Blogging Tip: Utilizing Evergreen Content

One of my favorite type of posts to read on other blogs are blogging tips, yet I’ve never really shared my own. I’ve always been more than happy to share my tips on everything else from home decorating to travel guides to wedding planning to entertaining, but diving into blogging advice just wasn’t on my radar. Well, today I’m bucking that trend and sharing with you one of the blogging tips that has helped me so much over the past few months.

CREATING EVERGREEN CONTENT

Back when blogging was in its infancy, most blogs resembled journals more than websites. You read about the author’s daily ins and outs and every once in a while some style inspiration might be thrown in. Eventually that evolved into style and home specific posts and, now, most of what we see in the blogging world could be considered evergreen lifestyle content. With the except of the occasional Weekend Thoughts post, most of what I’m creating is content that should be as relevant in six months as it is now.

People will always need to know how to style bedroom pillows, create a wedding budget, plan a 24 hour getaway, or nail down a 5 minute make up look. By developing consistent content that has no expiration date, you’re creating a website that can serve as a resource for its readers – one they can continue to visit and refer back to whenever they’re in need of some inspiration or advice. It takes a bit more effort to plan, write, and photograph rich, evergreen content, but it’s well worth the pay off for both you and your readers.

KEEPING CONTENT IN ROTATION

This, of course, leads to the question, “How do I continue to use this evergreen content that I’m spending so much time creating?” You don’t want to put all the time and effort into creating fabulous content to just let it sit in the archives of your blog never to be seen again. So, you have a few tactics you can use to keep putting that evergreen content back out into the world.

• Use your own blog to link back to past posts! Anytime you write a home decorating post, find a reason to link back to a related post. In a post about living room pillows, give a shout out to bedroom pillows. In a post about planning a road trip, reference packing. You get the idea.

• When you write a post, schedule social media promotion well into the future. You can plan and schedule social posts months out, so do it as soon as you write the post.

• Utilize Pinterest to keep those posts living forever. While I still haven’t mastered the Pinterest game, it’s definitely a place where content can grow legs and run farther and faster.

• Every season, go back to your old seasonal posts and see what can be revamped and reposted. See this Valentine’s Day blondie post? Yup, that’s an old one that I refreshed with a bit of new copy, some edits on the photos (now that I know what I’m doing just a bite more!), and voila, new but old evergreen content.

MAKING CONTENT EASILY ACCESSIBLE 

When you have all this evergreen content on your blog that you’re creating, planning, scheduling, how do you keep it all organized? Well, this is where Google Sheets is my best friend. I created a super simple Google Sheet with tabs for each of my major verticals: travel, home, style, wedding, beauty, personal development, and entertaining. Then, I added in three columns: subject, bit.ly link, and date. Why Google Sheets over regular old excel? I wanted to be able to access this document from anywhere, including my phone.

This document created a home base where I can easily to refer to every single post I’ve written (well, every single post after the date I started using this) and have immediate access to a social media ready link to the post. I just set aside 15 minutes for scheduling social posts for the week, scroll through the sheet, see what jumps out at me the day, write a quick tweet or Facebook post with the link, and I’m good to go.

So, there you have it: evergreen content is where it’s at. Put the effort in to create it and put the effort in to keep it accessible and organized.