When your company is launching a content marketing strategy to engage your current audience and attract new readers, it’s overwhelming to think that the blog posts you create will have short shelf lives. In other words, if your company can barely create enough quality content to publish multiple posts weekly, you certainly don't want to lose the sharing and search value of content in just a few days because what your organization has published is almost immediately outdated.
5 Keys to Creating Evergreen Content
If avoiding content that's quickly outdated is your challenge, consider these five lessons to generate evergreen (i.e., longer shelf life) content. These content marketing strategy lessons will extend your content shelf life - whether your company is just launching a content marketing strategy or are well into implementation:
1. Be less newsy and more bookish
News generates reader attention, but don't over-anchor your content in news stories. News-oriented content requires continually addressing new news all the time, especially since news has a short shelf-life in other social channels. Also create content that’s more like a book, whose content has value years after it is published. Use current news to INSPIRE your content, but write about the bigger themes that will be relevant later.
2. Stick with what sticks for longer
If your company is covering the latest technology, your content will be outdated shortly after you publish it. Even if you are writing a lot of content about a fast changing industry, balance it with content on business principles, fundamental concepts, smart productivity tips, and practical to-dos that remain truer, longer.
3. Reference specific dates - or leave them out entirely
Don't reference “last week” or something coming up “next quarter.” Instead, use specific dates such as “early November 2013” or “third quarter 2016.” Better yet, ask if a date reference really matters to content clarity? If you can avoid including a date in the content, leave the date out.
4. Link to what will change
Make ample use of links to provide more background on time sensitive content. With content related to news and current events, links can provide more direct ties to date-specific content and activities. By using links instead of rehashing newsy content directly in your posts, your content will be more timeless on the surface even though it’s linked to older material.
5. Create a broader view
If your company’s content marketing strategy involves generalizing big truths, timeless trends, and broad developments, the content you create will be better positioned to create content of value for a longer period of time. Leave the detail to others and communicate about what has momentum and staying power relative to your topic.
How do these content marketing strategy lessons work?
Yes, these lessons do work. We’ve used these principles, the discipline of publishing regularly, and time to build a back catalog of content that generates more than 90 percent of our B2B website’s visits on any given day.
That means we have a tremendous amount of evergreen content still working hard to generate interest, value, and site visits with no incremental work each day. That’s when an evergreen content approach really pays off for your organization. If your organization would like the same type of results, let us know. We'd be happy to get you going on a strategy to do the same! - Mike Brown
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