Content Lifespan: Is it Now? Is it Evergreen?

For a puzzle lover, Google Analytics is more promising than a Sudoku/Jigsaw/Crossword convention at the center of a maze. This month in Analyze That! we pick out a few edge pieces from the jumble to help you sort the data into useful pictures.

It Lives

The lifespan of your content depends on whether it’s relatively timely or timeless, and your audience elects which is which through their pageviews and the time they spend with your content. This article uses blog post examples, but other online content will benefit from the same analysis.

To best engage your audience in timely content online, you need great follow through – just try hitting a ball with no follow through – whereas evergreen content calls out for follow up (taking the next step in a progression).

But how do you know which is which? By paying attention to the lifespan of your content. Pageview data is good for determining whether content is evergreen or short-lived.

The envelope please

Remember, no matter what you think is your evergreen content, it’s your audience that decides. And they decide when time’s up on timely content. Compare the pageview charts of two posts from two blogs. Post A has five months of data, while Post B has just over one month.

Though it has only a modest number of views, Post A is actually growing stronger, attracting over 15% of the site’s visits in the final weeks.

Using Graph by week makes this clearer. A quick look at the peaks and valleys and a simple comparison to the overall site gives you the general election results: the audiece has elected Post A as evergreen content (see detail at left), but not Post B.

Post B is timely content, and its big time is day one. Follow through must be your standard practice. Does a batter wait to see if the ball’s been hit before following through on a swing? You’ll lose momentum if you don’t respond to comments on your post, and you’ll miss points if your post doesn’t (off the bat) nudge readers toward further engagement with your offering (whether that’s a product, service, community, or more content). You always follow through. But how long do you follow through? Till things aren’t kickin’.

When To Call It

Post B starts with a spike of over 3 thousand views, and that spike squeezes the rest of the picture into a scale too small to make distinctions in. If you remove the spike, starting the next day, it’s much easier to compare Post B to Post C, another timely content piece, also with its initial spike removed. Now both are at the same scale and for the same period: days 2 through 12 in each lifespan.

Timely content doesn’t always expire so quickly, but even the very short-lived Post C is clearly twice the lifespan of Post B. I would keep my eye on Post C’s data for the next month. The audience may be saying there’s the germ of an idea in here that’s evergreen, and we might want to follow up on that.

Now you know what to look for, and you’ll quickly sense when to linger and when to move on with your own blog posts. And you’ll spot the evergreen from the forest.

Questions to You

What do you consider the best follow through for timely content?
What do you consider the best follow up on evergreen content?
What do you think is the right mix of evergreen and timely content to best engage your target audience?

User Notes

• On your Google Analytics Overview page, click View Report
• From the left column, click Content > Top Content or Content by Title
• Click a Title link to see its Detail information
• Enter your Date Range or select it by Calendar or by Timeline
• And try the different views: Graph by Day/Week/Month
• In the Pageviews tab click Compare to Site
• Try starting the Date Range after the peak day, so the scale is easier to read

http://www.vimeo.com/4598822
See other User Guides at TippingpointLabs.tv.

About the author

Anita Roy Dobbs -

Since Anita first tagged up with the Tippingpoint Team in 2007, she has flexed an array of skills from previous positions in publishing, television production, indie filmmaking, and offline as well as online community trailblazing. This extensive experience enables her to oversee a spectrum of content creation and distribution so the puzzle pieces come together in a coherent picture and the work flows.

From her studies in fine art and theater at Yale, she has an illuminated love of line and story. In her years at Boston Film/Video Foundation and then studies in the UC Santa Cruz Film/Video Department, she has an expansive passion for teaching and learning (especially about and through media).

"Since my earliest memories, I've dreamt one week of being an inventor, the next week, an animator, then a research scientist, a portrait artist, a director -- I'll stop there, but none of those dreams has stopped; I still want to be every one of those things. At Tippingpoint Labs, I get to exercise all those faculties while helping our team and our contributors develop their own dream roles."