Go evergreen most of the time.
You can go topical sometimes but doing so leads to much more work down the road. I published this guest post to make it timeless. No matter when human beings read this post, it applies. Read the post one day for now. Dead on. Read the post one month from now. Bang on. Read the post 5 years from now. Again, this is evergreen content. The post remains accurate, truthful, and helpful for as long as human beings live.
I post evergreen content most of the time so I don’t have to waste time and energy editing topical blog posts in the future. Nor do I need to waste time and energy deleting topical blog posts in the future. Sure I may let a few sneak through. But a few topical blog posts out of 3000 plus posts are a tiny number not to worry about.
Blogging is a long term venture.
However, some bloggers make the mistake of publishing mainly topical content. As soon as the topic becomes irrelevant, the blog post becomes worthless. Knowing this, you better publish evergreen content most if not all the time because evergreen content is good forever. That’s the way to go. I saved myself so much time by publishing evergreen content plus self-publishing evergreen eBooks.
Creating topical free and premium content makes it difficult to sell for a long time. Imagine self publishing an eBook on some topic dependent on the current strategy for that topic. That current strategy may change in one day, one week or one month. Imagine if the strategy changes one year from now. The eBook becomes completely worthless. Nobody will buy it. You will have wasted your time writing and self publishing an something only relevant for one year. Why think in terms of one year when you can think in terms of 30 or 50 years or longer?
Why think of short-term profits for a quick income boost when you could think about long-term profits over months, years and decades? I always have decades in my mind because I plan to live for decades. But I still live in the moment. Being in the moment, I can see that following trends is foolish for building a sustainable, everlasting long-term blogging business. I would need to delete posts or edit posts routinely if I stayed topical. But I rarely if ever do that.
So I don’t have to waste time editing or deleting old posts or guest posts because everything I create is virtually good forever. When people read my eBooks, they tell me the books are as helpful now as the products were in 2014, that’s evergreen. That’s me thinking ahead. Someone could pay for one of my eBooks now and see the same value in the strategies that the individual would have received in 2014. It is that simple.
But when you publish evergreen content keep fundamentals in mind because the fundamentals never change but particular, time-sensitive details do change. I advise people to create and connect. Each fundamental will never change if you want to become a successful blogger. But specific strategies can and do change from time to time. Publishing blog posts and guest posts won’t change for a very long time. Ditto for income. Ditto with creating videos and podcasts. I would consider each strategy completely evergreen. Feel free to offer advice in these areas through premium and free content.
But beware focusing heavily on specific social media strategies as far as getting deep into details. Imagine if 60% of your eBook consisted of specific Twitter strategies now obsolete. Either you need to trash the eBook or spend precious hours deleting outdated content and replacing with current content. Bloggers do this often. I would rather be creating new content for driving traffic to my site and for boosting blogging income.
Publish evergreen content. Think about big blogging traffic and big blogging income years from now versus smaller, quicker blogging profits now and the headaches, time and energy commitments of deleting or editing dated, topical content.
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Hi Ryan, excellent advice. I did some non-evergreen posts a few months back but I will update them to be evergreen. I’ll need to do an eBook next year that is evergreen as well. Social media is very hard to be evergreen except for the “engagement” part. You are giving me ideas! Thank you.
Lisa that is a super point! Social media is super hard to make evergreen because strategies change fast. I would focus on core concepts like creating and connecting. Then stick to the basics like commenting on updates on Facebook, engaging via text-only chats on Twitter…..these concepts should be evergreen for a while.
Hi Ryan,
I really loved the topic. I find myself constantly worrying about following trends, and I am torn on what should I do. Recently some of my friends asked me this same thing and I realized I am not the only one with these questions. Your article really gave me a fresh perspective and allowed me to develop a better strategy for my blog. Thanks a lot for talking on this topic, I will definitely share this article with people in my network to provide them the same clarification I experienced.