Introducing Evergreen Content: The Backbone of Digital PR
Evergreen content is an essential component of many successful digital PR campaigns, but what exactly is it? Evergreen content is like a good bottle of wine – it only gets better with age!
Evergreen content refers to content that remains relevant and useful to your target audience for an extended period of time, often months and years after it was first published. Unlike timely content, such as breaking news or seasonal updates, evergreen content remains fresh and informative long after its initial publication.
Related Content:
Why is evergreen content important for digital PR strategy? Here are three key reasons:
Longevity
When it comes to creating evergreen content, one of the key benefits is its longevity. Unlike news or trend-based content, which tends to have a shorter lifespan, evergreen content can remain relevant and useful for years to come. By focusing on topics that are timeless and not tied to a specific moment or event, you can create content that continues to drive traffic and engagement to your website long after it’s published. This is particularly important in today’s fast-paced digital world, where new content is constantly being created and shared.
Another benefit of evergreen content is its ability to provide value to your audience over time. By creating content that answers common questions or provides helpful tips and advice, you can establish your brand as a reliable source of information and expertise in your industry.
Another benefit of creating evergreen content is that it saves time and resources in the long run. Instead of constantly creating new content to keep up with the latest trends and news, evergreen content can continue to drive traffic and engagement without the need for frequent updates or maintenance. This allows content creators to focus on other important tasks, such as promoting existing content and developing new evergreen pieces, without sacrificing the quality or relevance of their content strategy. Overall, evergreen content offers a sustainable and efficient way to build a strong online presence and attract a loyal audience over time.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Evergreen content can also be a powerful tool for improving search engine rankings. By creating content that provides long-term value to your target audience, you can attract high-quality backlinks, boost your domain authority, and improve overall SEO.
Backlinks are an important ranking factor for search engines, as they signal to search engines that other websites consider your content to be valuable and worth linking to. By creating evergreen content that remains relevant and useful over time, you can attract more backlinks, which in turn can help improve your domain authority and overall SEO.
By investing in evergreen content, you can generate passive coverage over time. Evergreen content’s potential to reach journalists is not limited to a specific outreach window but can be a resource for journalists and reporters in the future.
Thought Leadership
By creating evergreen content that showcases your expertise and knowledge in a particular area, you can establish yourself as a thought leader and authority figure in your industry. This type of content can take many forms, including blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, and videos, among others.
Creating evergreen content that is informative and valuable to your audience can help you build trust and credibility with your target audience. As you establish yourself as a thought leader, it becomes easier to attract media attention and coverage for your brand. This can lead to more exposure and recognition for your brand, which in turn can lead to increased traffic and engagement on your website.
In addition, evergreen content that positions you as a thought leader can also help you attract high-quality backlinks from other authoritative websites in your industry. By improving your site’s domain authority and search engine rankings, you can attract target audiences.
The key to creating effective evergreen content that establishes you as a thought leader is to focus on providing long-term value to your audience. This means creating content that is not only informative and educational but also actionable and relevant to your target audience’s needs and interests. By doing so, you can build a loyal following of engaged readers who turn to your brand for valuable insights and information. For example, if you’re a jeweler you may want to publish content around identifying the perfect engagement ring.
The reasons why evergreen content works are important to keep in mind as you begin to craft your evergreen content. However, it’s not enough to simply understand why it works — you also need to know how to create it. By following these steps, you’ll be able to create content that will remain relevant and valuable to your audience for years to come.
Writing an Evergreen Pitch
Once you’ve created your evergreen content, it’s time to pitch it to the media. The first step to writing an evergreen pitch is to identify a topic or angle that is relevant to your target audience and that will remain relevant over time. This could be a topic that addresses a common pain point or challenge that your audience faces, or it could be a trend or issue that is likely to persist for years to come.
Once you’ve identified your evergreen topic, it’s important to craft your content in a way that emphasizes the long-term value of your brand, product, or service. This means focusing on the key benefits that your audience will receive from engaging with your brand or product, rather than simply highlighting the features or capabilities of your offering.
In addition, it’s important to include relevant data, statistics, or case studies that support your claims and demonstrate your content’s merit. By providing concrete evidence, you can increase the likelihood that your pitch will be picked up and that your content will receive coverage.
Finally, it’s important to tailor your pitch to the specific media outlet that you are targeting. This means researching the outlet’s audience, tone, and editorial focus, and crafting your pitch in a way that aligns with their needs and interests. By doing so, you can increase the likelihood that your pitch will resonate with the outlet’s editors and that your brand will receive valuable media coverage as a result.
In summary, writing an evergreen pitch requires careful research, planning, and crafting to ensure that your content remains relevant and noteworthy over time. By focusing on the long-term benefits of your brand, including applicable data and case studies, and tailoring your pitch to the needs of your target media outlet, you can increase the likelihood that your pitch will be picked up and that your brand will receive favorable media coverage.
Maximize Your Evergreen Content
Check out the following tips below to help get the most out of your evergreen content:
- Update the Content Regularly: While the content may be evergreen, the data and statistics included in it may not be. It’s essential to keep your evergreen content up-to-date by updating it yearly with the latest information and data.
- Repurpose the Content: Evergreen content can be repurposed in various ways, such as turning it into an infographic, a video, or a podcast episode. Repurposing can help reach new audiences and increase engagement.
- Optimize for Current Trends: While the content may be evergreen, it’s still important to optimize it for current trends and topics. You can do this by including relevant keywords and topics in the content and promoting it on social media during relevant events or holidays.
- Use Storytelling: Storytelling is a powerful tool for making evergreen content more engaging and relevant. By including stories and anecdotes that relate to your audience, you can create a connection and make the content more memorable.
- Use Timeless Examples: Use examples in your content that are timeless and not tied to a specific event or trend. This will ensure that the content remains relevant even as trends and events change.
