When you see recycling symbol do you only associate it with trash and saving the environment? Well I've got another use for the symbol and it is about blogging.
Reuse is a simple as pulling out an old post. The nice thing about generic posts such as "how to" or "Speechless Sunday" posts is they are usually timeless. It doesn't matter how old they are they can be copied from your archives and used again. This is great when you have have writers block and can't think of anything new to say. Many times new members of Active Rain won't have seen it before and your old subscribers may not recognize it as a repeat. Reuse does not qualify for Active Rain contests though, so be careful as judges do recognize old content and won't award points for it.
Reduce might be the hardest one to accomplish. You could reduce the number of times you post per week. Ten posts isn't a rule for how many times you post per week, t's a limit for maximum points. You don't have to beat yourself up if you don't want to post 10 times (or more) per week. It can also mean reduce the length of your posts for maximum readership. The ideal blog posts, as written by dozens of SEO experts, is 250-300 words. If your posts run 500 plus words and require readers to continuously use their scroll bar it might be time to reduce them to a more reasonable length
Recycling is easy. If you created your post in blocks of content you can take content from a previous post and add it to a new one. Have an old photo that you used for a previous topic? It can be the inspiration for a new one. Write lots of hyper-local posts? You can cut and paste content from one post that is relevant to another without having to write it again. Recycling does not mean you can copy and paste from someone else's post and use it. That is called a copyright violation not recycling.
Do I use all of these techniques myself when posting to Active Rain? Absolutely. There are times when I post that easily falls into one of these categories. My preference is to be witty, clever and original but let's face it there are only so many hours in a day and only so many ways to describe a local neighborhood. In my opinion the trick is not to overdue the three "R's" when it comes to blogging. If you do your readers will eventually notice and may leave you for a less earth friendly blogger.
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