Create naturally organic evergreen content, pillar posts, and anchor articles for your small business blog
Frequently Asked Questions, like “How Do You Create A FaceBook Page,” make great fodder for evergreen content. When a topic is evergreen, people don’t even notice that the original posting was “2 years ago.” And whether you know it or not, you might have some naturally organic evergreen content living on your blog right now.
Table of Contents
Going Green
Have you ever witnessed the joys of mountain-living, with evergreens towering over mounds of snow? They keep living no matter the changes in landscape or weather. Evergreen content is like that: it weathers the changes in computing landscapes, transcends the technology, and answers questions that arise again and again. Writing in a "green ink" frame of mind ensures that your content stands the test of time. Here are some ways to recognize evergreen content and tips on how to keep your content useful and long-lived.
According to Wikipedia, the idiomatic term evergreen refers to something that perpetually renews itself, or otherwise remains steady and constant (it does not suddenly halt or "die off", as leaves on a deciduous tree).*
What contributes to content remaining evergreen? After combing through numerous articles, blog posts, and forum discussions, I determined there are several scenarios that contribute to content becoming — and remaining — evergreen. These three rose to the top most often:
- evergreen because of questions
- evergreen because of consistent negative impact
- evergreen because of "face-offs"
Let’s talk about one of these scenarios: Evergreen because of questions
Technology Questions That Arise Again and Again
The inspiration for writing this article was a search for answers to two queries: "Why have a FaceBook Page?" and "How to Create a FaceBook Page?" In less than 20 seconds, Google informed me there were hundreds of thousands results. Though I was impressed with how fast Google can return that many results, even more amazing was how many people are still asking these same questions.
These answers are contained in blog posts, articles, forum discussions, and comments. People were asking these question years ago, yet today they are still responding to information that was, in many cases, written years ago. Why? Because that subject continually rises to the top of the heap. Thus, any answers to those questions make the content evergreen.
In Why You Need A Facebook Fan Page For Your Website**, a commenter asks "How did you create or find the link to the page to give to people?" She asks this a few weeks ago, around the same time I was searching for similar information. And she got an answer, though the original post was written several years ago.
Tumblr
Another example of a question that produced evergreen content for an author is "What Is Tumblr? Why Would I Use It?" That was an exact question I had posed some months ago. I could tell by the comments I found on one blog post (Why I’m kissing Tumblr a sad, sad good-bye) which answered what Tumblr is not, that many others were asking the same question 2 years after the author’s original posting.
The original post date wasn’t at the top of the post, and I had already penned my comment before it occurred to me to check the post date. I was surprised to see, as I checked the dates on others’ comments, that not only did they begin about 2 years ago, but the last few were made within the last few months. As a matter of fact, the comments were consistently spaced across a two-year period! Just like me, people were trying to see why they should bother with yet-another blog, no matter how micro. That old post actually helped me make up my mind to use Tumblr.
Green In Places Other Than The Garden Shop At Your Local Super-Center
Home improvement super-centers give rise to evergreen content by the nature of the home improvement industry. The constant state of economic ups-and-downs fuels the popularity of "do-it-yourself," as does the genuine desire of hobbyists to build something. Right on the heels of the DIY purchases come the "how do I?" questions.
Smart retailers like Home Depot(TM) have extensive online written and video tutorials that answer those same frequently asked questions. The content, whether written step-by-step guides or show-and-tell videos, remains green because the process, for the most part, stays the same.
How can you recognize your own naturally organic evergreen content?
- Check your stats. Your WordPress stats or the logs from your hosting account are great sources of intelligence gathering. Are visitors revisiting writings you created ages ago? Follow the trail to find out what’s of interest to them.
- Re-read the comments on older blog posts. When you approve comments, are you aware of what they are attached to? Do you treat them like gold, even when they appear to rehash, or re-awaken a post created a while back? Some bloggers and forum masters don’t like to have comments on older posts (I’ve seen some rude behavior towards their guests!)
- Visit your own videos hosted on YouTube, MetaCafe, Vimeo, or Daily Motion. If they were created in previous years but have a resurrgence of views and embeds — something’s happening there! Is it something you also wrote about or should now?
- Take a look at old forum discussions that you participated in, whether in your own forum or those elsewhere. Have topics been revived? Are the same conversations taking place over and again?
You’ll know your content has stood the evergreen test of time when old posts continue to show up in your stats and logs, and when you’re still getting fresh comments 2-3 years later!
That brings us back to the original question: how evergreen is your content?
Potential For Green-ness
Occasionally I come across an article or blog posting I think has potential to become an evergreen topic. Jared’s Want To Learn Complete WordPress Dashboard Styling? is one such article (at least the tutorial he’s planning is one such article).
Why? Because with the multitudes of tech savvy WordPress bloggers come ever-increasing desires to have total control over every aspect of their blogging experience. As I noted in my comment on his blog, I’ve often wanted to make my dashboard Admin Panel behave more to my liking but I haven’t taken the time to explore how to do this. When the questions start pouring in, and the search engines heat up from authors looking to customize their WordPress control panel, tutorials like this one will be much in demand for a long time to come.
I think I’m seeing evergreen content in the making!
You can create naturally organic evergreen content, pillar posts, and anchor articles for your small business blog by being mindful of where you are headed and what others will likely search for in the future. I’m keeping an eye out for a similar trends. I plan to write a follow-up to this post at some point.
Don’t forget to revisit your own writings to see where your organic content is hiding.
Grab the RSS feed to stay up-to-date.
Credits
Search Engine Journal, Why You Need A Facebook Fan Page For Your Website, 2007
Photo: Courtesy of David Herrera: A typical scenic view on just about any Washington state freeway, Northbound I-405 in Bothell, WA. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
About Vernessa Taylor
As a Technology Consultant and Internet Coach, Vernessa Taylor+ works with both online and offline business owners. She writes about small business systems such as project management and customer referral systems at CoachNotes Blog.
No related posts.
Vernessa
First of all- a great blog! very helpful content and a simple design.
And the questions, they are so powerful and reveal so much. Certain issues are timeless- there will always be people who are new in the internet world, or to business, personal development, searching for the answers to the same questions…Strange, but true.
The guys that I learn from- James Schramko and John Carlton, repeat over and over again- test test test. What is your opinion on asking question in the titles of the articles?
You also mentioned two other evergreen scenarios:
# evergreen because of consistent negative impact
# evergreen because of “face-offs”
I would like to know more about them
thanks you, best
Martyna
Martyna, I am so pleased you were able to visit the blog! Welcome and thank you for your comment. You’re right, it is certainly strange how some issues are timelessness. Your reasons hit the nail on the head.
It seems that asking questions begs a reader to either repeat the question themselves, and then say, “yeah, I want to know the answer to that!” OR engages the reader to answer the question and read on to see what your solution could be.
I wrote an article for syndication at EzineArticles entitled Are You Writing in Green Ink? How to Create Content That Stands the Evergreen Test of Time. I’ve almost finished a sequel (Part 2) to the article that deals with both of these scenarios. But if you want a quick idea, I wrote a little about the concept in a guest post I did for my friend Gunther, You Can’t Lose With The Tools I Use. Skip down to the section Seek Both Positive and Negative Opinions.
Please feel free to syndicate any articles you think your readers will find interesting. You’ll find some over at Ezine Articles, otherwise just drop me a line and we’ll see what we can work out.