Some dishes are even better the second time around. Some movie sequels are not. Either statement could be true for the posts you are thinking about migrating from your blog archive to Substack. I’m grateful for the ease with which Substack helps new arrivals migrate from WordPress and other platforms.

When I took a look at my archived posts, I was happy to discover most are worthy of an encore. Honestly, some were crap. Especially the ones composed on a short deadline.

You may think you’re being a bad cook because you’re considering recycling old content like Dear Abby used to do. The truth is revealed the moment you understand the difference between posts that are timely and ones that are timeless.

I republished one of my timeless classic blog posts titled, "5 Tips for Using Twitter for Business from my blog Make Technology Work. Within moments of my LinkedIn publish, I received likes, profile views and invitations to join professional networks. But that was then, and this is now. I wouldn’t publish it here because it’s no longer timely.

The “Writing on LinkedIn” discussion group (One of LinkedIn's best) always features discussions about SEO republishing pitfalls. "Will my page-rank take a hit?" Who cares? There is no downside to republishing if it's done for the right reasons. If your community members find value in one of your classics, you are not a bad dog, you are smart. Search engines need to deliver valuable search results to grow their ad revenue. As the Likes and Comments grow, so does your street cred. To build digital leverage, engage your community with your best stuff, especially the classics.

Here are some tips you can use to decide if your content is still good or if it’s time to toss it out:

• Is it timely or timeless? Relevance matters.
• Can you add something to spice it up or update it to make it timely once again?
• Has your audience changed? Introduce it to a future fan.

You’ve written a lot of good stuff! Don’t let it go to waste, repurpose it.