Over the years, I have written hundreds of blog posts. Some of them are no longer relevant, but, frankly, most of them are. The problem is that these inevitably scroll into my blog archives. As a result, they all but disappear.

If you are a blogger, you know what I am talking about. You put a lot of work into those posts, and you hate to see them go to waste. The challenge is to make it more visible and more accessible.Recently, I started using Twitter to remind my followers about older posts they may have missed. Naturally, you can overdo this, so I am limiting myself to one “re-post” tweet per day. For example, I might tweet,

Note that I try to address a felt need, offer my post as a solution, and then provide a link to the post. I also want to be clear that this is a “re-post” not a “new post.”

Today, I actually took this one step further and scheduled the tweets using TweetLater.com. Here’s how you can do the same:

1. Create a new text file. I use TextEdit on the Mac. If you are on the PC, you can use NotePad.
2. Immediately, save your file. I called mine, “Scheduled Tweets for My Favorite Blog Posts.txt.” I saved it in a special Twitter folder that I use for all-things-Twitter.
3. I went through my blog and identified my 60 favorite posts. (You don’t have to do this many. You can do 10, 20, 30, whatever.) This was pretty easy because I use ecto as my blogging client. I simply scrolled through my list of posts and picked my favorites.
4. I wrote a tweet specifically for each post. Frankly, this took me a few hours, but I think it was worth it. Here is an excerpt of the file:

   

   Notice that I shortened the file name using a URL shortener. I like is.gd because it takes up the fewest characters. (With only 140 characters, every character counts!) Another good one is tr.im.

5. Register for TweetLater.com. If you use the free version of the service, you will have to copy and paste each tweet into the New Tweet section of the program. (If you register for the Professional version of the program, you can upload the entire text file in one-step. However, it costs $29.97 per month. You can also make each post recurring, so that it shows up once a month forever or whatever frequency you choose.)
6. Schedule the tweets one day apart. You can also specify the time you want the tweet to be posted. You can obviously tweet more frequently than this, but I think you risk annoying your followers.

That’s all there is to it. I have been testing this informally for the past few weeks and found that it has become a major source of new traffic to my blog.

Related posts:

• Focus on Blog Content Before Traffic
• What I Learned from My 48-Hour Twitter Fast
• 7 Strategies for Increasing Your Blog Comments
• How to Attach Photos to Your Twitter Posts
• An Invitation to Write for My Blog