If you are someone like me, who is in charge of preparing a content calendar every month, you are in the right place. Many people also ask me how to come up with innovative blog post ideas for the editorial calendar. Here are 20 ways to come up with interesting blog post ideas.
“Companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month get nearly 3.5x more organic traffic than those that publish 0-4 monthly. Also, longer, in-depth blog posts generate 9x more success in lead generation than short ones.“
According to the blogging statistics compiled by GetCodeless.com
Website owners and bloggers can get more website visitors and generate more leads by publishing in-depth and insightful blogs regularly. However, they cannot achieve the predefined marketing goals without persuading visitors to read the blog post.
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The SEO content created and published by digital marketers can be broadly divided into two categories – time-sensitive and evergreen. Time-sensitive or seasonal content has a short lifespan and diverts traffic to a website for a short period. On the other hand, evergreen content remains fresh and relevant over a longer time.
Evergreen Content Definition
According to SimpliLearn.com, “Evergreen content is content that remains relevant over time – for months, perhaps years. Much like an evergreen tree never loses its leaves; evergreen content never loses its significance and never goes out-of-date.“
While creating evergreen content, the content creators do not focus on a current trend or hot topic. Instead, they remove the expiry date by creating content that readers will be interested in for many years. While planning SEO campaigns, copywriters these days create a variety of evergreen content. Also, they look for ideas to increase website traffic in the long run by creating evergreen content.
Evergreen Content Examples
Now that we have understood the evergreen content definition, let us look at some of the evergreen content examples.
- How-To Tutorials
- Step-by-Step Guides
- Top Tips
- List of Useful Tools
- Encyclopedia-esque Entries
- Cornerstone Content
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Product Reviews
- Case Studies
- Videos
- Infographics
Why Create Evergreen Content for SEO Campaigns?
Increase Website’s EAT Score
Google uses Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-A-T) as key ranking factors for ranking websites. E-A-T guidelines emphasize on publication of high-quality content. Evergreen content creates opportunities for entrepreneurs to showcase their expertise in the industry.
For instance, an entrepreneur can showcase her expertise by writing insightful articles and blogs on topics related to her business. The industry experts will make the evergreen content appear on the first page by increasing the E-A-T score.
Generate and Convert More Leads
No business can generate and convert more leads without increasing its website traffic regularly. The evergreen content focuses on questions frequently asked by the target audience. Hence, more readers will read the content to get their questions answered. Hence, it becomes easier for businesses to drive lead generation and conversion by increasing organic website traffic.
Keep Brand Relevant
The open and competitive nature of digital space makes it challenging for digital marketers to keep a brand popular and relevant in the longer rum. They need to implement SEO strategies that increase website traffic and decrease bounce rates consistently. Evergreen content helps them reduce bounce rates by keeping visitors engaged and making them spend more time on the website.
Control Digital Marketing Costs
A business cannot increase organic website traffic without posting time-sensitive content frequently. It needs to deploy additional copywriters to increase the number and frequency of trending and newsworthy content posted on its website. Evergreen content helps businesses to save time and resources.
Evergreen Content Strategy: How to Create Evergreen Content that Increases Website Traffic for Years?
Evaluate the Long-Term Relevance of Topics
Selection of the right topic is the most important prerequisite for evergreen content creation. No copywriter or digital marketer can extend the content’s lifespan without choosing a topic that stays relevant and useful for the target audience in the long run. A copywriter can choose the right topic in several ways.
- Assessing the performance of articles or blogs posted on their own website
- Checking articles/blogs posted on competitor websites that get long-term traffic
- Considering keywords with high and consistent search volume
- Focusing on questions frequently asked or problems regularly faced by the target audience
Don’t Refer to Current Dates or Events
A piece of content becomes time-sensitive when copywriters mention specific events or include specific dates. They often reduce the content’s lifespan by referring to current events or dates. For instance, no copywriter can increase the lifespan of an article or blog by including the term COVID-19 in the topics. Likewise, they cannot create evergreen content by choosing titles like Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2022 that searchers will find outdated in 2023.
Write for Beginners
Many copywriters target experts while creating evergreen content. They should remember that experts do not need assistance or solutions like beginners. Hence, they can keep the content relevant for years only by writing for beginners. Also, they should not use any complicated or technical language that makes beginners abandon the website and look for simpler alternatives.
Embed Relevant Keywords
While writing evergreen content, copywriters must focus on improving their search performance. They must optimize the content for websites by choosing and embedding the right keywords. However, they should focus on identifying both primary and related keywords. Also, they should include related keywords in the first paragraph and subheadings.
Link the Content to Existing Posts
Digital marketers can optimize the content for search engines by creating internal links. The internal links will make it easier for readers to access relevant and additional information by clicking on the internal links.
Digital marketers can easily create internal links by connecting the new article/blog to specific posts. Here are some good internal linking best practices for you. For instance, they can link an article on white hat SEO techniques to posts on widely used on-page SEO techniques.
Keep the Content Up-to-Date
In addition to publishing evergreen content, digital marketers must focus on keeping the content relevant in the long run. They can keep the article/blog fresh and increase its search visibility by updating the content in a variety of ways – adding more information, removing obsolete information, adding the latest statistics, and changing images. The update will refresh the content as well as change its publication date.
Consider Repurposing the Content
Digital marketers should make the evergreen content reach out to a larger audience by repurposing the article or blog in a variety of ways. For instance, they can share the content by creating an infographic or a video on the same topic. Similarly, they can make people read the content by reposting it on multiple social networking platforms.
Conclusion
Unlike time-sensitive or seasonal content, evergreen content increases organic traffic to a website in the long run. However, digital marketers must make the evergreen content more effective by applying on-page SEO techniques. In addition to picking the right topic, they should focus on embedding the right keywords, facilitating social media sharing, and creating internal links.
This blog was republished in March 2024.
Every business can boost lead generation and lead conversion by launching a variety of digital marketing campaigns – search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, content marketing, and email marketing. But no business can run any of these digital marketing campaigns without creating and distributing high-quality content.
According to the updated content marketing statistics posted on HubSpot,
“Blogs are among the primary three forms of media used in content strategies today. Also, 89% of content marketers used blog posts in their content creation strategy in 2020.”
Copywriters and digital marketers cannot drive digital marketing campaigns without writing and publishing blogs regularly.
While writing blogs for digital marketing campaigns, you must focus on choosing the right topic and integrating the right keywords. At the same time, you need to ensure that the content is fresh, original, and engaging. That is why; you must adopt useful tips for better content writing to write articles and blogs to deliver the desired marketing message quickly and effectively to the target audience.
9 Useful Tips for Better Content Writing to Boost Digital Marketing Campaign Outcome
1) Understand and Remember the Purpose
While creating content for digital marketing campaigns, content writers write a variety of blogs – business blogs, corporate blogs, affiliate blogs, and service blogs. But every type of blog is written for a specific purpose and to deliver a particular marketing message. Before writing an article or blog, you must identify and understand the message to be delivered to the readers. The understanding of marketing messages will help you to structure and write content by gathering relevant information from various sources.
2) Spend Some Time on Research
No blogger or content writer can create engaging and trendy content without conducting elaborate pre-writing research. You must spend some time gathering the latest and relevant information about a particular topic before writing the content. While conducting research, you must focus on gathering up-to-date information from reliable online sources. Also, you must focus on making the content more relevant and engaging by gathering the latest statistics, metrics, and industry data.
3) Improve Both Readability and Scannability
The readability and scannability of your content will impact the performance of digital marketing campaigns. While writing content, you must keep the content readable and engaging by adopting simple best practices like using simple words, avoiding jargon, keeping the sentences short, and use a conversational tone. At the same time, it is also important to keep the content scannable by adopting best practices like writing short paragraphs, keeping sentences concise, using heading and subheadings, and presenting information as lists.
4) Focus on Creating Evergreen Content
While creating content for digital marketing campaigns, writers create both trendy and evergreen content. Businesses do not remove blogs from their websites regularly. That is why; you must focus on creating evergreen content while writing an article or blog. You can keep the content relevant in the long run only by choosing the appropriate topic. Also, you must use information that showcases both authority and expertise and focus on presenting the information by targeting the beginners. You can easily create content that lasts longer by trying to answer the questions asked by customers or clients.
5) Keep Headline and Intro Compelling
You cannot persuade a reader to read an article or blog completely without keeping the headline concise and compelling. The headline must be compelling and impactful enough to make the reader finish the piece of content by providing relevant information in seconds. It is also advisable to include instructional phrases in the headline to get more shares and likes on social networks. At the same time, you must complement the strong headline with an introduction that compels readers to scroll down. The intro must convince readers that they will get ideas and information that are both useful and relevant.
6) Embed Multimedia Content
You cannot boost the performance of digital marketing campaigns only by writing fresh and compelling textual content. As highlighted by several studies, blogs/articles with images and videos are more effective in attracting and engaging readers than various categories of textual content. Hence, you can make your content more impactful only by embedding the relevant images, visuals, graphics, or videos. You can embed multimedia content in an article or blog to illustrate or explain a point more clearly. At the same time, you can engage and impress the readers by including memes.
7) Optimize the Content for Search Engines
Major search engines recommend businesses update their websites frequently and publish fresh content regularly. The articles and blogs written by you will divert organic search traffic to a website when the content is optimized for search engines. While optimizing content for search engines, you must keep in mind the latest search engine guidelines. At the same time, it is also important to adopt a slew of SEO best practices – create scannable content, embed keywords naturally, place keywords strategically, link the blog internally, and refer to external links.
8) Proofread and Edit the Content
Often spelling and grammatical errors affect the impact of original and insightful content directly. Editing and proofreading are important tips for better content writing that enable you to convey the marketing message to readers effectively and accurately. You can easily identify the spelling and grammatical errors by getting the content reviewed by another content writer or digital marketers. Also, you can improve the quality and readability of the textual content, without putting in extra time and effort, using widely-used online writing assistants like Grammarly.
9) Don’t Forget to Check Content Originality
Major search engines do not penalize websites technically for duplicate content. But they reward websites that publish unique content. After editing and proofreading the content, you need to check its originality and uniqueness. You can easily check content originality and uniqueness using one of the widely used plagiarism checkers like CopyScape, QueText, or Grammarly. These plagiarism checkers will help you to identify and remove duplicate sentences and phrases from a blog or article in a few minutes.
While planning digital marketing campaigns, you must focus on the quality and quantity of content. In addition to publishing content regularly, you must focus on improving the quality of articles and blogs by adopting useful tips for better content writing. Also, you must look for content writing tips regularly to create content that drives digital marketing campaigns by remaining relevant and trendy.
While writing fresh articles and blogs, you have the option to combine a variety of content – static content, dynamic content, and interactive content. The static content does not change from time to time, while the dynamic content is updated constantly according to the latest information and emerging trends. At the same time, interactive content evolves regularly based on user input. Several studies suggest that interactive content is more effective than static content in educating the audience, generating more leads, creating brand awareness, and driving sales conversion.
According to the DemandGenReport.com,
“Bringing static content to life with interactive elements positions B2B marketers to better engage with their audiences. In fact, research shows that 93% of marketers agreed that interactive content is effective in educating buyers versus just 70% for static content. 81% of marketers agree that interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content. Also, 70% of marketers say that interactive content is effective at converting site visitors.”
You can no longer keep influencing the purchase decisions of prospects and leads only by posting static and text-heavy content regularly. Your content creation and marketing strategy must focus on converting static content into interactive content. You can use interactive content as a powerful tool to accomplish key marketing goals like capturing valuable customer data, increasing reader engagement, and promoting brand loyalty. You can make your blogs interactive by incorporating these 12 types of interactive content.
12 Types of Interactive Content You Must Incorporate in Your Blogs and Articles
1. Interactive Infographics
Interactive infographics are a form of new-age interactive content.
According to the visual content marketing statistics posted on Venngage.com,
“Infographics are more effective than videos and presentations at achieving marketing goals.”
In addition to facilitating data visualization, infographics are one of the most readable and sharable types of interactive content. However, you have to put extra time and effort to create infographics that deliver your desired branding message. In addition to picking the right topic, you must focus on presenting complex information in intelligible and compelling ways.
2. Interactive Video
The popularity of interactive videos as a digital marketing tool has been increasing consistently. Unlike textual content, video clips keep the target audience engaged by creating an immersive experience. Most brands these days experience with ideas to create videos that retain the attention of viewers on the content. You can always embed videos in your blogs to make the static content interactive. Also, interactive videos will help you to deliver the desired brand messaging to the target audience without disrupting their ongoing activities.
