Ever notice that you keep posting the same content again and again on social media? Perhaps that’s because these are important topics to your business.
Do you struggle to create enough content to post on social media? You could benefit from planning ahead with content that can be recycled in the future.
Evergreen content can be used repeatedly on your marketing channels and still be relevant to your audience. Although you don’t want to saturate your marketing with these posts, you can create enough to stay interesting and buy yourself margin.
If your business is looking to get started using evergreen content on social media, here are a few steps to begin in the right direction.
Identify evergreen topics
Start by designating the overall buckets for your evergreen social media content. There’s essentially no limit to how many categories you can create, but it’s usually best to pick 5-6 at first and then grow additional themes over time.
If you aren’t sure which topics are relevant, think about what actions you’d like for your social media followers to do consistently. For example:
- Learn more about our services
- Donate to our nonprofit
- Download our free resource
- Visit our website
- Read our latest blog post
- Subscribe to our email newsletter
- Subscribe to our podcast
- Follow us on another social media channel
You’ll notice that the majority of these topics are promotional or direct asks. That’s because these posts typically don’t change much over time.
Write evergreen social copy
Once you’ve identified a few topics for your evergreen content, it’s time to write the post copy. Create these like you would any other social media post. Make each post compelling and relevant to your audience.
Since you’ll be using this copy for the foreseeable future, take the time to write 2-3 different post options for each topic. Vary the length and style slightly so that you can re-use each topic without sounding repetitive or redundant or repetitive.
It’s also good to give yourself options for each different social media platform you’re on. The content that works on Twitter isn’t the same that works for Instagram. Giving yourself multiple options for each means you can expand your evergreen posts on all of your social channels.
Finally, be sure to include links for each post when relevant. Use UTM tracking codes and link shorteners to keep tabs on how much web traffic these posts generate. This reveals which posts perform best and which should be used less often.
Collect evergreen visuals
Social media posts with visual elements (photos, graphics, or videos) typically perform better than text-only posts. So you’re best off by creating some lasting visuals for your evergreen content.
This should be an easier task now that you’ve written the copy for each post. Pull some images or design a graphic for each post. Just ensure that all the visuals you use will be usable months and potentially years from now. You can always update these along the way as needed, but the goal is to invest the time now to save time later.
Just like you created different versions of the post copy for different social platforms, it’s important to create different versions of your images for each social platform you’ll be using.
Save everything in one place
Once you’ve created everything needed for these evergreen social posts, it’s time to save them in a usable format where you and your team can easily access them. Your goal is to make all of the work you’ve done easy to find and use when scheduling posts later.
At GreenMellen, we collect all of the assets for evergreen posts in a content calendar built in Google Sheets. You could create something similar in a shared Word doc. Content management platforms like Sprout Social also allow you to save visuals and text in their asset library for easy posting later.
Wherever you save it, be sure to include some of the following important details:
- Evergreen topic
- Post copy
- Visual (or link to where it’s saved)
- Platform to be shared on (eg. Facebook)
- Note on how frequently it should be shared
- Date when it was last used
Schedule the posts
You’ve invested the time and work to make managing your social media easier. Now it’s time to reap the benefits of your labor. Any time you schedule your social media content, take a few moments to pull from this list of evergreen posts.
Sprinkle them in amongst the more timely posts. There should be a balance between the posts specifically made for that time and evergreen posts that will be used again. This balance will depend on how much evergreen content you have and how frequently you post.
Because some of the work has been done in advance, you’re creating margin for yourself. It’s challenging to constantly be developing new content every day. Spending the time now to create a bank of evergreen posts for the future will make this challenge easier.
It also makes you more strategic because you’ll be focusing more content on topics that matter to your business.
Are you ready to use evergreen content?
If you’re excited about the idea of creating evergreen content for social media, but don’t have the time to do it yourself, we can help you.
GreenMellen offers social media management services—everything from running audits, optimizing channels, creating social marketing strategies, scheduling weekly posts, and engaging with your audience online. Reach out to us today to get started leveraging social media for your business.
