Why Your Next Blog Post Should Be Evergreen
The best content is the kind that doesn't have an expiration date.
Photo: Ekaterina Bolovtsova from Pexels
Evergreen content. You’ve probably heard that it’s super important for your blog, but often people forget to mention why that is and how you can make it work for your blog specifically.
So first, let’s cover the basics. Evergreen, or pillar, content is content that lasts all year round, for many years—just like the leaves on an evergreen tree. For blogging, this means that your post continues to attract readers to your site continuously after it is first posted.
Your evergreen content is often your most popular because new readers keep finding your site through these “pillar” posts.
As these types of post support your site with visitors in the long term, they need to really reflect your blogging brand and niche. They are the pillars or building blocks of your blog. When your posts do reflect your overall focus, the visitor to your site is highly likely to find other content on your site interesting and stay a little longer to look around.
Let’s break it down.
Why evergreen content?
For us busy bloggers and biz owners, every moment is important. We wear so many different hats, being writers, social media whizzes, educators, salespersons, and more – you don’t need me to tell you our time is pretty stretched.
That is why evergreen content is the must-have type of content for your blog. Why? Because it has the biggest return on investment for your time (ROI).
Rather than constantly producing new content that will be forgotten the next week, your time is much better re-paid by producing content that people will continue to visit weeks, months, and years later. A few hours of work for continuous return in visitors. Sounds good, right?
Even more importantly, by creating your evergreen content intentionally, the visitors it continues to attract will be the right kind of visitors. They will be interested in your blogging niche. This makes them more likely to click through to other posts on your site, sign up for your mailing list, share your content, and buy your products and services.
Pretty valuable visitors, huh? And the content that keeps them coming – even more so.
Spoiler! You have already posted evergreen content!
Some of your existing blog posts will already be pillar content.
You can usually find these types of posts by looking at your analytics. Which posts attract the most page views? Which attracts the most engagement through comments, likes, shares, and pins? These are the current cornerstones of your blog.
If these posts accurately represent your blog’s niche, then use them to guide the next blog posts you create. Look for a trend and create posts from different angles on the same theme.
Let me give you an example. I discovered that recipes including chocolate bars were really popular on Knead to Dough, so I produced more of those. As expected, these have all moved up to my most viewed posts and continue to bring visitors to my site. My target readers are foodie bloggers which many of these visitors are, but not all of them.
I also discovered that my how-to-style blog posts continued to attract traffic. As these directly appeal to my target reader, and the recipe posts offer valuable case studies to them, this is the most valuable of my two types of evergreen content.
It brings the right people to my site to then look at other recipes and my blogging posts. They are also likely to sign up for my free resource library, which includes some guides specifically for foodies as well as general content resources.
How to use evergreen content on your blog
So you know how I use evergreen content to boost traffic continuously for Knead to Dough, but how can you apply it to your own blog?
You’re already starting to assess your popular posts for their suitability as pillar content for your blog and using them as inspiration for more.
You can also create pillar content by creating content that is already known to be successful, shareable, and regularly searched. How-to and list posts are typically very popular as they usually provide in-depth, valuable, actionable advice.
The key to writing successful evergreen content is to provide as much value as possible. Pick your frequently searched niche topic and cover it in depth. Don’t leave your readers with unanswered questions at the end. If your content is valuable and informative, people will continue to find it useful.
“The key to writing successful evergreen content is to provide as much value as possible.”
Set yourself the challenge to make every blog post evergreen for the next month. If you can, challenge yourself to do this forever.
Tip: Don’t forget to update pillar content as and when changes occur that apply to that topic.
The takeaways?
Evergreen content gives you the best ROI for your time
It attracts the right kind of visitors who are likely to subscribe and buy
Create content intentionally to attract these visitors and provide them lots of value
How-to and list posts are great options for creating evergreen content
Love this story? Pin the below graphic to your Pinterest board.
This post originally appeared on Blog Society. Lauren Fraser helps other blogs and businesses (especially foodies!) transform their social media and blogging strategies to get the traffic, engagement, and leads they want. You can find blogging resources and guides on her site, Knead to Dough, with a pinch of delicious recipes thrown in for good measure!
This story was originally published on September 24, 2016, and has since been updated.
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How to Make Money on Your Social Channels
One pro shares her money-making trick.
Whether you are an entrepreneur launching the next great news content site or a blogger with a huge social following, making recommendations for things on your social platforms encourages your audience to click and buy. We covered the basics of affiliate marketing in an older post, but for a short refresher, affiliate marketing means you can earn revenue by placing trackable links to get paid when your users shop. But once you’ve got the basics down, what’s next?
Know Your Platform!
Social media is arguably the most challenging way to convert users to make a purchase. Why? While perusing Instagram and Snapchat, users want to be inspired and see their friends and family alongside inspiring images. When users are in the mindset to consume content on these platforms, they don’t always want to be immediately directed to a new page to make a purchase. With that in mind, using social media to direct people back to your site is a great way to drive traffic and allow the user to know where to shop a little later.
Instagram Posts: Include “Shop link in bio” in your caption and direct your followers back to a page featuring Instagram posts tagged with the products you are featuring. ShopStyle Collective has a tool called Looks & Collections which makes it simple! The best part? You can link to multiple items, making it even easier for fans to shop your entire look.
Instagram Stories: Swipe up to Shop! For those that have the ability to link in stories, it’s simple to create a shortlink via ShopStyle Collective and direct users to swipe to shop. ShopStyle’s tools auto detect that the user is coming from Stories and offers them the option to enter an email to get a link to shop, or to shop immediately. We’ve seen a huge increase in conversion on “Swipe up” by giving users the option to enter their email and stay within Instagram, or to shop immediately.
Facebook: Yes, that’s right: Facebook. It’s may not be as cool as Instagram, but Facebook is the silver bullet of driving shopping through social. It’s easy to link out and engage with your community — and it’s easy to do targeted advertising to get links in front of the right people. Focus on building your Facebook community by engaging users and seeing what works organically in order to diversify ways to monetize through social.
Hilary Sloan is a director of business development at ShopStyle, the leading fashion search destination, in charge of ShopStyle Collective, the fastest growing network of top fashion and lifestyle influencers worldwide, currently 14,000 strong. Sloan’s team works closely with influencers to successfully monetize their digital shopping content. In addition, Sloan works closely with ShopStyle’s product team, identifying and innovating against future trends and new platforms to create proprietary tools that influencers can use for revenue generation and brand building. When not at ShopStyle, Hilary can be found applying all her skills to her own mini influencer, her dog, Ella Bean.
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