- Consider the Format: When creating evergreen content, consider the format that will make the most sense for your audience. For example, long-form articles may be better for in-depth tutorials, while listicles may be better for quick tips.
Making Evergreen Content Timely
Creating evergreen content doesn’t mean it has to be irrelevant to current events. You can still make your content timely by tying it to current events, news, or trends while maintaining its evergreen nature. For example, if you have a blog post about “10 Tips for Effective Time Management,” you can update it with a section on “Time Management during Remote Work” or “Time Management for the Holidays.” By adding these sections, you keep the content fresh and relevant while also preserving its evergreen value. This approach can attract both new and returning readers who are interested in the topic, and you can repurpose the content across different platforms, such as social media or email newsletters, to reach a wider audience.
Overall, the key to making evergreen content timely is to balance the evergreen nature of the content with current trends and topics. By doing so, you can create content that remains relevant and useful for years to come.
Now that we’ve discussed how to make evergreen content timely, let’s move on to the pros and cons of creating evergreen content. While there are many benefits to producing content that remains relevant over time, there are also some potential drawbacks to consider. Let’s take a closer look at both sides.
The Pros and Cons of Evergreen Content
Pros:
- Long-term Traffic: One of the biggest benefits of evergreen content is it can continue to drive traffic to your site long after it’s been published. By creating content that remains relevant and useful for years to come, you can attract visitors to your site for a long time without having to constantly create new content.
- SEO Benefits: Evergreen content can also be great for improving your search engine rankings. By attracting backlinks and establishing your site as a trusted source of information, you can boost your domain authority and improve your overall SEO.
- Thought Leadership: Creating evergreen content that showcases your expertise in a particular area can help establish you as a thought leader in your industry. This can lead to increased trust and credibility with your target audience, as well as more media coverage for your brand.
- Time-Saving: By creating evergreen content, you can save time and resources that would otherwise be spent constantly creating new content. This can free up your team to focus on other important areas of your business.
Cons:
- Less Timely: One potential downside of evergreen content is that it may not be as timely as other types of content. While evergreen content can provide long-term value, it may not be as effective at capitalizing on breaking news or other timely events. Evergreen content also provides reporters less incentive to cover it at the moment, as it will remain relevant to write a story about in several months; timely content has tighter deadlines and gives reporters more of an excuse to cover it now.
- May Become Outdated: While evergreen content is designed to remain relevant for years to come, there is always the possibility that it may become outdated at some point. This means you may need to update or refresh the content periodically to keep it relevant.
- May Not Be as Shareable: Since evergreen content may not be as timely, it may not be as shareable on social media or other channels. This means you may need to work harder to promote the content and attract visitors to your site.
- May Require More Research: Creating high-quality evergreen content often requires a significant amount of research and expertise. This means you may need to invest more time and resources upfront to create truly valuable content that stands the test of time.
Overall, evergreen content can be a powerful tool for driving traffic, improving SEO, and establishing thought leadership in your industry. However, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons before investing significant resources into creating this type of content. By understanding the potential benefits and drawbacks, you can make an informed decision about whether evergreen content is the right strategy for your business.
Looking at Examples of Evergreen Content:
Examples of evergreen content include: “how-to” guides and tutorials, industry overviews, expert interviews, infographics, webinars, and in-depth analyses of trends or issues within your industry.
The campaigns below have proven to be evergreen because they continue to generate interest and engagement long after their initial launch. This is because they were designed with a focus on providing long-term value to their target audience, rather than being centered around a specific moment in time or trend.
The topic of mental health is a perennial issue that affects people of all ages and backgrounds. By providing evergreen content that ranks and analyzes the best U.S. cities for mental health, readers can gain valuable insights and resources to make informed decisions about where to live and seek support. This type of content remains relevant and useful for years, as mental health concerns continue to be a top priority for individuals and communities across the country. As such, the information provided can continue to attract readers and drive traffic to the website for an extended period, making it a valuable and evergreen resource. This piece attracted coverage from DeseretNews, NewsBreak, and more.
Digital equity is a topic that is evergreen because it addresses an ongoing issue that affects many people. The digital divide, or the gap between those who have access to technology and those who don’t, is a persistent problem across the country. By providing data and insights, this type of content can continue to be relevant and informative to readers for years to come. As technology continues to advance and play an increasingly important role in our lives, the issue of digital equity is likely to remain relevant and important, making this an evergreen topic. This gained coverage in City Monitor, and WRAL Tech Wire, among others.
This is an example of evergreen content because it offers readers valuable information and resources to better understand the complex topic of personal data collection, usage, and sale. This content remains relevant to a large and diverse audience over time and continues to be a popular and in-demand topic, as privacy concerns remain a critical issue. By providing this data and empowering readers to make informed decisions about their personal information, this content can continue to educate readers for future years. This earned coverage in PCMag, Digital Information World, and more.
By creating content that speaks to long-term interests and needs, these campaigns can maintain relevance and value for their audience, resulting in ongoing engagement and success. These topics remain relevant for a longer period of time than time-sensitive or trending topics, making them evergreen content.
At Go Fish Digital, by incorporating evergreen content into our digital PR strategy for our clients, we create a strong foundation for your brand’s online presence, attract high-quality traffic and leads, and establish your brand as a thought leader within your industry.
Don’t forget the power of evergreen content – by creating content that remains fresh and useful for years to come, you can drive long-term success for your brand. If you need help with evergreen content for your digital PR campaigns, reach out to Go Fish Digital today. We specialize in digital PR, tangential, branded, and evergreen content for your campaigns.
Search News Straight To Your Inbox
*Required
Join thousands of marketers to get the best search news in under 5 minutes. Get resources, tips and more with The Splash newsletter: