Good morning and welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. I bet you weren't expecting me. My name is Melanie
And I'm Esther.
And today we're going to be talking about what is evergreen content and what is it used for? So Esther, in your mind. What is Evergreen content?
Evergreen content is one piece of content that you have written that never loses its significance or its meaning or never goes out of deep.
But content doesn't just have to be something written or visual. It can just be a picture or a saying or a tag line, something that's relevant to your brand, your business, or even just your persona. So as an example, as I suggested, a blog now, blogs will eventually obviously go out of date because especially in this sector and the social media sector, it's going to change. But there are ways of overcoming that. Do you know how what kind of tips can we impart to the listeners about that?
Well, there are many things. I mean, if you try to keep your content as evergreen as possible, so don't include information about image sizes or length of posts or you know, anything like that, then it shouldn't go out of it as quickly, because I remember writing a blog years ago about yes, the optimal length for Twitter is 140 characters. And obviously that changed. So going back and correcting it and fixing it. If you're writing something about New Year, new you, etc, then after a couple of months, it won't be the New Year anymore. So try to keep your stuff as I wouldn't say generic, but as open as possible as you don't name it specifically. Don't always talk about Christmas in your posts. If you're coming from September, people won't want to see them come February, they won't want to be looking at things about Christmas. You know, things like that. If you refresh your branding, then change your images on your posts as well. You can also have different images that you make up using Canva if you like. Or there are other tools out there
that was quite a concession there from you, isn't it?
It was it really was. It caught at the back of my throat. But there are other tools out there. I'm being all serious and that you kow use tools that are simple and easy for you so that you can make six or seven different images for one blog post. And that also helps keep the content looking fresh and evergreen, even if it has been four or five, six years. Some sectors don't change as quickly as ours, Melanie.
Yeah, that's true. But what is the purpose of Evergreen content? Why is it useful? Why do people desire or require it?
Because everybody always has the same questions. The same questions always come up. It's always. How do you do this? How do I get that? What would happen if you know? So all these questions are questions that people always ask. And there are always new people coming into business that will have those same questions and if those are questions that you're answering in your blog, then people will come and see them now, another tip I would recommend is do not put your dates on your blog. So if it says published 3 July 2012, then people are just going to look at it and go, Well, that's a long time ago now, so it's probably not still relevant.
Yeah, I see your point, but what we're suggesting here isn't that do you just write one blog post on there is an absolute need for fresh content is a visual, written, image based audio based that needs to go up on a regular basis in order to, you know, increase awareness. Remember, it's always down to the old Ye old sales funnel, and it always starts from the largest part, which is awareness. And if you just leave the old content up there, even though you're sharing on a regular basis and freshening up with the information in it and maybe freshening images, it's still not enough. People still need to see pertinent, timely, relevant content going up, even if it is called Christmas or Easter or something like that, because they still have a place in your calendar. We wanted to emphasise how important this particular area is for the very reasons that Esther mentioned, there's an awful lot of content that people want to consume regularly and repeatedly. And I mean, this kind of content is also an absolute gift if you want to use something like either social pilot or Agorapulse or indeed missing letter because they can keep on putting information back up again for you. So this gives you an idea of some of the things that we can talk about. So we've got the frequently asked questions, of course. But what other things would you use that is evergreen, Esther?
Infographics, infographics are a great way of sharing lots of information in the short. In one image and infographics help you to see the flow or see what's needed. So say you're starting out in business. What do you need? Tick, tick, tick. You know, it's a short list that's right there in front of you. It's easy to follow things like that. If it's been designed, for example, with the trend at the minute would be with icons and with little what are those called like emojis and things like that. If it's been designed like that in a couple of years time that's no longer the trend just change out the images. The information will still usually be okay. As long as like I said earlier, you don't include things like social images, sizes and length of posts and things like that. But in general, a lot of information. Now we're talking marketing. Obviously, we're talking about our sector here with social media. But if you're going to be, say, talking about houses and talking about design, interior design and houses that also changes with the seasons so you'd have to think about how you could include something that would be more evergreen, whether it's the flooring, whether it's something more generic, like the wallpaper or the paint and not so much the soft furnishings. There are lots of different things that people can talk about. And like Melanie says it doesn't have to be written content. It can be in a short, a blog or in a short Vlog that was a Vlog with a V, like a video blog. So you're just recording what you're going to be talking about and then obviously repurposing like we've talked about in previous episodes is also important. So evergreen content keeps being able to be shared. But like Melanie says, keep making content doesn't mean I've made three blogs. That's it. I don't have to make any more blogs for the rest of my business life. That's it. I'm done because those three blogs will see me through and that's that's easily done, you know. But keep just keep the information coming.
There is another small element you might want to take into account as well is okay. Some of your blogs vlogs post whatever may be situational or for a certain event, but there could be paragraphs or sound bites that you could take out that will remain evergreen. So instead of using the whole thing, you can you can take a snapshot of elements of that blog vlog video, whatever it is, and that can become evergreen, not all evergreen content is massively long or great deals to digest. Some of it can just be a snapshot as another way of actually creating content out of old ones. But what we want to do or put across in today's podcast was to explain there is an absolute need for this evergreen content as much for you to be able to measure because you've got KPIs that you can get from your or key performance indicators. Sorry, I have a go at people all the time in the Irish tech news podcast for using abbreviations. So you've got these KPIs or key performance indicators that you can measure the success of your blog, vlogs, videos and podcasts. And by using evergreen content, you can see how much is being consumed. If it started to dip in how many people are consuming it, could it be you need to put up a new image? Or obviously you can't change the URL of these things because that makes it harder for people to refine the content. But you can change the image if you want to. You can change some of the content as well and update it. But I wouldn't change the name or the URL of any of this content, particularly. So any last tips before we finish up,Esther?
I mean, there's been so many great tips through the podcast, so just get started would be one and start with your FAQ. Start with questions that people ask you frequently because like I said, they won't be the only ones asking those questions. And it won't just be in this season that they are asking those questions. Those questions will be asked by others in years to come, in months to come. And if it's there on the Internet, people will be Googling for it. People will be looking for it. And like we said, you can reuse your content and keep sending it out using you've heard of sand before things like missing letter, which just does it for you.
And just to remind everybody we're not being paid for these podcasts. When we're mentioning these brands, it's just because they're just really good and we like them.
We recommend things that we like. So thanks for joining us today, guys. I hope you got some useful information out of this from us, and we'll be back next week with more Monday morning marketing Podcast Bye bye.
You just couldn't bear me saying the end, could you? Okay.
Go now, do it now.
it's like sharing for the happy, isn't it?
It is really sorry. Next time it will be Melanie ending.
Anyway, bye for now guys