Evergreen content is one of the pillars of modern inbound marketing techniques.
Although it doesn’t have the same quick return as traditional advertising, evergreen content’s ability to keep earning money over time makes it a viable long-term strategy for increasing revenue.
Read on to learn more about evergreen content and how it can work for you.
An Overview of Evergreen Content
Here are the basic things to know about evergreen content.
What Is Evergreen Content?
The adage on the internet is that content is king, and nowhere is that more true than evergreen content.
As the name suggests, evergreen content remains perpetually relevant to audiences, or at least for a long time.
Difference Between Evergreen Content and Trending Topics
Evergreen content is always relevant.
Trending topics are shorter-term content with expected end dates for performance.
Some companies (like news organizations) focus almost entirely on trending topics, while regular companies usually have a mix of trending and evergreen material to help reach both audiences.
What Is the Purpose of Evergreen Content?
The primary purpose of evergreen content is to increase revenue by pulling in consistent traffic over time.
For example, let’s say that every piece of evergreen content a company publishes increases its revenue by $50 a week by attracting traffic, and it publishes one article each weekday.
In one week, the company will be up $250 per week in ongoing revenue.
In a month, they’ll be up $1000 per week, or $4000 a month.
Simple math tells us they could increase revenue by $48,000 per year at this rate.
Why Is Evergreen Content Important?
Evergreen content is important because it’s one of the best ways for companies to reach audiences that ignore traditional outbound advertising.
Further, evergreen content’s proven reliability for increasing profits over time makes it an attractive option for companies looking at new ways to advertise and expand.
Benefits of Evergreen Content
Evergreen content has several advantages for companies.
There’s an entire online writing industry that can help create it on request, and its performance as an ongoing revenue source means it quickly pays for itself.
Common Types of Evergreen Content
Here are some of the most common types of evergreen content that companies produce.
1. Blog Posts
Blogs are the most common way companies and individuals produce evergreen content.
Blogs are a great way to connect with readers and provide timely, helpful information that wouldn’t fit elsewhere on your site.
There are countless types of blog content, but when done well, they can drive traffic to your products or services, reinforce your brand presence, and help build you as an authority in your field.
2. Video Content
Video is one of the more expensive types of content, but provides engagement on a completely different level than blog posts if shared widely.
Videos are particularly good for showing things that aren’t easy to do with text, such as how to use certain products.
A few video topics that are likely to stay evergreen for a long time are history, cooking, and of course, entertainment.
3. Social Media Posts
Social media posts aren’t quite as evergreen as other options unless they’re highly sharable and keep getting passed around.
However, they can help link to true evergreen content like blog posts.
That’s right, it’s marketing for your marketing.
Done well, however, this can drive a lot of traffic.
4. Ultimate Guides
Ultimate guides (like what you’re reading now) are in-depth looks at a specific topic designed to help the reader master them.
Most readers prefer short content, but anyone who bothers to read through long-form content is probably serious about learning, and therefore someone likely to stick around.
What Types of Evergreen Content Are Most Popular?
Blog posts are easily the most popular form of evergreen content.
A little creativity can give you plenty of things to write about, and as long as you focus on high-quality content, every blog post essentially becomes a landing page that brings steady traffic to your website.
Examples of Evergreen Content
Here are some examples of evergreen content on the web.
Moz: How to Identify and Refresh Outdated Content
Moz has an outstandingly relevant blog post for inbound marketing.
Even evergreen content can occasionally fade out of what’s most relevant, so finding and tweaking that content to make it relevant again can help ensure its continued performance.
Wikipedia Articles
Encyclopedia-type sites like Wikipedia have plenty of evergreen content, and you may recall that Wikipedia is one of the most-visited websites in the world.
While you’re probably not making a wiki yourself, the point here is that robustly informative content works for attracting readers.
However, it’s important to note that anyone can alter a Wikipedia page and may include inaccurate information in those edits.
While these are usually quickly resolved, the content may be incorrect for a time.
Home-Buying Checklist
Rocket Mortgage, a lending company, has a great home-buying checklist with evergreen content.
The details of the list don’t change much over time, and when they do, the page is easy to update.
It’s also content relevant to many people, important enough that others care to research it, and capable of driving traffic by converting some people into customers.
Evergreen Content Ideas & Inspiration
Here are some things to think about when you’re looking for evergreen content ideas.
Where To Find Ideas & Inspiration for Evergreen Content
There are many places to find ideas for evergreen content, and the more ideas you have, the better off you will be.
You can look at industry news and recent trends, get feedback from customers, or consider different use cases for products or services.
Online idea generators can also spit out titles and topics to work with, though you may have to pay for these generators.
Inspiration can strike anywhere, so don’t be afraid to experiment with ideas.
How Do I Get Evergreen Content?
You need two things to get evergreen content: a topic and somebody to create the content.
You can write the content yourself, or hire someone to complete it for you.
You can conduct keyword research to see what topics are most relevant to your audience, then use those as inspiration when writing out your instructions.
How To Create Evergreen Content
Creating evergreen content isn’t hard.
You’re already most of the way there if you know how to write a blog post, and if you don’t, you can easily hire someone to do it for you.
