Content Writing: 5 Tips to Create Evergreen Content

Table of Contents

• What is Evergreen Content?
• Types of Evergreen Content
• Why Create Evergreen Content?
• 5 Content Creation Tips for Creating Evergreen Content
• Promotion of Evergreen Content
• 5 Bonus Evergreen Content Creation Tips
• Key Takeaways
• FAQs

Content marketing is a comprehensive strategy that helps marketers reach the correct type of customer. It involves choosing the target audience, the type of content to be developed like articles, blogs, videos, posts, infographics, etc., creating the content (in-house or outsourced), and distributing it on chosen online platforms.

Another critical decision that content marketers and content creators need to make is whether they want to create content that:

• Caters to the immediate needs of the customer, the latest trends and gets you immediate but short-term eyeballs (like the ice-bucket challenge, or ‘How it started and How it is going’ memes trend) or,
• Create something that has a longer shelf life, i.e., creating evergreen content.

A great content strategy is a little bit of both. Let’s understand and learn more about the latter, i.e., creating evergreen content.

What is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content is a content type that has a longer shelf life. Creating evergreen content stands the test of time and provides valuable and relevant information long after being created. It never goes out of fashion. 

It is just like your favorite old classic movie or sitcom that is still entertaining, and you keep going back to it every time you need some entertainment.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t go back to it and update the content. Updating old content is a great way to keep the SEO juice flowing.

Types of Evergreen Content

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Depending upon your company’s offering and your industry type, evergreen content can include:

• FAQs: FAQs answer questions that the customers regularly ask your customer care or your sales team. You can upload this type of evergreen content on your site for easy reference and reduce dependability on your customer care team.
• How-to tutorials and reference guides: Guides and tutorials like how to set up a blog, how to make a cake, how to clean temp files from your computer, etc., are one of the best examples of creating evergreen content marketing. Old and new, both types of customers may need to refer to these guides when they face any problems.
• Product/Service Reviews: Both old and new positive reviews build credibility showcasing the consistently good performance that your product or service is offering. Highlighting them is one of the best evergreen content tips.
• Highlights in Instagram stories: You can always create Instagram stories on relevant topics and upload them as a company or content creator. It gives customers easy and quick access to the desired content.
• Encyclopedic information: Easy reference material on basic terminology, basic concepts, different events, short forms, etc., relevant in your industry makes it easier for the reader to understand and absorb the information.
• Relevant interviews of stakeholders: Interviews through which the senior management or others discuss and provide a solution to the customer pain points, answer their questions, and build confidence amongst the customers. This makes for a great evergreen content strategy.

Why Create Evergreen Content?

Creating evergreen content is like planting a tree; once planted, it reaps multiple benefits:

• Improves ranking: An evergreen content strategy helps improve SERP rankings. The two factors that play a significant role in getting a better ranking in search engine results are:
  • The duration of the existence of a website, content, or graphics. The longer it has been available online, the better the chances search engines will rank it higher. 
  • SEO optimization with all relevant keywords.
• Brings leads: Creating an evergreen content strategy gets better rankings, so it drives more and more leads towards your page. And, since it is usually developed keeping its long-term relevance in mind, there are chances that such content will attract qualified leads.
• Establishes you as a thought leader: The published and relevant evergreen content marketing with continuous traffic creates credibility for your brand. Customers start trusting you and keep coming back to you to look for more valid and valuable information. As this trust keeps building over the years, they keep referring you to others.
• Attracts content creators and relevant linking: Again, it benefits an excellent continuous number of views on your evergreen content. These views attract other content creators to quote you as a reference in their content. When more and more creators add your links over time and across many articles, blogs, etc., it helps in better ranking and creates your authority across the internet.
• Is cost-effective: Creating an evergreen content strategy is a cost-effective option for companies and individuals who do not have too many resources (both human and capital) at their disposal. They create content once and leverage it over a long period in various formats on different platforms.

5 Content Creation Tips for Creating Evergreen Content

How to write evergreen content. It is a mix of art and science. Here are 5 evergreen content tips that will help you stay relevant for longer. 

1. Relevant keywords

Creating evergreen content heavily depends on keywords. The first step towards it will be by performing a thorough keyword search. It will help you find out the answers that customers are looking for. This search will also help define the intention that the customer has. For example, searches for health, hygiene, etc.  

