An evergreen refers to the plant that has green leaves through the year; it’s green during summer and winter. With this in mind, an evergreen blog post is a content that stands the test of time or should we say contents that stand the test of algorithm updates. These contents are so relevant they never get outdated. How do you write evergreen blog posts? Here’s how.
1) Familiarize yourself with different forms of evergreen contents
If you’ve been maintaining a blog for quite a while now, chances are, you’ve already written evergreen contents without realizing it. The perfect examples of these contents are how-to guides, FAQs (frequently asked questions), tutorials, history-of discussions, and glossaries and terminologies.
If you haven’t written anything about these, now is the perfect time to write something about them. Evidently, these contents are aimed at the beginners so make the discussions as unique, interesting and informative as possible.
In addition, a blog post is not only about written texts. You may also incorporate other types of contents such as illustrations, images, videos, animations, and infographics. Visuals can make the post clear, concise and straightforward. Offer a TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) information, if possible.
2) Let the evergreen content flourish
Some content will remain relevant and some content may lose relevance if they won’t be updated so they’ll reflect the changes in the trends, behaviors, and even technologies. These are positive changes that you can incorporate on your previously written posts.
An example of the former is ‘How to Grow Your Own Sprouts at Home’ while the example of the latter is ’10 Best Mobile Gaming Apps.’ For the second article to remain relevant, the list must be updated from time to time because the 10 best in 2014 won’t necessarily be the 10 best by 2015.
If you’ve previously published evergreen contents and you want to revive them, you simply need to add new information. Afterward, make these posts obvious to frequent, returning and new visitors in the form of ‘Top Posts,’ for example.
Likewise, consider re-sharing the posts on your social profiles. Remember that dates are only important for news articles. In this way, the updated post may garner even more views and re-shares, breathing new life to what you might think a dead-end for that particular post.
With these said, your goal should be conducting a regular audit of your blog may it be a corporate or non-corporate (personal) blog. Evergreen posts may get buried with the surge of recently published blog posts. Thus, put a blog audit on your editorial calendar.
3) Regard the social media as a vehicle for evergreen content
As a content marketer, your work doesn’t stop after hitting the publish button. Content marketing as a strategy is often tied up with a clear social media marketing strategy. They co-exist and in a time where every probable target seems to have a social media profile, a brand cannot afford to ignore such presence.
Show the human side of your brand through sharing your contents on these platforms. People would prefer to interact with a brand that connects with them on a more personal level. One measure of evergreen contents is shareability. Your target audience will never share your post if they didn’t find it pertinent and useful.
Evergreen contents always aim to inform, help and educate your target audience. Show that you, through your blog posts, acknowledge the problems, issues and needs of your target market. You can only do this by helping them with writing and publishing contents with reliable information and that your audience can make sense of.
