Making Your Blog Content Evergreen

by Dec 21, 2012Content | Social Media | Email, Marketing

In the news business, there are different types of stories. There are the breaking news stories like Hurricane Sandy or the explosion and fire on the south side of Indianapolis. These stories are relevant as they are happening.

There are other stories which are time sensitive or seasonally relevant, such as stories about holiday shopping trends in the winter or gardening tips in the spring.

Then there are the evergreen stories. These informative features can be run at any time. Newspapers typically use this content to fill in on a slow news day.

As you look at constructing your blogging calendar, it makes sense to develop content which fits each of these different categories. While you may not have news as dramatic as a hurricane or fire, every business has news to share with their customers and prospects.

  • Breaking News – In this category is information about new regulations or new products are the hardest to plan for, and often need to be dropped in quickly, before they become irrelevant.
  • Time Sensitive – This is particularly important in seasonal businesses such as snow removal, landscaping, HVAC, education or retail. Time-sensitive information includes news about company anniversaries, moves and new employees. These stories don’t necessarily need to be run on a specific day, but they should be planned and scheduled within a specific time period. Also in this category are industry trends, because what is hot now may not be a month from now. Discover a hot trend and write about it today.
  • Evergreen – This is information that will be interesting and relevant to your audience whenever you run it. These are things every visitor should know. Remember, the vast majority of your visitors are dropping by for the very first time. Frequently asked questions, simple how-to blog posts or product reviews make great evergreen content. These posts can be researched and written well in advance. Then they are ready whenever you need some fresh content but there just isn’t anything happening that is newsworthy.

One of the other benefits of evergreen content is that it continues to add value weeks, months and sometimes years after it is posted. A well written how-to article with a good title and appropriate keywords will bring traffic to your website time and time again.

If you want to simplify your blogging process and improve the performance of the blog over time, consider adding evergreen content to the mix.

photo credit: Du Žiedeliai { Vestuvinė floristika } via photopin cc