Every December, millions of people around the world chop down fragrant furs and pine trees with the intention of decorating their homes in festive fashion. In the long, cold winters of Europe and North America, this tradition allows us to look upon the green needles of those evergreen trees and remember that seasonal colour and vibrancy is never too far away. It may seem like an odd example at first, but there’s a reason why timeless digital content is also known as ‘evergreen’ content. Just like a Christmas tree, evergreen content looks as good through the colder months as it does in the height of summer – so much so that people want to bring it into their homes and make it their own.
On the other hand, seasonal, deciduous trees and shrubs lose their leaves every autumn, and are a welcome sight only when they’re in full bloom. In much the same manner, time-sensitive news content and pieces that focus on current affairs or dateable issues will inevitably lose their appeal or your website, and rapidly too. Of course, it’s important that you offer news content on your company’s website too, but you need to realise that dateable pieces will eventually show their age, gradually losing relevance until page visitors begin to fall away like dry autumn foliage. Evergreen content – the oaks, pines, furs and cedars of the content world – doesn’t suffer from this same problem.
Pressure on production
Content marketing can be very labour-intensive, but when applied correctly, the results are plain for all to see. In order to get the most out of news content, you’ll have to add a new news piece to your site every day or so to demonstrate how up-to-date your site is, and encourage people to check back in with what you’re saying. It’s another way of giving off a signal that your business has its finger on the pulse, and ensuring that your most recent news pieces don’t suggest that your business has done little since 2009.
Realistically, few companies have time to see to this kind of marketing diligence, and inevitably with news pieces, your audience will be able to find the same information displayed via numerous other sources. If you want to demonstrate to your site visitors that you’re a thought leader and a pioneer in your industry, you need to write about something a little more engaging. The trick is to create evergreen content that is unique and that can hold its appeal for months – you’ll get more life and shareability out of one carefully written evergreen piece than from a dozen dateable news pieces.
Choosing successful evergreen topics
To attain content marketing success, you need to avoid topics that will date quickly and ideas that will be out of vogue within a week or so. Writing a piece comparing your company’s products to the weekend’s football results or referencing the latest social media meme may be all well and good in the short term, but the article will be dated within a week, or even less – no-one wants to read about old news, after all. Instead, try to say things in your online content that no-one has thought to say before. Speculate, examine, question and explore – if you have an original opinion on your industry, or an idea of how things may be in a few years’ time, then say so. The more forward-thinking and progressive your content marketing is, the more successes your company will experience from it as a result.
Of course, there are two kinds of evergreen content: one stands proud, pretty and perfect all year around, and the other droops immediately as soon as the weather turns. Writing engaging, interesting and popular evergreen content can be incredibly difficult, so if you’re not experiencing the content marketing success you’d like for your company, consider getting the content marketing experts in to help.