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Looking for a beginner’s guide to evergreen content? Maybe you are new to creating content for your business or maybe you’ve been creating timely content and are ready to take your content to the next level. Either way, you are in the right place. Keep on reading to find out what evergreen content is, why it is important and how to create it for your own business.
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A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO EVERGREEN CONTENT
Since this is a beginner’s guide to evergreen content let’s start at the very beginning and define what evergreen content is and isn’t.
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is content that is relevant at the time of being published and continues to be relevant for a long time in the future.
Evergreen trees are green all year round and evergreen content is relevant all year round. Once published it doesn’t matter when someone consumes the content.
What isn’t evergreen content?
You might be thinking that most content is evergreen content so here are some examples of what isn’t evergreen content.
Content that is time-sensitive
Any content that is time-sensitive is not evergreen. Time-sensitive content is where the content is about something that has just happened, is happening or will be happening shortly. Think news article, content about trending topics or content with references to pop culture
Content that includes statistics that will go out-of-date
If you use statistics in your content then the content is limited with regards to how long it is seen as relevant. The length of time will depend on how fast-moving the industry you are creating content about. But think about it, if you were reading a blog post that had statistics that were 5 years old how relevant would that research feel to you?
Content that is seasonal
Another type of content that isn’t evergreen, although is can be relevant in the future is seasonal content. Some examples of seasonal content are: a dating coach makes a video on how to throw your other half the perfect valentine’s day or a nutritionist might have a blog post on enjoying Christmas without putting on weight. Both of these examples are relevant at a specific time of the year. If someone comes across the Valentine’s Day video in June it isn’t relevant and if someone comes across the Christmas blog post in March it isn’t relevant.
Seasonal content still has value though. It will be relevant again and creating seasonal content that will be relevant in future years should be part of your overall content strategy.
For example, in my business, I have blog posts that focus on the beginning of the year.
How to plan for your best year ever in business
New Year Checklist for small and solo business owners
How to prepare your business for a New Year
As you can see these blog posts aren’t relevant all year round, but the beginning of a year is a key time of the year for business owners and by having this content in the mix I’m able to generate traffic each year without much more work for myself.
Why is evergreen content important?
Evergreen content, especially long-form evergreen content (think blog post, YouTube videos, podcast episodes) are great for your business for multiple reasons
1. Generate additional traffic without additional work
If you optimise your evergreen content for search engines then evergreen content has the ability to continue to generate traffic for your business for months and even years to come without you having to do any additional work.
2. Has the greater opportunity to be shared
Since evergreen content is relevant at any time of the year there is a greater chance of it not only being found and enjoyed, but also being shared.
3. Can be promoted multiple times in the future
Given the timeless nature of evergreen content, you can promote the content in other marketing.
Organic social media – if you use a social media scheduler that ‘recycles’ content then you can create posts for your evergreen content and it doesn’t matter when they are posted.
Automated email sequences – If you have automated email sequences set up for your business then you can include links to your evergreen content as again it doesn’t matter when someone reads that email and clicks on the link.
Paid digital advertising – Since evergreen content isn’t going to run out-of-date you can have ads that direct people. Knowing you can run the ads for a long period of time means you can do the work once and let them run for a decent amount of time. This is good from a workload perspective but also from an ads perspective as most digital adverts perform better the longer they are running.
Pinterest – Pinterest is a search engine where content lives for years so you can create Pins for your evergreen content and add another search opportunity into the mix.
| GET A PERSONALISED CONTENT STRATEGY CREATED FOR YOUR BUSINESS
As you can see there are lots of options and you need to find a way to integrate evergreen content with your current marketing strategy. I specialise in creating one-person marketing strategies that can be delivered by the business owner or a VA. I’m a Chartered Marketer, have over a decade of marketing experience and I’m a solopreneur that does all of my marketing myself. That means you’ll get a content strategy that is created combining best-practice, and tried-and-tested marketing techniques, but with a real understanding of what is possible for one person. If you are ready to take the marketing of your business to the next level and get a personalised and integrated content strategy created get in touch. |
Examples of evergreen content
Here are some examples of evergreen content you can create:
- How-to-guides – What does your ideal client or customer want to learn how-to do? This type of content is great as people are often searching how to do X or Y. By creating these guides you not only have the opportunity to be helpful and enable them to solve their immediate problem. But since you know exactly what they wanted to learn how-to do you can also offer them a lead-magnet, service or product that is the next step.