Process of Creating Evergreen Content
To create evergreen content, all you have to do is follow these simple steps.
- Figure Out What Content Attracts Customers: Some customers like videos, others like how-to guides, checklists, or expert advice. Do some research and find out what overall types of content your audience likes.
- Pick A Content Format: Decide how you want to convey the content. Most companies do blogs, so that’s a safe default, but formats like videos can help you stand out.
- Research Topics: Research specific topics that are relevant to your company. Make sure to pick content that
- Make The Content: Finally, it’s time to make the content. You can do this in-house or hire it out.
How To Create Evergreen Content
Here’s a little more detail on how to create evergreen content.
1. Figure Out What Content Attracts Customers
Audiences like different things, so it’s important to test several types of content to see what works best.
Take a look at what your competitors do, paying particular attention to formatting types instead of subject matter.
Also, consider your budget and what you can invest in this.
2. Pick a Content Format
Once you know what customers like, it’s time to pick a format.
Consider the timetables, cost, and expected return for each option.
Remember, it’s okay to use several formats for different types of content.
You don’t have to pick one and stay with that forever.
3. Research Topics
Use our tricks for inspiration to research topics that match the format and style your customers are looking for.
Try to create a long list of topics because the more evergreen content you have, the better.
4. Make The Content
Finally, make your content. Don’t forget to utilize some strategies for content to maximize its performance.
If you’re not good at this yourself, and many business people aren’t, hire an expert to do this for you.
Best Practices for Evergreen Content
Here are some best practices for content marketing and tips for blogging more effectively.
Ask Why Readers Should Care
Why should anyone read your content? What makes it valuable to them and worth spending time on?
There are plenty of ways to write content, but your material should always focus on giving value to the reader.
That’s what convinces people to convert into customers.
This will also draw more attention to your content from companies if you want to earn sponsorship deals from companies in the future.
Make It Scannable
Did you notice how few of the sections in this article are more than one or two paragraphs long?
That makes it easy for you to scan the headings and find specific content instead of digging through pages upon pages of solid text.
You can get the basic information just by reading the headings, while these text sections provide more detail.
Ensure It’s Evergreen
Make sure you understand the difference between things that are likely to change and things that aren’t.
Evergreen content provides a higher ROI the longer it stays up attracting traffic, so maximizing that is key to getting more revenue.
Making sure you have an evergreen niche can help with this.
Evergreen Content Tools To Save Time and Money
Here are some writing tools to help you produce evergreen content more efficiently.
What Is an Evergreen Content Tool?
Evergreen content tools are anything that can help quicken or automate the process of creating evergreen content.
These can include keyword generators and AI tools.
Our Favorite Evergreen Content Tools
Here are some of our favorite tools for making evergreen content.
1. AI Writing Tools
AI writing tools can help analyze topics, identify relevant headers, and suggest ways to approach content.
They’re not good enough to be a reliable substitute for human writers, but they can reduce the amount of time you need to spend researching and planning content.
2. GPT-3
GPT-3 is a natural language-learning model that helps create human-sounding text.
This is a good way to smooth things over if you’re not good at writing and don’t want to hire a human for it, but it relies on having some content to work with.
You will have to make edits and add in some of your own text after GPT-3 writes for you, but it provides an excellent base to work with.
3. Paraphrasing Tools
Paraphrasing tools can help you rephrase things so you aren’t simply copying and pasting from competitors on the web.
This can be helpful when you want to create similar content but need to avoid plagiarism.
However, like the other tools, this still isn’t as good as having a human writer who can incorporate more original ideas into your content.
Other Related Content Types To Check Out
Here are some other terms related to evergreen content.
- Copywriting: Copywriting is the process of creating blogs and other written material, especially for marketing purposes. This is the heart of most inbound marketing strategies.
- Quality Content: Quality content is high-performing material with few structural or grammatical mistakes. AI is still bad at making this because most readers will notice flaws in computer-generated text, so human writers are still the best way to get quality content.
- Longform Content:Longform content includes material that’s longer than average for the internet. Although not as widely appealing, it tends to attract people who are more likely to convert, making it a valuable part of inbound marketing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some common questions people have about evergreen content.
How do you identify evergreen content?
You can identify evergreen content by looking for anything that isn’t time-sensitive.
For example, blog posts discussing seasonal bargains for shirts aren’t evergreen, but blog posts that describe how to pick appropriately-sized clothes without trying them on are.
As long as you don’t include information that can date your content to a specific time, it is considered evergreen.
What is an evergreen project?
An evergreen project is a marketing campaign focusing on creating evergreen content.
Evergreen content isn’t too valuable if you only make one or two blog posts.
It’s the snowball effect of having many pieces of content all at once that provides real value for businesses.
Wrapping Up
Evergreen content is the heart of modern marketing. Particularly high-performing content can improve revenue by hundreds of dollars a day (meaning over 100% ROI overnight), but even on the lower end, building up a steady amount of evergreen content can provide long-lasting cash flows to companies.
Evergreen content adds up over time, so if you haven’t already started making this, get started as soon as you can.
