How to Turn Your Old Email Newsletters Into Evergreen Blogs
Between actually running your business and trying to juggle all the marketing tasks everyone tells you you “should” be doing, blogging can easily get pushed to the backburner.
So many business owners get overwhelmed with blogging because it feels like such a big task compared to just hopping on IG stories or sending an email to their list.
But, good news: If you’re already taking advantage of email marketing and newsletters, you’re probably already sitting on a pile of potential blog posts!
Here’s how to turn those old newsletters into blog posts so you can blog more often without reinventing the wheel.
How to Repurpose a Newsletter Into a Blog Post (Beyond Just Copy-Pasting)
I’m NOT talking about just copy-pasting and publishing your old emails to your website as a blog post. That isn’t going to work, and honestly, might actually do more harm than good.
As good as the original content might be, it still needs some tweaking to become truly valuable, evergreen blog content. Here’s the process I use for clients and myself:
Not all newsletters are well-suited to become blog content, and that’s okay! Some emails can just stay emails. 🤷♀️
Repurposing emails → blogs works best when you’re picky in your selection process. Think about things like:
- Evergreenness: Is the topic something that’s going to be relevant for years to come?
- SEO potential: Is this a topic people are actively searching for?
- Offer relevance: Will this drive visitors to your offers or educate them on what you do?
- Email performance: Look for newsletters with high engagement rates.
Basically, you want to repurpose newsletters on topics that 1) your audience wants to hear about, 2) will bring traffic to your website, and/or 3) drive people to your offers.
Once you’ve decided on a newsletter to repurpose, I recommend pasting it from your email platform into a fresh doc. This makes it easier to see the email as a working draft and extract the meat so we’re not writing from scratch!
Read through your newsletter from top to bottom and ask yourself:
💡 What’s the main idea? 💡
It may feel like you’re back in elementary school for a minute, but this is important. The intimate nature of email newsletters means that sometimes the overarching message or takeaway you want to convey can feel a bit muddy or unclear, which is why I like to start here.
You need to know what problem this solves for your audience and how it ties in with how you serve people in your business. That’s your blog concept.
At this stage, it’s also a good idea to do some keyword research. Look for a keyword with a search volume higher than zero and relatively low difficulty, but don’t get too hung up on this – because you’re repurposing a topic that’s already created, there’s only so much you can do without fully reinventing the wheel.
3. Strip out irrelevant and email-specific elements
Now that you’ve figured out your blog concept and the SEO keyword you’re targeting, it’s time to, well, de-emailify your email.
First things first, go through and strip out any personalization tags from your email provider. Then update or remove time-sensitive references and check to make sure every link leads where it’s supposed to (and fix any sneaky broken ones).
You’ll also want to revisit any CTAs in the content. Is the offer and actual CTA copy still relevant? Does it make sense to stay in this blog post? Consider your ultimate goal for the blog — whether it’s to get people to download your freebie, click on a resource, or inquire to work with you — and make sure the calls to action align with that goal!
4. Add more depth and context
This is where the real magic happens! Newsletters are typically shorter and written in a more casual, intimate style than blog posts. But because blog posts are often someone’s very first introduction to you, adding more context and expanding to make the content more useful is super important.
I like to literally just put myself in the shoes of the reader and think about what else I would want to know if I were reading the post. Things like:
- More detailed explanations of concepts you mentioned briefly
- Tactical “how to” steps if it makes sense
- Examples that illustrate your points better
The goal here isn’t to bulk up the post just for the sake of it. But make sure the content fully answers the query or solves the problem it promises to readers in the title.
5. Add headers and final formatting touches
The final step is making it all LOOK like a blog post! Blog posts NEED clear structure to be SEO-friendly and skimmable, so go through your draft and identify the main points or sections. Make use of H2 and H3 headings to define these sections.
If you have related blogs on your website already, add internal links where relevant. And of course, don’t forget the introduction and conclusion!
All of these things increase readability, make your blog post more effective, and help search engines understand what it’s about.
Why Your Newsletter Is the Perfect Starting Point for Blogs
What I see holding a lot of business owners back from blogging for their business is simply a lack of time. They’re already showing up in a bunch of other places and they don’t think they can keep up with blogging consistently.
But one of the beauties of blogging is that if you’re not consistent every single week or even every month, no algorithm is going to punish you for it.
However, the reality is that the more blogs you publish, the more results you’ll see.
If you’re sending regular newsletters to your email list, you’re ALREADY creating longform content consistently. It’s just not discoverable like blogs are. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reusing that old content if it serves your business! Honestly, it’s just the smart thing to do.
Your Newsletter and Blog Can Work Together
Your newsletters are great for nurturing and building deeper relationships with subscribers, while blog posts can help you reach new people through search and establish authority in your niche.
So instead of treating these two channels as separate, think of them as working together towards the same goal. You can repurpose the same ideas back and forth to cover different stages of the customer journey without burning out.
If you’re struggling to maintain your blog when you’re already putting so much effort into email marketing, repurposing your newsletters in this way is a great way to get more out of what you’re already writing.
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