Making the most of your evergreen content

CharityComms content marketing conference

28 April 2015

Rob Mansfield @robram

What this presentation isn’t

Talking points

• What is evergreen content and why is it

important?

• How do you go about creating or identifying it

• What should this content look like?

• How do you quantify success?

Who’s this?In 1906, he came up with his famous principle (the law of the vital few)

o It’s always in demand

o It does good Google SERPs

o It’s not reliant on a specific event or time of year

o It takes far less effort than the shiny new stuff

o You’re less likely to be competing with everyone else

The importance of evergreen

How do we recognise this content?• No matter how much ‘viral content’ we

attempt to create, all our sites have their workhorses

• Yours may be regularly in the Top 10, definitely in the Top 20

• Evergreen content tends to be informational

• It’s easy to overlook, because it’s very rarely the ‘sexy content’

The easy way to work it out…

What’s your evergreen content?

Now you know what it is and why you should bother,

there’s a bit of detective work involved

o Think ‘useful’

o Check internal search logs

o Comb back through monthly traffic

reports

o What’s ‘your’ USP?

Remember

But most importantly…What do your users want?o Talk to your

supporters/benefactorso Interrogate your partners/customer

service team

o Carry out focus groupso Don’t think you know better than

your audience – if you do, then you’re likely to choose the wrong topics

Finding the unmet opportunities is key

There’s no point producing content that doesn’t…

a. Meet your audience needs

b. Meet your business needs

What does this content look like?

Think formatsLook at different ways of displaying your content

o ‘How to’ guides: YouTube is full of them

o Beginners guides

o Answer a question

o Curate

o Make sense of a trend

o Lists: XX reasons…

o Best in show

o Checklists

Evergreen AND shareable

And a few more…

You won’t get it right on the first hit

o Choose things that you think will work and give them a try

o It’ll take time to rise up the Google rankings, so always look for a new opening

o If it doesn’t work, go back to the drawing board

Innovate and iterate

Can you repurpose it?If it’s worked once, why not try it again in a different format?

• Infographic

• Video

• Podcast

• Re-package for social

How do you quantify success?

• How do people get there?

• Where do they go next?

• Check bounce rates

• How long do they spend on

the page?...

Do some investigation…

Donor facts: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2014/03/18/organ-donor-register/

What’s the ROI?• Convert them to something else

• It may be popular, but does it do any

good?

• Run a survey

Can you enhance their visit?

The truth is they may never need to come back to you

• Even if they’re in crisis mode, give them something

• Provoke an emotion

• Encourage them to take an action

In summary

• Find your USP and exploit it

• Listen to your users

• Iterate

• Measure the hell out of your content

Thank you!

@robram

Visit the CharityComms website to

view slides from past events, see

what events we have coming up

and to check out what else we do:

www.charitycomms.org.uk

Conference

28 April 2016

London

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