4 Reasons to Keep a List of All Your Marketing Articles

I always recommend that my clients keep a list of all their marketing articles, such as newsletter articles, blog posts and guest posts.

This isn’t an onerous task when done from the outset. But even if they’ve accumulated several years of posts, it doesn’t take much time to compile a list.

Then, as I write new articles on their behalf, I simply keep adding to the list.

Why do I promote this practice? Four main reasons:

1. It provides inspiration for new topics

When you’re looking for new topics to write about, a list of what you’ve already covered is a great place to start. By reviewing your list, you might:

• Find an article you can update with new information.
• Add a “part two” to a particular topic if your expertise has grow since writing the original one.
• Disagree with something you’ve written before and write an article about that! Or maybe you feel more even strongly about an opinion you’ve expressed before for a new set of reasons.
• Write a post that summarizes your top performing posts of the previous year. (Which garnered the most comments? Which got the most traction on social media?)

In short, a master list can provide inspiration for new posts.

2. It helps you keep track of what you’ve written about before—and where

For some clients, I ghostwrite articles for a number of different online journals. And it doesn’t take long to get confused about what topics we’ve covered and where.

In most cases, these journals won’t allow you to publish the exact same content to different sites. But that doesn’t mean you can’t cover the same topic from a different angle for different journals.

Also, when you have a master list, you can spot gaps in what you’ve covered and come up with new topics.

3. It helps you find good internal links

For SEO reasons, it can be helpful to include internal links in your blog posts. (Internal links are hyperlinks to related articles on your site.)

For example, one of my clients has a LOT of content on his site. When I’m writing articles for this client, I’ll review his list of articles to find related content and then incorporate them into the article as internal links. This is a much more efficient process than clicking through his site to find related content.

4. It helps you onboard new writers

If you’re writing your own content now and hoping to onboard a writer in the future, then a list is a quick way to give your writer an overview of the types of topics you cover.

What Should You Put on Your List?

Your master list of marketing articles doesn’t have to be terribly sophisticated. A simple spreadsheet often does the trick.

Here’s an example:

In this case, I’ve used the worksheet tab to specify the platform where the article was published.

Some of my clients include many other fields in addition to these, such as type of content (article, podcast, etc.), featured guest (if applicable) and promotional tie-in.

Don’t Let Your Past Articles Lay Dormant!

When you don’t have a list of your past articles, it’s easy to forget about them.

As you well know, writing quality content takes time and effort. So make the most of it by keeping a list!