AP 0251: Which Is Better, Evergreen Content or Lots of Blog Posts?

AskPat 251 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 251 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have another great question today from Andy, which is awesome.

But before we get to that, I also want to thank today's awesome sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com, the super easy-to-use cloud accounting solution to help you with all your small business needs. Millions of small business owners are using FreshBooks to help keep track of their accounting, and you know, its 2015 now; there's a lot of stuff going on in our businesses, and we definitely want to make sure we're on top of our taxes and things like that. Tax season's right around the corner, and FreshBooks makes it so easy to organize and keep track and just get a snapshot of your business at any moment in time. Even on a mobile phone, which was award-winning, actually. So, if you'd like to FreshBooks and try it out for free for seven days, go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat.” Awesome.

Let's get to tonight's question from Andy.

Andy: Hey, Pat. My name is Andy Keen, and I'm calling from Japan. I've been listening to your podcast and reading your blog for the past eight months and want to say thanks for all the valuable information you've given me. I'm hoping to have my website, Testoftoefl.com up and running at the beginning of next year. It will be similar to Green Exam Academy website, since it will help students pass a test. But my site will be for foreign students who want to enter American and Canadian universities and need to pass this English test. I've noticed that on Green Exam Academy, you have posted articles that are evergreen as opposed to keeping a regular blog going. My students will also be looking at my website for only a few months while they are trying to pass an exam; therefore, do you feel it's better to produce a few killer articles to post on my website rather than have blog posts come in regularly? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks again for all your content and advice.

Pat Flynn: Andy, what's up? Hello over there in Japan. Hope you're doing well, and I hope your site is up and running and is off to a great start. I'm going to hopefully help you kickstart it even more with this question and my answer to follow it. I love this question, because anytime I ever hear anyone talk about starting a site to help people pass a certain exam, obviously I can relate to that. I have a very good space in my heart for that, because that's what I did, and I know that through experience of both somebody who has helped people pass exams and also somebody who's gone through school and has taken exams myself, people who take tests and want to pass will go to great lengths to make sure they pass them, especially if it's for something professional. That means that they're going to study everything that they can get their hands on. They're going to perhaps purchase a lot of guides and practice exams and things like that. So I really do feel like this is a great space to get in, and maybe this is going to inspire some of you out there listening right there, if you're looking for a niche to get into, maybe think about what tests you've passed in the past, and what exams that you've taken that you could perhaps provide information for, for people who are also looking to pass that test. I don't know. Just throwing it out there.

But Andy, let me see if I can help you out here. So the question is about, is it better to post evergreen content? And for those of you who are listening who don't know what that means, it's essentially content that will stand the test of time. It's something that you can post today and it will be good two weeks from now. It will be good six months from now. It'll be good a year from now; something that is forever always or mostly forever, or at least for a long period of time, be relevant. On evergreen content, I don't know if there's a name for that; regular content, I guess you could say, is stuff that you could post and then next week it might not necessarily be relevant, or it would eventually be based on the topic, just not be relevant anymore, something that is not necessarily evergreen. An example of this would be: “The top tools I'm going to use in 2015.” Now that would be evergreen until December 31st, and the clock ticks midnight, and then it's 2016 and that content wouldn't be useful anymore. But evergreen content, and I have some evergreen content that's been on my blogs for years now, that I haven't touched, but continue to still get SEO, search engine optimization value, and also a lot of visits and traffic and customers as well. So there's definitely value in providing evergreen content. Some people also call this pillar content, the content that sort of hold up your brand, if you will. And whatever it is you're trying to teach is just the stuff that is the foundation and the stuff that they need to know in order to achieve whatever goals you want your audience and target members to achieve, or target market to achieve.

