Evergreen Marketing: 7 Types of Content Authors Can Create Once and Use Over and Over Again

Today is a Hit Splits episode for Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

This month has been all about automating social media and being able to use it to the best of your ability. And so in today's episode of Hit Splits, I wanted to talk a little bit more about evergreen marketing. It can be powerful when you integrate it into your marketing strategy. So what is evergreen marketing? Well, basically it's doing the work one time and then having that piece of work continue to market for you ongoing. Now this is the type of marketing I love. I love being able to do something once and then see results from it over and over again. That's the power of a book, really. When you create a book and you write a book, then you can continue to get royalties from that book for years and you can also repurpose that book into an ebook, print book, audiobook, other translations, PDF on your website and more. So there's so many ways that once you do that work one time, you can benefit from it. And the same thing is true with evergreen marketing. So in today's episode, I want to Share with you 7 ways authors can use evergreen marketing to get more done. The first is by having an evergreen email opt in gift. So when somebody signs up for your email subscriber list, you do have an email subscriber list, right? That's the very first thing I recommend that every author business owner have. You, you need to be having a list, not just a list in Yahoo that you're putting people in as BCC because that's technically spam and illegal. But you want to have an email subscriber list, you can use GetResponse. AWeber Mailchimp. I'm currently using getresponse, but there's so many ways to do it. And if you create an evergreen email opt in gift, then that can be working for you 24, 7 for a long time. So evergreen basically means that it isn't date specific and it won't change often. So I had my first product for authors was a course on Facebook marketing. Now I learned the hard way that although I love social media, Facebook changes often and I had to continue to keep updating that product all the time. And so now I try to focus more on evergreen products. And that's what you'll find in authoraudienceacademy.com it is a system. It is a way to publish your books Market your books and then create products and resources on the back end. And most of it is evergreen. My opt in gift for the ascent method that is evergreen that that will not change very often. And I also have a gift where you can download my book marketing plan kit and templates and that won't really need updated often either. So there's so many things that you can offer as a gift to your email subscribers, but make sure that it's evergreen if possible, because then it can work for you for a long time. Along with the email opt in gift, you want to have an autoresponder series in your system that is evergreen as well. So I like to recommend doing at least seven follow up emails that go out automatically or like I like to say, auto magically. You schedule them and every new person that signs up for your list will get these emails and you can schedule them at whatever schedule works best for you. I tend to do once a week because I also send out broadcast. I send out a broadcast about my podcast and I tend to send a promotional email once a week as well. And so I don't want to bombard my list and so I tend to only schedule my autoresponders once per week. Now the first couple with my video series, they tend to be a little less than that. But you know, that's something to consider as well. To have an evergreen opt in gift and then to write out seven evergreen autoresponder emails that will automatically go out. Now this you can keep adding to these emails and that that means if you're sick, if something happens, you can't work. Anyone new that signs up for your list will automatically be getting these emails. They should eventually tell them about your products, your services and so your business won't shut down if you can't work. This is really, really super important. So make sure at the very minimum you have an email subscriber list with an evergreen opt in gift, a reason for them to give you their name and email and then a few autoresponders. I Recommend Starting with 7 and working up from there. But if you're, if you feel overwhelmed with seven, start with one, start with three, start with whatever you can get started with. The second thing is having Evergreen tweets and posts. Now I already talked about Evergreen tweets in a previous podcast episode, so I recommend you go back and listen to that if you want more information on on it, it's podcast 13 and you can get to it by just typing in authoraudience.com 13. That's the number 13. And you'll be able to get that entire training in that podcast. The third form of evergreen content that you can create are blog posts. Google loves content tutorials, things that people are commenting on, they're staying on your page. And so if you have some evergreen blog posts that provide some really good content, there's a potential for you to get into the search engines from Google and to then get get people introduced to you and to your site, to your blog through that content. If you have great content, it can also be shared on social media by other people. And that can also be a way that you can be marketing ongoing. So I recommend you have at least one really, really good blog post that's long, it's in depth, it shows your expertise and it is share worthy and Google worthy. That way you can have those blog posts be marketing for you 24 7. I have a post on my blog, 100 Plus Ways to Promote Christian Books. And that post tends to get shared and it has a lot of really great resources for Christian authors. And so that's just one example. It's a resource list. Another form of evergreen marketing content that you can create are videos. I love videos. I'm a speaker and so it's so much easier for me to speak something than to actually write