This is a guest post from Jon DeNunzio, who runs Squarely Digital, an online marketing agency based in Alexandria, Va. 

You’ve heard of claustrophobia and arachnophobia. What about vacansopapurosophobia?

Vacansopapurosophobia can cripple just about anyone who writes for a living. It’s the fear of the blank page — also known as the dread that comes over you when you have to write something new.  

If you create marketing content for your business, you may be familiar with this affliction. There are times when you know you need a new blog post, case study or success story for the company website, but all you have is that white screen and a flashing cursor. 

I’m here to help. There’s one thing you should know about creating content for your website: Not every piece has to start from scratch.  

You can (and often should) build on what’s already there. How? Here are five ways to do it: 

1. Update an Old Piece

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you almost certainly have a few posts in the archive that could use a refresh. For example, you might have written about a trend you were beginning to see emerge months or years ago. An updated post could add information about how that emerging trend played out — and what it means now. 

“Best practices” posts are always ripe for updates, too. Example: If you posted tips for social media success in 2018, it’s time to update that post. The platforms are always evolving, and what worked then probably isn’t as effective today.

Remember: If you use date stamps on your content, make sure to update those, too. And it can’t hurt to add a note at the beginning or end explaining when the post was originally written and when  it was updated. 

2. Write a Sequel 

This is similar to Tip 1, but instead you extend an old idea by creating a new piece. For example, in 2018 I wrote a blog post about two of my favorite business podcasts. Since then, I have started listening to a few more — a new post featuring those would be a natural “sequel.” 

A common-sense sequel for many businesses might come from changes your industry has experienced due to the pandemic. Take a piece you wrote before March 2020 and think about what you’d say differently now. And then use those changes as the basis of a new post.

Pro tip for sequels: Make sure to link to the old post, and then add a note at the end of the original piece promoting the sequel — with a link to it, as well. 

3. Find a Gap

Look at the pieces you’ve published in the past and think about topics that fit right in, but you’ve never covered. Then write something to fill that gap.

Maybe you’ve written a beginner’s guide to understanding a certain topic, and expert tips on it as well. You could write something for the audience that’s in the middle — they’re not newbies, but experts either. What information or tips will help them move toward the expert level?

Another way to approach this task is thinking about the buyer’s journey. Ideally, your site should contain content written for your ideal customer(s) at each stage of the journey. But when you review your content, you may notice that you don’t have much — or any — content for a certain stage. 

For example, perhaps you have plenty of content that helps visitors with a certain problem understand the solutions available to them (consideration stage). And you also have a good amount of content that shows exactly why your solution stands out (decision stage). But you lack that top-of-funnel, awareness-stage content that helps visitors diagnose their problem and start thinking about solutions. If so, get to work in that area.

4. Repurpose From Another Platform

That video you put on YouTube last month? Transcribe it and turn it into a blog post.

That customer success story you published in your site? Turn it into an animated video or a podcast episode. You could even interview the customer to add a new dimension. 

The Twitter thread you posted last week that created all that engagement? Flesh it out into a guest blog post you can offer to strategic partners. 

You get the idea. 

5. Compile a Downloadable Resource

If you’ve written multiple times about a certain topic, you may have the ingredients for a downloadable resource, such as a white paper or in-depth report.

If so, take those pieces, add a cover and an introduction and publish it as a PDF. If you think it’s valuable enough to your prospects, you could even turn it into “gated” content — requiring the user to fill out a short form before downloading. If you ask for their email (and you should), it allows you to start marketing to them more directly.   

If you don’t have the content to pull this off now, consider adjusting your content calendar to put yourself in position to publish a downloadable resource in the future. A travel-industry client and I did this a few years ago, when the National Museum of African American History and Culture was preparing to open in Washington, D.C. We published several blog posts about the museum over two months, then compiled them into a visitors’ guide available for download on his site. It has been a regular source of leads for the client. 

Bonus Tip: How to Choose the Topic to Build On

If you’re having a hard time deciding which old pieces to build on, check your analytics. It’s rarely a bad idea to start by updating or enhancing your most popular pieces. Build on success!  

Hopefully these tips will help you vanquish vacansopapurosophobia. If you’d like more tips on creating high-quality marketing content, join one of my Content Marketing Tune-Up Sessions — free virtual workshops held monthly, where participants bring one piece of content for the group to review and offer feedback.