A blog post about taking a TV network programming approach to shape your social media content strategy led to questions about tips for what content to re-share on your social media sites.
When it comes to the decision to re-share evergreen content (i.e. a less time sensitive blog post), step one is making sure you have a big enough catalog of evergreen content. Depending on how active your content strategy is going to be on social media sites, you could need fifty blog posts or hundreds of blog posts.
If your evergreen social media content is in place, it’s vital to make sure you’re sharing social media content relevant to your audience at the time it is being shared. You can’t just throw content out there on social media sites your audience will view as old, boring, and irrelevant.
5 Tips to Sharing an Evergreen Blog Post
Here are five tips you can use to increase the probability your social media content still feels "fresh" when you re-share it on social media sites:
1. Share what your audience is searching for currently
If people are finding their way to your blog for specific topics and looking at a particular blog post right now, that is a good indication that particular social media content is still valuable. Check Google Analytics for recent active keywords and review the blog posts getting the most attention right now. We use the Jetpack Sitestats plug-in to monitor what blog posts are getting attention on a real-time basis so we can share links to what's hot from an audience perspective right now.
2. Share what's in the news right now
Current headlines are another great indicator of evergreen content to share. If a topic is hitting the business or popular news, it's your opportunity to feature relevant social media content. For example, we published a blog post when Coca-Cola introduced a short-term redesign for the Diet Coke can. When Coca-Cola later announced the Diet Coke redesign was becoming permanent, it was a natural blog post to share again.
3. Share evergreen content related to what you are currently publishing
Suppose you are running a new list blog post on a particular day. As you share the link for the new content throughout day, alternate links to other blog posts related to your new content. For instance, on the day this post publishes, we’ll be tweeting links on community management and the programming like a TV network blog post. By taking a holistic view to your content strategy in this way, you can create a content theme for the day.
4. Share what the crowd is pointing to that’s popular right now
If you have vibrant Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, or other presences on social media sites, you can readily scan them to see what topics people are writing and asking questions about currently. Check especially for topics and content others are re-sharing most frequently in your social media streams. The Google Trends is another option to see what searches are most popular currently. Take advantage of these cues to find comparable topics among your archived social media content to match current interests within your social media circles.
5. Share content that hasn't been but should be popular
Just as certain TV shows are critically acclaimed but struggle to find an audience because of timing or other factors, the same can be true for a particular blog post. Perhaps an older post on our blog you really believe in didn't receive the attention you thought it should have when originally published. Take advantage of future opportunities to share the post again and see if it catches on with the audience at a different time.
What other tips do you use to shape your content strategy and decide what evergreen content to share?
If you are sharing archived content from your blog as part of your content strategy, what tips and input do you use to make sure blog posts you’re sharing are relevant right now? Do you take any other steps to freshen evergreen content you share? We’ll put together a follow-on blog post about steps we take to keep even evergreen content fresh. - Mike Brown
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