3. Polls and Surveys
Social networking platforms make it easier for you to conduct polls and surveys without investing extra resources. You can conduct a poll to collect customer data, understand customer preferences, or get customer feedback by answering a single multi-choice question. Likewise, you can conduct surveys to collect additional information by making the customer answer a slew of multi-choice questions. Many website visitors love to participate in polls and surveys. But you must plan the polls or surveys strategically to make them appear fun and unobtrusive.
4. Interactive Calculators
Online calculators are one of the types of interactive content that produces results based on the information submitted by a person reading your blog. You can use interactive calculators as a useful marketing tool to collect additional information about the leads. The calculators will help the readers to evaluate the available options when they are at the consideration or decision stage of the buyer’s journey. Also, they enable readers to get instant results simply by submitting relevant information. You can use interactive calculators to help readers calculate ROI or savings.
5. Assessments
According to Content Marketing Institute, assessments are one of the most effective types of content used in various stages of a buyer’s journey. Each buyer wants to understand and evaluate her precise needs using a variety of parameters. While creating blogs, you can use assessment as a powerful tool to collect valuable information by making the reader answer a slew of questions. In addition to keeping the target audience engaged, the interactive content will help you to gather the information required to send personalized content.
6. Interactive eBooks and Whitepapers
Despite being static content, eBooks and whitepapers are used widely by B2B marketers to generate more leads. You can make eBooks and whitepapers more effective as lead generation tools by making them interactive. While creating eBooks or whitepapers, you must focus on visualizing information and incorporating animated charts. The interactive content will keep the readers engaged and make them share information by making the longer content easier to read and scan.
7. Interactive Emails
You can easily convert a lead into a customer by sending personalized and targeted content through emails throughout the buyer’s journey. You can make personalized and targeted content more effective by sending interactive email content.
According to MartechAdvisor.com,
“Adding videos to your email content can boost click rates up to 300%, while interactive email content increases the rate of click-to-open by 73%.”
You can easily make the emails interactive by conveying information or highlighting key points using animation.
8. Product Recommendations
Major online retailers like Amazon these days drive sales conversions by recommending the right product to the right lead or prospect. They use advanced algorithms to recommend relevant products to a prospective customer based on her purchase history and recent online activities. You can easily influence the purchase decisions of customers using a sophisticated product recommendation engine. The new-age product recommendation engines recommend the best products to customers using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
9. Data Visualizations
Images are more effective than text at making human minds consume information and process data. You can use data visualization as one of the most effective types of interactive content. While presenting information, you must explore ways to convert large datasets into easy-to-digest graphs, charts, and visuals. The data visualization will keep the target audience engaged by making them consume large and diverse data in a few seconds.
10. Diagnostic Tools
Most people these days look for free online tools to assess, check, and evaluate various things. You can easily make your blogs interactive by offering easy-to-use diagnostic tools. In addition to keeping the visitors engaged, the online diagnostic tool will make users return and trust your brands. You can offer a variety of diagnostic tools according to the nature of your services. For instance, you can use online tools to assess the search engine performance of a website to boost digital marketing and interactive content marketing efforts.
11. Online Contests
Many bloggers these days organize online contests regularly to create brand awareness and promote user-generated content (UGC) generation. You can easily make the readers share your blog posts and post comments by organizing content. Social networking platforms make it easier for you to organize contests and opinion polls without investing extra time and effort. But you must plan the contests strategically to generate more leads and get new email subscribers.
12. Mixed Reality
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two emerging technological trends that have the potential to change the way websites are designed and developed. Many websites already leverage AR to blur the line between physical and digital. Also, 5G will soon enable users to access many unique AR and VR applications in the near future. While exploring ways to keep your blogs interactive, you must consider implementing some of the
On the whole, interactive content is more effective than static content in capturing the attention of readers and influencing their purchase decisions. But the interactive content does not make well-researches and text-based content obsolete. While writing fresh blogs, you must focus on integrating a variety of interactive content seamlessly into your blogs and articles. The interactive content will make your blogs more effective in generating leads and driving sales conversions.
