Today we’re announcing three new features in Parse.ly that help our clients access and identify insights about their audiences clearly and quickly, which allows them to make better decisions, faster. We now offer Evergreen Reports for identifying evergreen content, Multi-Author tracking for posts with more than one author, and an Audience Overview report (in beta) for understanding what encourages engaged, loyal readers.
To understand what each of these features means for our customers, we’ll be focusing on each in a blog post over the next few weeks. Read more on our Evergreen Report here.
Evergreen Reports
What is evergreen content and why should you care about it?
Typically online articles have a three-day lifespan. “Evergreen content” refers to any post that extends beyond this cycle. This means it’s attracting readers, often on its own through search or referral links. Finding this content and incorporating it into social media or re-packaging opportunities allows your team to provide additional relevant content to your readers, while editorial works on new pieces. Read about how media organizations are incorporating the practice on Digiday.
What can my organization do with evergreen content?
Content marketing often tries 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 sometimes posts become evergreen on their own because a topic becomes popular again, or because the subject matter is timeless.
This opportunity is so large, in the 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.
Do I have any evergreen stories already?
You do! We checked.
According to our network, over half of our top 100 sites have more than 5% of their page views attributed to evergreen content.
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For those customers in the 0-5% range, this also represents an opportunity to increase circulation of existing content. Integrating evergreen posts into your distribution strategies can attract and grow readership without having to increase editorial costs.
How do I find these stories?
Thanks to our new Evergreen Report, if you’re using Parse.ly, you simply click a button. 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.
Client Example: Mashable
Mashable, the leading media company for the “Connected Generation,” reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. It covers innovations in business, technology, entertainment, environment, breaking news from around the world. The site uses advanced technology to bring the best possible content to its audience, including its proprietary Velocity platform, which predicts what content will go viral.
In addition to being able to predict what’s going viral, Mashable utilizes the Evergreen Report to show what content might still be attracting readers. Using this content to bring in readers can allow them to then show newer, trending content that can encourage engagement and new readers.
What are two of Mashable’s most popular posts? “What to Remove First When Your Phone Storage Is Full,” which saw a huge influx of views from Pinterest and “Maid of Honor Loses Herself in Eminem-Inspired Wedding Toast,” a video that went viral on Facebook back in April, but still sees a good amount of traffic coming in from the social network. Both posts originally went up in 2013.
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The report also shows more recent stories; posts that were published in the previous 30 days that attracted evergreen attention. The top evergreen post for Mashable in June: “The Questions Managers Want You to Ask During a Job Interview.”
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For publishers seeing this information for the first time, we encourage them to ask themselves: what’s happening on these pages and how can we take advantage of the attention this is receiving organically? Are there opportunities to add more calls to action on these pieces? Can they help answer any editorial questions that your team is facing?
We’re hoping to find out more about how publishers put this to good use as our clients start to use the report.
Multi-Author Functionality and Audience Overview
In the next few weeks, we’ll also be talking about the additional new features we’ve rolled out, including multi-author support and our audience overview report. The Audience Overview Report is the first of a set of features that will allow our clients to understand how their content is having an impact on reader loyalty.
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!