Regardless of your industry or niche, content marketing should be high on your priority list. However, not all articles are treated equally, and some will prove far more valuable than others. For many pieces of content, the fact remains that they will grow old and eventually become obsolete.
If you’re launching a blog, or working on your current blog, there are many reasons why you’d research evergreen content. Evergreen content is copy that stays relevant with time. Regardless of the season or changing culture, evergreen content will remain useful to its readers.
If you’re using a platform like WordPress, managing and promoting evergreen content is easier than ever, particularly with a few select plugins. Be sure to avoid common WordPress errors, and always stay up to date with your copy. Here are a few tips for creating evergreen content for your blog:
Take a Look At Existing Evergreen Content
To help steer you in the right direction, it helps to take a look at existing evergreen content. This includes everything from “How To” guides to tutorials to industry resources and historical articles. Original interviews with business owners, athletes, artists, etc., are also always a safe bet.
A good place to start on your hunt is Medium, where there’s a wide range of different types of content and you can locate evergreen easily. And keep in mind that evergreen doesn’t just have to be written content—graphics and videos work just as well, too. Take a look at these examples of great evergreen content to get you started.
Update Existing Content
It’s important to understand that there are two types of evergreen content. Traditional evergreen content is timeless; once it’s published, there are no changes to be made. However, there’s also a sustainable type of evergreen content, which means that, while its foundation is evergreen, there are still some elements that need to be updated.
For example, if you write a blog post about how to use Facebook advertising, you’ll have to go back and change it as Facebook rolls out new features or updates that change its interface. To make this easier for you to do, maintain a list of your evergreen posts, so you can easily pinpoint articles that need updating when the time is right.
Research Carefully
What makes evergreen content so long-lasting is that it’s reliable. Thorough research ensures that your copy will stand the test of time. A well-researched blog post with the appropriate citations, links, and resources will prove particularly valuable, and will encourage others to share it, as well as strengthen your relationship with the reader. Furthermore, it helps to conduct your own research from time to time; this might involve interviewing someone relevant to the article, and going directly to the source.
Let Your Content Shine
Let’s say you put hours upon hours of your time into creating quality evergreen copy. However, as time goes on, you create dozens of other blog posts too, and your evergreen posts may get buried in the process, and lost in the shuffle. Sure, if your SEO is great and post contains value, people may discover it via search engines. But you also want it to stand out on your website, and to do that, it has to be easy for site visitors to find.
One way to do this is to be sure to link to your relevant evergreen content in your other blog posts. If you’ve got hundreds of blog posts, this might be a little more difficult, but it definitely can be done. An easy way to do this is to search across all blog posts for keywords. For example, if you wrote an evergreen post about business owner who managed to turn his business into a successful franchise, then your keyword might be “franchise” or “small business.”
You could also create a “Top Posts” or “Start Here” section on your website, which informs new visitors to read your most important content if they’re browsing your site. And lastly, be sure to share your evergreen articles every now and again on social media to keep them fresh.
Use the Right Tools
Fortunately, there are some tools that eliminate the guesswork for you, and can help you pinpoint what the best evergreen content will be. These tools will allow you to identify trends in your industry that can give you solid ideas. They also reveal which influencers can be beneficial in your reporting, making it easy to reach out to different people for interview sources. The following are great tools to use:
