It takes a lot of time, work, and creativity to get your content marketing plan moving. That’s why it’s so painful to post something online and watch it go stale after a few days or weeks. Wouldn’t it be better to have your articles and posts keep generating views, shares, and leads for years to come?
Many business owners—not to mention professional copywriters—work to sidestep this problem by creating content that is “evergreen,” meaning that it stays in style for a long period of time. With a little thought and planning, you can do the same. Then, you won’t have to worry about watching your ideas fade after an early expiration date.
If that sounds good to you, let’s look at five ways you can create web content that lasts…
1. Write About Big Industry Themes
If there are huge trends or themes that are transforming your business, those make great evergreen topics. For example, in our business things like social media marketing, search engine optimization, and mobile utilization are always hot topics and probably will be for years to come. See if you can find something similar that your readers and customers are going to care about for a while.
2. Create Beginner Guides and Explanations
In most businesses, the “basics” of advice and information are always in demand. To draw on another example from our industry, small business owners always want to know about the essentials of web design. By creating guides for beginners, you generate content that will be useful to readers who are just starting to learn about a subject for a long time.
3. Generate Posts from FAQs
Do you get the same questions about your company again and again? If so, you might want to use those FAQs as the basis for a series of upcoming posts. After all, most commonly asked questions aren’t time-sensitive, and the fact that they are brought up again and again means they have lasting power. This is a quick and easy way to come up with a few evergreen article ideas.
4. Address Yearly Concerns
Some topics might be seasonal but appropriate for many years. That’s because lots of businesses are affected by the holidays, changing weather, or even differences in the economy as a whole. If you can spot these kinds of patterns, you might be able to come up with some posts that are going to be useful for readers each and every year, generating search traffic and customer interest again and again.
5. Transfer Wisdom to Your Field
One of the best ways to come up with evergreen content is to simply take a piece of knowledge or wisdom and apply it to your field. For example, you could review a groundbreaking book or documentary and explain how it pertains to your business or affects your customers. Assuming the idea has some staying power, your content will, too.
Making Evergreen Content Work
In a perfect world, your content marketing plan would consist of some evergreen articles and others that take advantage of hot topics and current trends. In other words, you don’t want to miss out on something that’s happening now just because it won’t be relevant in a year, but you don’t want to find yourself only posting about current news when your posts could have a longer shelf life.