One of the hardest things about being a working freelance writer is coming up with content. Which is why you need an evergreen content strategy.
Trust me on this, it will change your life.
Writers who want to build an online platform know they should be producing content. Maybe a blog or something similar.
And in theory it makes sense.
A blog is an excellent way to showcase your skills as a writer and advertise your services. In reality things are a bit trickier.
- What do you write about?
- How do you balance writing for yourself/your site with writing for clients?
This is where an evergreen content strategy comes in
Evergreen content can be described as the foundation of your blog—and this surprises many people for a couple reasons.
First, because it’s hard to comprehend how timeless articles can stay relevant over time.
Second because hardly anyone has heard of it.
How can evergreen content be a foundation when I’ve never heard of it before!?
I know! But I’ll explain everything and you’ll never wonder what to write about on your website again.
Do you find brainstorming ideas a total nightmare? I have a process for that! Check out the worksheet and free training in my my resource library.
This is a free training but you’ll need the password—just pop your email address into the form below and I’ll send you it to you. Once you’re there, navigate to the writing section and download the “How to Brainstorm Ideas for Writing Worksheet.”
*Back to the training*
First I’ll talk about what evergreen content is, then I’ll explain how to come up with ideas in a way you can balance with your freelance writing workload.
What is evergreen content?
“Evergreen” is jargon but the word makes sense—think of evergreen trees, they keep their needles year-round and the needles maintain their green colouring thus, ever-green.
Evergreen content works the same way, it stays relevant year-round and answers questions people are asking years after it was written.
Why you should employ an evergreen content marketing strategy is because this timeless, relevant information will deliver a consistent stream of leads to your website month over month.
It takes a bit of time and effort to set up but once you have the wheels in motion this approach will allow you to spend your mental energy on your freelance clients while your website works in the background.
How to come up with ideas
The best way to come up with ideas is to know your audience. In a freelance writer’s case, your audience is your ideal client.
Think about who you serve and what problems they’re trying to solve. Your website or blog content should solve those problems and answer common questions. The more questions you answer the stronger your foundation.
Here’s what you need to do when coming up with evergreen content ideas:
- Get clear on who you’re talking to (your ideal reader) and what you offer (what’s your goal? What are you trying to achieve?)
- Decide what your topics are
- Put everything into a calendar template.
To systemize these ideas (and actually get them written) you’ll need to take your ideas and build a content calendar with them.
Of course we could go a lot deeper when talking about creating evergreen content—there’s SEO, keyword research and virality to consider.
But for today we’ll stick with the concept of evergreen content and building a strong online foundation as the base of your freelance writing business. When done well it’s a beautiful thing.
Bonus: here’s a helpful post on what type of posts work best for evergreen content from Thirteen Thoughts.
One more thing. You may be interested in my free resource library. This is where I keep my files, downloads, ebooks, worksheets and whatever else I manage to create. I love sharing what I learn and want to keep adding to this library so it becomes a wealth of helpful goodness.
This is a free resource but I do require a password to access the library itself. You can get access by popping your email address into the form below.