- FAQs – Are there questions that you’ve been asked over and over again? Write these questions down and then start to create content to answer those questions. Not only will you be able to create succinct answers to those questions so when you are asked again you can direct people to your content, but if some people are already asking the questions there will be others who want to know the answer, but don’t want to ask.
- ‘Everything you need to know about X’ guides – These differ from how-to guides as you aren’t necessarily teaching someone how to do something, but sharing everything someone needs to know on a specific type of content. This content is great for demonstrating the depth of your expertise, and also being something that is saved and referred back to.
- Checklists – Are there any processes your ideal client needs to follow that you could make a checklist for. Checklists are great for people who feel as if they know what they are doing in relation to a topic, but just want to make sure they haven’t missed anything.
- Glossaries – Does your industry or niche have lots of technical terms? If so, you could make a glossary.
- Best resources, tools, books etc – People are always looking for the best resources, tools, books etc. Think carefully about what you decide to create in this category. Of all the categories this one can become dated in a few years’ time.
- Common mistakes – Are there mistakes that you see people in your industry or niche making over and over again? If so, create a piece of content that shares those common mistakes. This type of content is successful because people want to avoid making mistakes and find the fastest route to success.
How to start creating evergreen content for your business
Step 1. Choose your format
The first thing you need to do is decide what type of evergreen content you want to make. If you already have a blog, podcast or YouTube channel then you’ll probably want to continue using that format. If you aren’t already creating long-form content then you’ll need to decide what is best for your business. This blog post will help you decide between the 3 – Blog vs Podcast vs YouTube.
Step 2: Decide what type of evergreen content to make
Go back through the examples above and decide what you want to make. You don’t have to stick to one type of content, in fact, creating a variety will enable you to test your creativity and also see what performs best.
Step 3: Keyword research
To maximise the success of your evergreen content you’ll need to do keyword research so you can choose the keyword you’ll optimise your content for You can do this using tools such as Ubersuggest.
Step 4: Plan
Your evergreen content should work alongside all of the other content you are creating in your business. Whilst evergreen is powerful, you don’t want to only create evergreen content. Planning in advance will enable you to find the right balance.
If you aren’t already planning your content in advance then I have a free content marketing plan workbook to help you. Download your copy and you’ll be able to create your very own 2023 content marketing plan.
Step 5: Create
You know what type of content you want to create, you know what it will be able and you’ve decided what keyword you’ll be optimising your content for. Now it is time to start creating. Open a document, grab your microphone or sit infront of the camera and do your thing!
That’s it! You’ve got to the end of my beginner’s guide to evergreen content.
I really hope you have found this helpful. I am a massive advocate of evergreen content and can’t emphasise enough how valuable it is for businesses. Hopefully now you can see the power of evergreen content and have some ideas bubbling for how you can start to create evergreen content for your business.
Let me know in the comments what evergreen content you are going to create next.
| GET A PERSONALISED CONTENT STRATEGY CREATED IN JUST ONE DAY
If you are posting the wrong content you are wasting your time, which is why I offer Content Strategy Days to allow businesses to quickly get a personalised content strategy that they can start implementing in weeks, rather than months. In just one day I’ll help you to create a content strategy, that includes evergreen content, for your business over a specific number of months, or create a launch content strategy for an upcoming launch. To find out more about my Strategy Days click here. To discuss your specific needs and book a Content Strategy Day fill in my contact form here or book a call here. Know that just having a plan isn’t enough? If you want ongoing training, support and accountability then I have ongoing mentoring programmes. For more information check out my services here. |
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