What is Evergreen marketing & how to implement it?

With plants gaining popularity on the daily for several years now many nursery goers are stumbling across the word evergreen – which is quite the buzzword within the marketing industry.

As in botany where evergreen describes the annual color of a plants’ leaves – forever green – in marketing, it describes content that is forever relevant. Thus, the hype in the content strategy department. Evergreen content meets all levels of satisfaction as it ensures a higher SEO ranking which in turn increases traffic, social shares and the cherry on top: lower maintenance.

Evergreen Characteristics

There is an outline to ensure you’re creating evergreen content. While content without an expiration date is considered as green, there are certain characteristics that makes it evergreen:

·       No current trends / news articles / seasonal topics / statistics

·       Generally, aim at niche beginner topics

·       Always seek high stay time or long clicks

·       Usually longer articles

·       Testimonials and reviews

Evergreen Themes

Let’s look at a few overarching themes within the industry:

• A definition or explanation breaks down a meaning of something no matter how simple or complex. From describing a word or taking a closer look at how a system works – this never changes. Therefore, they are evergreen.
• Lists. Yes, checklists for going shopping; camping; etc but, more popularly, resource lists. Lists of blogs related to a certain topic, a helping hand to finding information on the ever-growing internet is a proven to be successful evergreen marketing strategy.
• With niche beginner topics being one of the main characteristics of evergreen marketing, how-to articles tend to leverage off another strong marketing key point: engagement. These articles can be targeted at any level or expertise.
• Any forms of tips or life hacks.
• Non-tech articles dealing with behaviour, attitude or personal characteristics.

I hope you have some posting ideas right about now.

Evergreen Implementation

How to add evergreen content into your social strategy:

Your marketing strategy should contain an overarching evergreen masterplan. This relates to the business identity – logo, style guide, brand voice, markets or audiences. While there is potential to grow, the core of your business needs to be evident in order to not only have a sense of direction, but to create a brand reputation to uphold. If you need a marketing strategy, write to us. We are an award-winning digital agency specializing in complex tasks.

In formulating a business model and marketing strategy you identify a few values to stick to. It is vital to stick to this identity in order to flourish. The goal is brand recognition across all platforms. This is achieved through

1. Design. The over all look and feel of your brand across the board.
2. Copy. The way in which you communicate online drives traffic, sales and – highly important: engagement.
3. Content. Information shared needs to remain informative, educational and entertaining. Marketing techniques such as inspirational material is often used too.

It’s important to note that your entire strategy can’t be evergreen, there needs to be a balance between need-based and seasonal content too. There are ways to add a long-lasting touch to content:

·       Adding an original publishing date ensures authenticity to your brand, don’t update this.

·       As your industry develops and grows, go back and update content in order to stat relevant.

·       Ensure your audience know your content is as relevant today as it was last year, inform readers of updates made.

·       If a major update is required, it’s best to create new content with backlinks to previous posts and explain the reasoning behind the most recent creation.