Evergreen content is your best friend as a small business. As a small business owner or team member, every hour counts — and the goal is to get technology working for you. This means everything you create needs to have multiple uses and purposes, and stay relevant. Evergreen content equals website visitors, backlinks and more! That’s where we come in with 5 effective ideas for creating evergreen content.
WHAT IS EVERGREEN CONTENT
First, let’s talk about what evergreen content actually is — and what it isn’t.
Evergreen content is content that stays relevant. It doesn’t go out of date. It’s named for the evergreen plants and trees that stay green all year round.
It’s always good to see these principles in action, so here’s an example of what is and isn’t evergreen content.
Evergreen —
This is evergreen because it will be just as helpful in 6 months, 1 year, even five years. The only thing that might need to change is specific names and references to technology and social media.
Not Evergreen —
The example above is not evergreen because it’s focused on a specific time — 2021.
Both pieces of content are great, but only one is going to stay relevant and help answer the most common customer questions.
There’s a place for both on your website, but if you can only tackle one — tackle evergreen first.
A piece of evergreen content should bring people to your website (or social media) all year long for potentially many years. One disclaimer is that after a while, evergreen content should be refreshed to make sure all terms are still relevant.
So why is evergreen content worth creating?
- Because your time is valuable. It’s frustrating for business owners to work hard on content only to have the relevance deadline pass and they have to start all over again.
- Because it reduces your workload. That’s right, good evergreen content should do work for you and help answer initial customer questions.
- Because it brings people to your website. It helps establish you as an industry expert and even helps convince prospective customers.
If you have a small team or it’s just you creating content, this is where you should start and we’ve got the foundational ideas to get you — well — started!
Let’s recap what evergreen content is —
- It stays relevant and isn’t limited to a specific time.
- Additionally, it is usually helpful and informative.
- Lastly, it can be repurposed.
5 EFFECTIVE IDEAS FOR CREATING EVERGREEN CONTENT
There a literally dozens of ways to create evergreen content, but we’re going to get you started with 5 effective ideas for creating evergreen content.
1. Answer Your F.A.Q.s
While we’re on the topic of answering questions, this is a veritable gold mine of evergreen content.
What are the questions or concerns or issues that your current and potential clients talk to you about? Is it about your product? Is it about wedding or event planning in general?
This is where you should start when creating evergreen content. You can reduce workload by having your content answer questions for you. And in the end, it not only helps you, but adds value to your clients to educate them about topics they are wanting information on.
Are your clients always asking what it’s like to work with a planner? Or what the benefits are to having an all-inclusive venue? Write an in-depth evergreen piece on it.
2. Ultimate (or Complete) Guides
Guides are a great idea for evergreen content because they help customers learn about a topic they are searching for all while establishing you as an authority on the topic.
Additionally, you can repurpose pieces of the guide’s content for social and email newsletters.
Here’s an example — The Ultimate Guide to Wedding Flowers. You create a guide of what couples need to know about picking wedding flowers and what they need to know. This can be turned into a PDF download lead magnet to help get email sign-ups. Then, you can take single points from the guide to become fun social posts.
You could even break the topic down further and make each major point in the guide its own blog post. The possibilities are endless.
3. How-To
How-to searches are the most popular everywhere from Google to Youtube. Your potential customers are out there asking questions and you can win their business if you can answer their questions.
Teach them something. Even better, teach them something related to your work.
A good way to select the topic for your how-to is to think of your current clients. What do you wish they knew? Or what did they want to learn or get the most help with? Use that as your jumping off point.
4. Glossary
We’re back to educational topics with this idea. It’s important to remember that you are an expert in your field. An effective idea for evergreen content is creating a simple glossary.
This makes a wonderful blog topic that easy to digest. It could be an amazing lead magnet in the form on a video or PDF download. And think of the fun social posts to highlight one term at a time.
For couples planning their nuptials, they are having to get a quick education just to keep up with the names of things that pertain to contracts or services. Most people don’t know what a corkage fee or room flip is unless they are in the planning industry.
Whatever your specific service is, there’s a glossary idea there that could help so many people!
5. Common Mistakes
Mistakes are something people what to hear about. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
There’s something so appealing about getting good advice ahead of time. It’s valuable to your target market to know how to avoid the pitfalls that many people have been trapped before.
Bonus Evergreen Ideas
As we said, there are dozens of evergreen content ideas, but these will get you started, and here are a few bonus points to add to the mix.
- Checklists
- Case Studies / Testimonials
- Resources List (Something that your target audience always needs.)
PRO-TIPS FOR GETTING THE MOST OUT OF EVERGREEN CONTENT
- Find out what your target audience is looking for. Take stock of your current client’s questions and requests. Also, do your own research on Google and Youtube to see what topics people are looking up related to your type of business. Are you a wedding photographer? See what the popular related searches are. Services like SEMrush, Moz, and even Answer the Public can be a great investment. (You can also test them for free.) Ahrefs has a resource to help you learn to search for popular evergreen topics.
- Use the content in multiple places, multiple times. Take the evergreen content and see how it can be broken up to be used in an email newsletter or multiple social media posts. Write the in-depth piece, but don’t be afraid to use pieces everywhere and link back to the longer blog article.
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Written by Corrie McGee