And so yes, you should absolutely be posting evergreen content. Everybody, no matter what niche they're in, should be looking for opportunities to post information that is going to last a long time. Those are going to be the ones things that help you get a ton of traffic. Those are usually really high-quality posts, typically in depth, that allow you to get a lot of shares. And also more than anything prove your authority in the fact that when people go to your site they know that they are in the right spot. They're going to go to your site and see these amazing articles that are going to be relevant to them, no matter if they come next week or six weeks or eight weeks down the road, and be like, “Wow, this person knows what they're talking about. I'm going to dig in and get more information.” And perhaps they'll come across some of the products that you have to offer and they'll become customers as well.

So, yes, evergreen content is good. However, with that being said, I could use more regular content, regular blog content, more up-to-date content on GreenExamAcademy.com. And I don't mean up-to-date like the exam content; that is stuff that obviously has to be up-to-date, so as much as I can I update that information. But lets take SmartPassiveIncome.com, for example. There's a lot of posts in that blog that are evergreen. My podcasting tutorial at PodcastingTutorial.com, my newsletter tutorial at StartAnEmailList.com … “Ebooks the Smart Way” has been a book I created, an ebook that you can download at EbookstheSmartWay.com that has been there for five years and has provided value and still continues to provide value for people based on that information.

But if I only had that, then I wouldn't have a lot of the other content that makes people realize that I'm still here, and that I'm an active blogger, and that I'm here to help and I'm with the latest trends and stuff like that. So, it's important to also include those things as well, stuff that is relevant to now, and I'm sure there's potentially information in the niche that you're in, Andy, that could be relevant to what's happening now. Perhaps you can cross-pollinate with stuff that's happening in pop culture or things to get people interested and having them understand that not only are you relevant and also up-to-date on certain things, but just that you're active and you're there, and you're there to help, and you're not just somebody who put stuff up and then left, and abandoned the site. Yes, the information could still be useful, but it's pretty cool when you know there's a person on the other end, and they're there, and that they're kind of up-to-date on things. So I would have a mixture of both, but I would definitely, in terms of the content for the exam, especially if it's something that you were talking about, definitely spend the time to create that epic content, those beastly resources, like I like to say, and then after those are done … And that's the nice thing about this exam space, with whatever exam, as long as the content's updated, once its there, there's a finite information. There's a finite number of information, and things you can share to help people pass an exam, and that's why with Green Exam Academy it was perfect, because I had put all the stuff up there that I needed to put up to help people pass that exam, and what else could I put up? Yes, I could have put news articles and things like that to help people understand that I was up-to-date on things, and I failed to do that, and that's a mistake that I feel like I made. I feel like, however, it allowed me and gave me the opportunity to explore other verticals, like SmartPassiveIncome.com and FoodTruckr and SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, because again there was that finite amount of information that was needed and then I can move on. But for most people, I would recommend that once you get that base information, that foundational pillar information, then you can do other things to build a better relationship with your audience, and to communicate with them even better, or provide even more products beyond the initial product that you might create or course. And that's what I would recommend.

So, Andy, I hope that helps, and gives you some insight on where I'm coming from, and what I feel would be the best approach to what you're doing. I wish you all the best of luck, and I'd love to hear from you in the future to let me know how everything's going. So, in the meantime, an AskPat t-shirt is going to fly over the ocean and head on over your way. I'd love to see a picture of it at some point in time. And for those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask your question right there on that page.

I'd also like to thank today's sponsor. the first sponsor ever of AskPat, and they are still going strong here in 2015, and I love them for that. And that is FreshBooks.com. Don't make the mistake like I did and try to keep track of everything on a spreadsheet or on a Google Drive or on an Excel file; it's just going to be a major headache, especially come tax season. That was another big mistake that I made. I made a ton of mistakes. One of the mistakes I made was just not getting the software that I needed to organize my finances, and also if you're doing any sort of invoicing, maybe you have clients, or you're a coach or you're a consultant and you have to invoice people from time to time, FreshBooks makes it super easy and very professional-looking. Check 'em out. You can try them out for seven days for free by going to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Thank you so much for listening in today, and as always, I like to end with a quote, and today's quote is from Laura Fredrickson. And she says, “Life treats you the way you treat you.” So true. Take care of yourself, and I will see you in the next episode of AskPat.