2. Don’t create content around trends or numbers

Don’t create content that caters to recent trends, current affairs from around the city, country, or world. These trends and information around it fizzle out quickly. Customers lose interest and forget about it after a while. The content also loses its relevance. Also, avoid content that is entirely based on numbers, periods, percentages, or figures. Customers start to look for fresh and updated data at frequent intervals.

3. Avoid launch announcements

Small content pieces around launches are okay, but the content created for launches cannot be treated as evergreen content marketing. Once the launch is done and dusted, the customer won’t come back for that information. They will look for more information on the product or service features, availability, cost, and other relevant information.

4. Write easy-to-understand and straightforward content

A basic evergreen content tip to follow is the basic principle of creating content — keep it simple. When the content is easy to understand (for a layman), grammatically correct, and properly formatted, it attracts the reader’s attention and holds it. Now, every time the reader needs information, they will visit your page.   

5. Build a reputation for creating dependable, credible content

Back your evergreen content strategy with proper research. Cross-check and double-check all facts from multiple sources before publishing the content. It will make a good pool of content that customers will rely on for all information requirements (for presentations, discussions, research papers, etc.)

Promotion of Evergreen Content

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You have created the content, and now you need to make the customers aware of its existence. This is what you should do: 

• Promote it regularly: Don’t just create relevant content and let it stay in one corner of your page or website. Keep promoting the evergreen content at regular intervals so that existing and new audiences become aware and fully benefit from the content.
• Share it online from time to time: Share the content at considerable time intervals on your website or social media accounts. You can lead the audience to the main content via small posts. Where required, include online paid promotions for high-quality and most relevant content. Spread the discussion around the evergreen topic across your website to have an instant recall value and generate awareness.
• Repurpose the content: You can convert the evergreen content into snippets, videos, reels, stories, etc., and share it to generate curiosity around it. You can then link this short-form content to long-form content.

While you understand the importance and relevance of creating evergreen content, having both types of content, including short-term and evergreen, as a company or content creator, is ideal for any company’s marketing arsenal.

5 Bonus Evergreen Content Creation Tips

1. Connect evergreen content with a pillar page

‘We published evergreen blogs, but other new blogs came on the top of it.’ Does that sound familiar? Have all the evergreen content at a single place, much like Instagram’s highlight section. Most companies and content creators do that by creating a ‘Start’ page, training guides, or ‘Top Posts’ section.

2. Update existing evergreen content strategy

You might have created content around ‘How to fix a bug on Android?’ but the version of Android might be old. So you need to keep updating the content to include newer Android versions. Another example can be, ‘How to grow on LinkedIn?’ The basics might be the same, but there are still new features and changes in the algorithm that your content should cover.

By updating your existing content, you also tell the SEO that there have been some changes on your site, which is more likely to rank. You can even set a reminder every 6 to 12 months to ensure that you take a look at your content.

3. Write headlines that clearly communicate the topic

The headline is the first thing people see when they visit a blog or search for information. Having vague headlines discourages people from reading further, and when people don’t like it, the bots don’t want it either.

So, consider having a headline like 5 must-have ingredients to prepare pizza at home instead of ‘Ingredients used to make pizza’.

4. Collaborate with other businesspeople and content creators

Get industry leaders, thought leaders, and content creators to create some content for you if you can’t write all the evergreen content yourself! Not only will it help in promoting your blog in the short run, but it will also increase the chances of interlinking and backlinking. This is an important evergreen content tip.

5. Avoid topics and words with short lifetimes

It might feel like a no-brainer, but it deserves mention. Although terms like ‘in 2021’, ‘this year’, etc., help with SEO, you need to update such content and its dates to stay relevant.

Instead, choose topics and words that aren’t associated (or rather restricted) to a particular year or time. Another tip here is that even when you’re writing ‘Best ways to do XYZ in 2021’, you can ensure that the content within the article is evergreen so that you simply need to change the year every year.

Key Takeaways

• A content marketing strategy comprises both fresh content and evergreen content strategy that helps build a comprehensive plan of action.
• An evergreen content strategy is all about creating content pieces that always stay relevant. This content is important because it helps generate leads, saves cost, and establishes your brand as a thought leader.
• How to write evergreen content? Use keyword research, forget trends and numbers, and focus on creating a reputation for yourself as an authentic content resource. 
• This evergreen content marketing can be promoted using repurposing methods, and sharing it time and again. 

FAQs