it as easy as possible for them to help you,” Patt writes  (opens in a new tab).

Negative Facebook comments got you down? Community engagement manager Kristina Leroux offers tips on how to handle them  (opens in a new tab).

Still a Flickr user? You might enjoy the latest update  (opens in a new tab), which makes it a great tool for organizing smartphone photos.

(iStock/Thinkstock)