Evergreen content is a precious resource. From filling gaps on weekends and holidays to lightening the daily load to free up your staff for other projects, it’s a vital piece of keeping the machine running.

But how do you get started?

If you’re like many publishers, the task can feel overwhelming. How do you pull all of the content? Do you need to do it manually? How do you add to it? Can you track the ROI of the posts? When is it time to retire them?

We’re not going to lie to you: the task can be daunting if you’re trying to tackle it manually. Digging through your CMS, looking up performance, creating messy spreadsheets – it can take the time that you are likely already short on.

Let us help. We’ll start with the basics.

Use your CMS tags

It seems basic, but you’d be surprised how many of us don’t use “evergreen” tags in the CMS. What do you do if you have years of content in the CMS and no evergreen tag? Add them. There are a few ways to do this.

Batch tagging

Go through and click each post that is an evergreen post (if you aren’t sure what makes a good evergreen post, read here.) Batch tagging is going to take time. Sifting through thousands of posts is much work! However, your CMS will likely let you batch edit and add the tag to a bunch of posts at one time. Try it. Batch editing is not an excellent way to catch all of them, but it’s a good way to go through and get a chunk of posts added to your evergreen pool quickly.

Train your staff

Get your staff in the habit of using designated tags. All the time. Everybody who creates content. Get your editors in the habit of checking to make sure pieces are appropriately tagged. You should always have a tagging structure that makes sense.

Look at what has worked in the past.

Use your analytics reports. Choose 3, 6, or 12 months and look at your top performers from that period. Is the content timely? Is the content something easily used again? If they are evergreen, tag them. Methods like this are how you make sure the best pieces are getting another shot to drive your traffic. 

If you aren’t sure if something can work again, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Is this a news article that only had a short shelf life? 
• • • Is this piece of content still relevant?
    • Does it involve a particular date/time?
• Does it include outdated information that can not be updated?
• Could I make a small update to make this relevant, i.e., remove a timely reference to make it evergreen? 
• • • 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?
• Would this make sense if I published it live today?
  • • Is the information up to date?
    • Has the story progressed?
    • Is the information still relevant today?

Dive more in-depth here.

Create new content

Creating new content may go without saying, but we’ll say it: Look for new opportunities to create evergreen content. Every holiday, every video, and every piece of content is an opportunity for evergreen to add to your well.

Some ideas for evergreen content:

• Animal stories
• Weather anniversary flashbacks: storm storms/hurricanes/floods/earthquakes
• Holiday content. Not just Christmas – ALL of the holidays. It would be best if you had a bank for every holiday.
  • Recipes
  • Write-ups of fun traditions
  • Decorating ideas
  • Local lore
  • Origin stories
  • “History of” content
  • Movies and music – rankings, retrospective, “the story of …”
• Audience favorites – figure out what they like! Some ideas:
  • Creepy content: Ghost stories, haunted buildings
  • Travel ideas
  • Explainers and graphics
  • Specific celebrities

How True Anthem can work for you

If this all sounds like too much work, it definitely can be. There is, however, an easier way.

We can help you build a system that works for you. We’ll help you categorize and tag your content appropriately and then figure out when recirculation makes sense. Our system operates on a set of rules that we create to help pull the right content at the right time for the right audience. Need a day to run meetings without someone hovering over social?

We can fully automate your whole day, filling content slots with general evergreen pieces and new content as it is available. Everybody off for Christmas? Set your social channels to run on autopilot and pull seasonally-appropriate content.

We’ll coach you through the whole setup process and then take it from there. You can click here to read more or sign up for a personalized demo.