Content marketing is one of the most important strategies for building awareness of your business. Great content not only provides value to the person reading, but also helps to establish your brand’s voice and message – both of which are important for building trust and demonstrating authority online.
Content Marketing with Evergreen Content
This why they say that content is king, and no matter how tired you might be of hearing it, it remains true – demonstrated by the fact that 77% of adult internet users read blogs. This is great news if you’ve spent any amount of time developing a strategy and churning out great content for your blog. One can only assume since you’ve invested so much time creating content, that you want to get maximum traction out of it.
The solution is to go evergreen.
Evergreen is a word used to describe content that stands the test of time because it continues to hold value and relevancy over the lifetime of your business. True evergreen content will have the same impact a few years into the future as it does today. Creating evergreen content provides endless value to your readers, makes your content strategy more profitable and even streamlines your creation process.
Ready to get more traction out of your blogging efforts? Here are 7 tips to improve your content marketing by writing evergreen content:
Choose Your Topics Carefully
Content that continues to get attention appeals to the needs of your audience that tend to remain steady over the life of your business. In other words, it’s content that will maintain its relevance no matter when a visitor accesses it.
In a digital age where information is flying around at the speed of light, slowing down and focusing on content with lasting potential often requires a major change in mindset – especially if you want to be the one to pen the next viral blog. Trust that taking a step back and focusing on the basics with your content creation is a strategy for longevity.
For example, say a local coffeeshop does a piece on their new feature brew. This is a great for informing their audience about what’s new and exciting, but the content isn’t going to hold long term interest if it’s only a seasonal addition. If this same coffeeshop wanted to produce evergreen content, they could do a series on their basic brews or a topic like 10 Ways to Enjoy Coffee on a Saturday Morning.
Keep Your Brand Voice in Mind
Because evergreen content is meant to stand the test of time, it’s extremely important to be thoughtful about how your brand voice and message comet through to the reader. This is a good time to think about what your brand voice is at this moment and how you anticipate it changing in the future.
At the end of the day, the intent of an evergreen strategy is to support your brand growth. If you create a piece that’s too far removed from your core mission and values, it’s going to be an awkward fit for your brand in the future. This isn’t to say that it’s never acceptable to veer off topic into something new with your content, just as long as you keep your main focus on track with anything that’s meant to be evergreen.
Optimize Your Keyword Strategy
Almost all evergreen content is built around a question – think along the lines of who, what, how, when, etc. If you want your piece to attract readers who are looking for an answer, a dedicated approach to keyword research is essential.
It’s no secret that keywords are important for search engine optimization, and while you may be able to take a few more liberties with your keyword approach to standard content, your evergreen strategy needs to be spot on because the intent is to capture attention and answer important questions well into the future.
For evergreen content, a long tail keyword strategy is the way to go. Think about the questions your audience has and research how they’re asking it. This is especially important for local businesses that are looking to connect with an audience that relies heavily on mobile and voice search options.
Avoid Being Trendy
It should almost go without saying, but content that addresses anything trendy doesn’t hold evergreen power. While trendy pieces have their place, take extra care in not including anything too timely in content created with the intention of being evergreen.
News stories, pop culture and statistical information are all examples of content topics that your audience will perceive as having an expiration date. Instead, focus on topics such as how-to pieces, tips, reviews, testimonials or anything else that won’t immediately be connected to a certain point in time.
Write for the Masses
When developing your content marketing strategy, it’s important to recognize that today’s audience might be different than the one that’s tuning in tomorrow. This means that writing in a generalized tone that appeals to a larger base is key for a successful evergreen strategy.
The goal of any business is to continually attract new customers. Writing for a general audience guarantees that you’ll meet your new customer’s needs, no matter who they are.
Update or Repurpose
Here’s a little newsflash – it’s possible to sway away from some of the above rules of evergreen content as long as you go back in every so often and update any information, links, etc. It’s also entirely possible to take a non-evergreen piece that you created in the past and optimize its staying power by making a few adjustments and repurposing it.
For example, you don’t have to shy away from using statistics that are important for your industry. Just make sure you go in and update them regularly as new information is released. The last thing you want is for your content to make you appear irrelevant in the industry.
Make It Visible
Finally, a mistake too many businesses make is allowing their evergreen content to get buried as it ages. This problem is simple enough to avoid by taking a few precautions to make sure it doesn’t get lost.
You can make sure your evergreen content is highly visible by linking to it frequently within new content, highlighting it on your website or blog and promoting it occasionally through social media and email when it’s relevant to your business and marketing goals.
Are you ready to uncover the potential of evergreen content for fueling your brand’s growth? We’re the SEO agency that can show you how it’s done. Contact JLB Florida today to learn more about our professional SEO services.
