Creating evergreen content is essential to a sustainable long-term strategy. Evergreen content recirculation refers to reusing available content over and over for an extended period of time instead of a “timely” piece of content with a limited lifespan. For example, a news piece about a hurricane bludgeoning the east coast would not be evergreen. However, the science of storms is unlikely to change over time, so an explainer video about how hurricanes form could be useful for years to come. You can use the explainer to supplement ongoing hurricane stories.
Evergreen content creation opportunities
Depending on your current method, you may not have to make any changes to incorporate evergreen elements into your content creation process. With this in mind, here are some basic content ideas that can deepen your well of evergreen content:
- Explainers: In a newsroom? Chances are you’re covering a lot of the same topics every year. It could be worth creating some broader explainer or “did you know” style content that can be easily repurposed every year. Videos, articles, slideshows, and other multimedia integrations are great ways to These are great because they can be added to several articles to enhance the experience and grow views.
Example: Hurricane categories and other terminology explained
- Holiday content: This can go in so many different directions, but most publications have content surrounding specific holidays. Recipe content, traditions, historical pieces, movie and music highlights, and local lore may be the right places to start, depending on your outlet.
Example: Why do we hang Christmas stockings?
- Audience favorites: Spend time learning what your audience loves. Are they into ghost stories and creepy content? Do they like travel-specific content? Celebrities? Maybe they’re political and engage with issue explainers or graphics. You’re going to want to keep track of stories that you can resurface from time to time for that niche. You’ll also want to be on the lookout for evergreen content that you can create to keep your pool of content growing.
- Create tailored content: Knowing what your audience loves is important, but tailoring your content to exactly what they are searching for will yield the best results. What does your audience expect? What platforms do they use? Do they like emotional or informational posts? This information will help you create tailored content just for your reader. Tailored content has a much higher chance of becoming evergreen content you repurpose in the future.
How to start building your evergreen database
You probably don’t even realize how much evergreen content you already have. No, seriously. Here are some tips for sifting through your content and pulling things that can e evergreen:
Utilize Google Analytics. Pull your top performing content and look for three things: Is this a news article that only had a short shelf life? Check by seeing if you can answer yes to these questions:
Does it involve a very specific date/time? Does it include outdated information that can’t be updated? “Has the moment passed,” so to speak? Do not recirculate.
Could I make a small update to make this relevant, i.e. remove a timely reference to make it evergreen? Try to answer these questions:
Can I identify what elements can easily be updated? Are there any references to specific holidays, seasons, or events that are not critical to the story? Can I update the image? Optimizable. Update the necessary elements and recirculate it!
Would this make sense if I published it live today? Is the information up to date and relevant? Do people still care about this story? Recirculate
Search your CMS.
Looking for holiday content? Content involving a certain person/event/place? Whatever you’re trying to find, you can search your CMS to find it.
Create a database. Find a tool that works for you, like Google Sheets or Trello, and start creating a bank of content. If you want, you can sort it seasonally or by holidays, anniversaries, events – whatever feels relevant to you.
Tag it all. Use your CMS to tag things that are evergreen. If you aren’t sure where to start, here is some info on making sure you are taking full advantage of your metadata. Tagging will make it easy to discover your content faster, when you need it, and let True Anthem automate recirculation.
Use True Anthem’s Content Discovery tool. Our Discovery Tool is going to save you a ton of time. We’ll pull all of your content into our easy-to-use dashboard where you can search and then schedule it with a single click.
You’ve got the content. How do you execute the strategy?
So what do you do with all of this data? Certainly, if you have a significant amount of content it could be a struggle. There are a couple of ways to navigate an appropriately timed posting schedule.
Manual Evergreen Content Recirculation
Manual distribution is the most time-consuming route, but if you want full control and have the bandwidth, it can serve its purpose. Once you’ve sorted your content and created your database, you’ll need to schedule the pieces one by one. Evergreen recirculation is a great way to fill in the gaps, and will be much easier if you follow these steps:
- Search in Google Analytics
- Search your CMS
- Create a database
- Tag everything in your CMS to make it easy to find
- Identify when the right time to post Evergreen content is
Next time somebody is on vacation leaving you’re scrambling to fill up your social media slots for the week, you can make sure your bases are covered!
Automated Evergreen Content Recirculation
AI evergreen recirculation is where the magic starts to happen. Low-touch distribution of evergreen content is a way to drive consistent traffic without any more effort. TrueAnthem’s AI distribution tool will look at every piece of content that you have tagged as evergreen, fill your scheduled posting slots, and let you lock them in with a single click… or sit back and let us do the work. You’ll see results very quickly, and you don’t have to do anything at all. Drive traffic without burning out your team. It’s a win for everybody.
