5 Strategies For Creating Evergreen Blog Content

What do white button downs and Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” have in common? They never go out of style. They’re iconic; classics even.

No matter how trends shift, some things remain popular and relevant. Like those prickly pine trees that flourish even when winter has stripped other trees down to their bare branches, they’re evergreen.

And this can be true for your business content too.

What is evergreen content?

Content that’s evergreen remains relevant no matter how much your business evolves or your industry shifts. Even as new technology, trends, and ideas emerge over the years, evergreen content stays pertinent.

It’s the blog posts that newbies to your audience will find interesting and helpful today and five years from now. It’s the IG Live videos that people who want to understand the fundamentals will come back to over and over again. It’s the deck you can use to introduce new customers to the magic of what you do. Evergreen content is timeless.

Why does evergreen content matter?

Evergreen content allows you to establish your authority and expertise, pushing your brand to the forefront of trustworthy sources in a space or industry. It’s also great for generating traffic because it can be promoted repeatedly (unlike posts tied to specific calendar date), allowing for more views and shares. All of that means more traffic to your website and socials, which means more leads.   

While it would be impossible for all your content to be evergreen (and, frankly, a bad idea since you want your audience to trust that you’ve got your finger on the ever-changing pulse of your industry and their interests), it’s important that you develop at least a few pieces that will stand the test of time.

Here are five tips to help you do that (and do it well):  

1. Answer the FAQs

If you’re struggling for ideas for evergreen content, stop thinking like an expert, and start thinking like a beginner. When you were just a newbie to your industry, what questions do you have? What kind of questions are in your inbox and social media comments? What are the need-to-knows in your space?

The answers to these questions should give you a good place to start. Evergreen content often covers the basics of a topic in detail, but simply enough that someone with little-to-no prior knowledge can follow. How-to guides, tutorials, glossaries, or lists of useful tools and resources are great places to start.

2. Watch your language

We don’t mean swearing. Hey, if that’s your brand voice and your audience eats it up, by all means, drop those f-bombs. We’re also pretty comfy with slang too. Again, we’re all here for whatever fits your brand voice. But, when it comes to evergreen content, you want to be careful that the language you’re choosing isn’t going to date it.

Slang changes at a dizzying pace, and phrases that are cool today might be cringey in a few years. So, while it might be tempting to spice up your evergreen content with today’s hottest slang, be careful not to overdo it.

3. Don’t get stuck on current events

Don’t get us wrong, current events can absolutely spark evergreen ideas. But you have to be careful not to centre the event in a way that too closely links the value of your advice to the moment in time that inspired it.

For example, in our last post, we wrote about coronavirus and how businesses can create content in a crisis. But we were careful not to make the post all about COVID-19 because, thankfully, a time will come when it’s just not that relevant anymore. By broadening the subject to ‘creating content in a crisis’ we allow that piece to remain relevant even after coronavirus has finally blown over.

4. Put your spin on it

Because evergreen content tends to address the basics, others in your industry have likely covered the topic already. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add your voice to the mix.

What it does mean is that you need to make sure that yours is going to have a little extra something to draw attention. The best way to do that is to take a unique approach, using analogies and examples your audience will connect to or even creating interesting (but timeless) visual styling.

5. Don’t slack on maintenance

Like its namesake, evergreen content is meant to be long-lasting, but that doesn’t mean it won’t require some maintenance to remain relevant. As things in your business or industry shift, you’ll want to make sure you revise your content to reflect these changes.

This is especially for true for how-to guides or tutorials that involves technology that may be updated. Other examples include the addition of new industry language to glossaries or new tools to resource lists.

Have you got evergreen content on your blog? If you don’t, now is a great time to jump on that task. And, of course, if you need a little help generating ideas or crafting that content, drop us a line.