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If you have any history in the content marketing game, you’ve probably heard this advice: “Keep it evergreen.” So, what is evergreen content?
It’s what the word implies: content that doesn’t go stale over time and provides consistent value to potential customers. Evergreen content is one component of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. Here, we explore the core elements of evergreen content and outline some best practices for its production.
The Timeless Value Of Evergreen Content in Marketing
Your content marketing strategy should focus on delivering valuable content to your potential customers. Depending on your industry, that could mean blog posts on current trends, newsworthy articles, or other posts that demonstrate you are a thought leader in your space.
This “trendy” type of content is essential for grabbing the attention of your target audience. That’s especially true if you deliver a product that’s all about what’s new, innovative, and emerging. But it also has an expiration date. A fashion brand’s posts about what’s on the runway for next season are just that — seasonal — and won’t be relevant when the weather changes, let alone the year.
The beauty of evergreen content is its timeless nature. Evergreen topics won’t go out of style, even if your website color scheme has an overhaul or your product line gets an update. Evergreen pieces are the cornerstone of content creation as they give your online presence a stable base to work from.
Core Elements of Evergreen Content
So, what are the benefits of evergreen content? It helps you to connect and sustain your audience. It’s also a fundamental tool in the development of your digital marketing strategy.
Timeless Relevance to the Audience
Evergreen posts always hold meaning. No matter the season or year, readers find them relevant. This might seem unbelievable in an online world where everything is constantly updated to reflect changing moods and trends, but there is always a need for evergreen content. It’s the type of content that is foundational to a topic and is perpetually useful.
Let’s say you have a website that sells sewing patterns and supplies. Your non-evergreen content might include the latest styles and fashions. Your evergreen content pieces can focus on “how-tos,” like instructions for certain stitches, as well as tips and tricks for finishing garments. The current events stuff keeps people interested, while your evergreen content offers a reliable source of information for new sewers and seasoned pros alike.
Versatility and Adaptability
Part of any modern content strategy is posting across multiple platforms. This can be an exhausting process for any content creator who starts from scratch every time; but with evergreen content, you can reuse old content without appearing out-of-date or out-of-step with the current conversation.
Social media visibility is critical for a digital marketing strategy and you require a regular presence to get consistent traffic. But the savvy content marketer knows you can populate your feeds with new content and evergreen content to keep the interest of your followers. Your sewing audience might have an equal interest in the latest fabrics from Milan (not evergreen) and how to create a dart stitch (evergreen).
Best of all, the pieces can become relevant content no matter where they land, with just a few tweaks. It’s often a simple step to turn an evergreen blog post into an infographic, so it’s more suited to image-based platforms like Instagram.
Longevity and SEO Ranking Benefits
Evergreen content has consistent interest from readers, so it can be a big driver of organic traffic. A post can stay on your site for a long time and still generate interest, so your site builds reliability over time. If you integrate search engine optimization (SEO) principles into your evergreen posts, you will get those consistent hits. Your non-evergreen or seasonal content by contrast will experience spikes and valleys — or more accurately, a single spike and prolonged valley.
The Role of Evergreen Articles in Marketing Strategies
Evergreen content, therefore, has a central role to play in a digital marketing strategy. Beyond the SEO advantage, quality content can build your profile as an entrepreneur or business leader and help your brand connect with your current and potential customers.
Establishing Thought Leadership and Authority
Thought leadership gives you the opportunity to speak or write in-depth about a topic relevant to your industry. Because this necessarily involves a deep dive into a topic, it’s evergreen almost by nature; even if you want to provide insight into trends, you might speak on a timeline of 10 years instead of 10 months, meaning your content has less of an expiration date.
Evergreen articles also demonstrate your unique knowledge and experience by providing substantial information that sustains over time. While some say that thought leadership is about sparking conversations, it is also about establishing authority in an area. By expanding upon the essentials in a timeless piece of content, you ensure your name becomes synonymous with reliability and expertise.
Nurturing Leads and Building Trust
The ultimate goal of content marketing is to attract, nurture, and eventually convert leads. Evergreen content often has a central role in the second prong of this strategy: nurture. A keyword search, paid ad, or trendy post has brought your potential client to your site. An evergreen post gives them the opportunity to learn more about a particular topic. This deepens their interest in your brand, builds trust in your reliability and authority, and gets them closer to the third stage: conversion.
Enhancing Brand Loyalty and Engagement
Evergreen content that provides useful, accurate, and reliable information can develop its own following. It can also make your brand the go-to place for insight into your particular niche. People can choose to return to your site to learn from your insight, in the process engaging more deeply with your brand. Compare this to non-evergreen content: when people follow trendy news, they rarely feel a connection to the brand that delivers it to them. If they do, it’s only to see the next new thing — not to engage more deeply with a subject.
Best Practices for Creating Evergreen Content
In order to develop an evergreen strategy for your business, it’s a good idea to review some best practices. While almost anyone can throw up an evergreen post on “how to tie a tie,” that’s not necessarily what’s relevant to your audience, nor will it increase engagement and promote conversions. There are some essential approaches to improve your content quality and get the maximum value out of your evergreen engagement.
Conduct Thorough Research and Analysis
Even though evergreen content is always relevant by design, it still acts as a vital anchor for your content marketing by adhering to SEO principles. There should be a target keyword that gets consistent organic traffic to build your content around. In order to know what to target, it’s essential to research and analyze past and current trends.
The idea of looking at current trends for a timeless strategy might make some marketers nervous — after all, who knows what the future holds? However, you can perform historical keyword searches to see trends over a long period of time.
You can also use your own personal knowledge of your industry to develop evergreen content ideas. It’s highly likely any sewing expert will tell you there’s always a need for step-by-step instructions on how to make a dart stitch.
Craft Comprehensive and In-Depth Content
Evergreen content often focuses on broad topics. But even broad topics hold value, as do narrower subjects with timeless relevance. You can develop many types of evergreen content, from short instructional pieces to in-depth analyses.
It’s the comprehensive and in-depth pieces, however, that you may find seem to set you apart, particularly if you work in an industry where knowledge is currency. A Fortune 500 firm looking for investment services might want to know your analysis of stock market trends over the past 30 years, or any other piece of evergreen content that demonstrates the unique expertise of your professional team.
Incorporate Timeless Tips, Advice, and Solutions
A sewer probably doesn’t want to know the history of the dart stitch. If they are typing in the keyword, “dart stitch,” they probably want a how-to. When they click search, that sewer will likely have dozens of options, from blog posts on competitor websites to YouTube videos produced by amateur crafters. That’s because everyone is always on the hunt for useful, practical information.
So, while in-depth analyses are important, so is providing useful advice and solutions. If you can answer a question for your potential customer, answer it. Your solution-focused evergreen content draws people to you and makes them amenable to your services.
Use Up-to-Date and Accurate Information
It's often in the tiny details that content fails to be evergreen: If you include statistics or in any way “timestamp” your content with jokes, references to pop culture, or the latest fads, the piece of content soon feels out of date.
That isn’t to say, however, that you can’t include a number or two. Just make sure it’s as up-to-date as possible. It never hurts to give your evergreen content the occasional once-over to ensure current relevance and accuracy.
Leverage Evergreen Content for Long-Term Marketing Success
Speak to the Compose.ly team today to up your evergreen content game. Our professional copywriting services can help you get the most leverage out of your content investment.