it. I tend to have a lot of my content either recorded through video or audio and then transcribed because it's easier for me. But videos are a great way to have evergreen content as well. I love having a YouTube channel because that way I can do videos related to different keywords and search terms and those can easily get found in Google as well. One of my most popular videos right now at the time of recording this podcast is my Evernote tutorial and people are finding it. And so, you know, videos are a great way when it's evergreen and they're things that are ongoing, you know, those can be working for you 247 ongoing. Once you've created the content one time, it will continue to work for you. The next form of content five, number five is podcasts. And this is where you're finding me is through itunes or Stitcher or on my blog and you're listening to this podcast. Most of my trainings I try to make evergreen so that if you come and find this content ten years later you it will still relate. Now there are links, there are resources that may change and that's okay. But for the most part the strategies and the things that I'm teaching are going to be ongoing. Like this podcast, for example. It's going to be an evergreen training that will be on my podcast ongoing. Another thing to consider are webinars. I have several webinars and what you can do is once you have a webinar you know is well received, has great content and people are responding to, you can have that webinar available 247 through automation. So there are different tools that you can use. And I've been looking into so much of that. It's been actually kind of overwhelming. But I'm going to be sharing more about that probably here soon. But those are things that you can use over and over again. So once you create the PowerPoint, once you have the flow of your presentation, not only can you have those webinars and the recordings to share ongoing, but you can also use those for live events and for hosted webinars. A JV webinar where somebody's hosting you and promoting you as an affiliate. There's so many ways to reuse and repurpose that material once you you have it. If you're thinking in advance of creating a webinar that's evergreen, that the content is not going to change very often or it's not date specific. And then finally, the seventh thing to consider with evergreen marketing is guest posts and interviews. So if you've been featured on a blog as a guest blogger, that content can continue to bring you leads ongoing, especially if it's a popular blog. So before you write that blog post, think about is this content going to be evergreen? Will this continue to be relevant? Sometimes you want to just share something that is hot and it is the, you know, most recent thing that's going on, that's fine too. But I do want you to think about trying to create a mind mindset of creating content once that can continue to market for you ongoing. This includes podcast interviews, interviews where you're on the radio or the media of some sort as well. So those are things to think about as well. So just a quick recap 7 Ways Authors can use evergreen marketing to get more done is to in advance think about creating content that isn't date specific or won't change very often. Your email opt in gift and autoresponders Number two evergreen tweets and posts and you can actually schedule those to be recurring, which I share four different scheduling tools that you can use in podcast 14. So I recommend you go back and check that out. And I actually did two video tutorials using a couple tools that are embedded in my blog. So I encourage you to go back and check that out. If you haven't yet, go to authoraudience.com 14. That's the number 14 and you'll find all of that information and the tutorials that I created for you on video so you can have those tweets and posts. You can have blog posts that are evergreen and I recommend having at least one epic blog post that you're really proud of and that people are going to want to share. On social media, another form of content is videos. Number five is podcast, number six are webinars, and seven are your guest post interviews or guest appearances on the media. So I hope that this has given you a lot of ideas for how you can use Evergreen marketing in your business as an author, as a business owner, so many ways that you can use it. Tonight in my Author Audience Academy Take Action Workshop, we're actually going to be going over, even in more depth, how to automate social media. I tend to make these workshops an entire training of themselves. And the cool thing is when you join Author Audience Academy, you get instant access to every Take Action Workshop I've done in the past. You can binge watch them if you want. I don't recommend it because I take you through the steps of what to do next and we actually get work done on the workshop. And so you can access this at any time if you join today or if you join later on. But I definitely recommend that you check that out if you're interested in this topic of evergreen Marketing and you can join@authoraudienceacademy.com to find out more. Thanks again for joining me for this hit Splits episode. I've been enjoying being able to do this. Having these hit splits episodes means I don't have to get them transcribed, I don't have to have them formatted for my blog, I don't have to do all the different things that I do for my main episodes. But I can still continue to deliver content on demand as I get inspired as I have the ideas without as much work for my team. So thanks for being willing to roll with me and adapt with me as I find what works best for me and my business. I love freedom, I love adaptability, and I love creating this content for you. So I'm glad that this is a way I can do it. Tweet me Elliehits, if you've gotten some inspiration from this episode, and as always, I'd love to know that you're listening, simply leave a comment here on itunes and let me know that you've been listening to the podcast and I'LL see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.