What is evergreen content?
Online articles have a three-day lifespan on average. Evergreen content broadly refers to any article, post, or video that has visitors come to it well beyond this typical three-day attention cycle.
This means evergreen content attracts readers, often through search traffic or referral links. In one study of our content network, over half of our top 100 sites have more than 5% of their page views attributed to evergreen content. Even if you haven’t paid any attention to it, you likely already have evergreen content in your own archive.
Why should I care about evergreen content?
Your organization has already spent the time, energy, and resources to create evergreen content. Existing audiences have already indicated they’re interested in this content as well. That means that you can get more out of existing work, while also knowing that the additional effort you put in is more likely to pay off, in terms of reaching audience goals. This can allow your team to be more experimental with new content as well.
Finding this content and re-promoting it involves creating an evergreen content strategy. Evergreen content strategies include habitual updating of old content, re-sharing on social media, creating new assets for old posts, or re-packaging the content.
Teams that focus on evergreen content see improved SEO, engage with their audiences more, and encourage loyal readers by reminding their audience of their existing work.
What can my organization do with evergreen content?
Content marketing teams often try to create evergreen posts, with lots of timeless tips and how-tos posts. A media brand’s editorial goals may not align with creating content that tries to be evergreen, but many posts become evergreen on their own because a topic becomes popular again, or because the subject matter is timeless.
In the 2014 New York Times’ Innovation Report, the authors determined that a primary focus for increasing audience growth was to increase discovery options for readers. Among their top recommendations? Finding, promoting and repackaging Evergreen content. Today, on the New York Times’ digital properties, archived content is prominently displayed along newer stories, giving context and reminding readers of the deep history of the Times’ reporting archive.
Relevant archive content featured in “34 Ice Cream Trucks Towed in Midtown ‘Operation Meltdown’” story.
How do I find these stories?
In Parse.ly, we recommend using our Evergreen Report. No huge spreadsheets, and no complicated URLs to follow, we send you an email that shows the stories that had an evergreen lifecycle over the previous month from the date you set.
You can read more about the Evergreen Overview Report or how we calculate an Evergreen post in our help docs.
Have any questions about these features or want to try it for yourself? Reach out to your account manager or contact us to get started with a Parse.ly trial!
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