Evergreen content applies to the topic and the mediums used to communicate the subject itself. Dedicating a percentage of your content to produce evergreen content allows you to maximise your content's potential to provide you with a higher return on investment in terms of its use value. Work on it once and have peace of mind that you can then consistently repurpose the same content over and over again for the next few years (and then some).
When you're planning your brand's content marketing, you need to include evergreen content as part of that strategic process so that you can seed more opportunities. Doing it right can aid you in generating more growth from website visitors, to newsletter subscribers, social followers and leads directly to you.
But what is evergreen content anyway?
Evergreen content is content that remains relevant and does not have an expiry date. If you think about trees and bushes that can maintain to keep themselves green regardless of the season, that's evergreen. With evergreen content, it maintains its value and messaging and can have a great (if not finite) shelf life. Keep in mind though that sometimes the content may not necessarily be timely based on a situation but it can certainly remain relevant.
When it comes to content marketing, your main focus should be able delivering content to the right person at the right place and time. Creating evergreen content such as articles, videos and blogs as part of your strategy across multiple channels will mean that whenever a visitor is seeking something relevant to what you do, they will always find something on your channels worth consuming.
To get you started in your next content strategy planning session, here are some tips:
1. Choose a topic that is timeless
Timeless pieces of content are those that attract the most followers or visitors to you consistently. If you can apply SEO keywords to your piece, it'll be 10 times better because it will help your content appear high on a search result page.
To make this content evergreen, ensure that your headline isn't tied to an event or holiday. Don't add dates or times and avoid trendy or seasonal types of visuals in your content to ensure that it remains relevant on any given day.
2. Turn content you already have into evergreen pieces
You may already have a stack of existing content you've created that can be modified into an evergreen version. Do this by removing sentences that make it time-relevant and are a nice-to-have detail. if it's not a major edit to the content and we have little impact, delete it. Perhaps you just need to update the introduction to take any seasonal or dated references. This process would be a much quicker way of addressing and having evergreen content than creating brand new pieces!
3. Plan ahead to create evergreen content
When you're working with your team or production company to create a script for your brand video, take into consideration that evergreen content is what you need. By having this deliberate mindset, you will have a script that accounts for it. This means that the content and the messaging you capture will likely remain relevant for a very long time. Not only will this be engaging a few years down the track, but you will also save time, resources and money when you know that the video you created 10 years ago, is still great to watch.
Creating evergreen content is one of the best ways for you to maximise your content's use value to bring you more interest, more engagement and more leads. Why wouldn't you do it?