The Two Types of Content All Businesses Need

There are two major "Currencies" when it comes to content and it pays to be able to transact in both.

As they both serve different purposes and can benefit your business in different ways.

🌲 EVERGREEN Content 🌲

Timeless, high value content that can be repeated and repurposed with ease.

Benefits:

- Is timeless (i.e. not season/time/event specific)

- Delivers high value to the reader/viewer/listener

- Ideally containing nuggets of wisdom or insider insights that will help someone solve a problem in their business and life

- Should be sharply aligned with the key focus areas of your business

- Can be packaged with a neat and timeless Call-to-Action

- Can be repeated and repurposed with ease

🚨  Cautions:

- If you rely on evergreen content alone you will miss out on vital opportunities to connect at a deeper level with your audience.

- Even if you schedule content in advance, ALWAYS pay attention to what's going out.

- If a crisis hits, the first thing you should to is pause and review your evergreen content. It's where a lot of brands tripped up in 2020. (They weren't sensitive to their audience and where they were at and it damaged their brand)

- Review your evergreen content every six months to assess whether it's still serving both your business and your audience to your highest level.

Evergreen Examples (from my LinkedIn):
A carousel post showing the 5 things you need to do for your content to get results,
A short  video about how to make make people feel good with your marketing.
An article about the power of thought leadership

🌊  TOPICAL Content 🌊 

Seasonal, trending topical or has some time or event specific element.

Generally gets more response & engagement than evergreen content, and is ideal for connecting your audience as it's often more "interesting".

Benefits:

- Great for maintaining relevancy & connection

- Generally gets more response & engagement than evergreen content

- Ideal for building relationship and trust with your audience as it's often more "interesting"

- Can be used as a low-risk way to test out different messaging

- Perfect for adding your brand's (or your) voice into a hot/contentious issues and letting people know where you stand

- You can take a piece of evergreen content and put a fresh slant/tone on it to make it topical.

🚨  Cautions

- It can be higher maintenance so if you rely solely on this, your energy and investment into your content will be a lot higher.

- Because it's seasonal/fresh/topical and often can't be recycled, it's important to look carefully at each piece of content being produced and understands how it supports your commercial objectives. You don't want to just publish and say stuff for the sake of it. 

Topical Examples (from My LinkedIn)
An post about Spotify releasing Greenroom, a competitor to Clubhouse.
Some images of my daughter and I with new a very posh tea set.


IN SMMARY

The two work hand in hand and both should be part of a robust content strategy.

How do you know what balance of evergreen and topical content is right for you?

As a rule of thumb, I would typically suggest 80% of the effort goes to evergreen with around 20% of the effort reserved for topical content on an ongoing basis.

This way you have both bases covered.

And then with a clear plan and process and just a couple of days you or your team can have 80% of your content "in the bank" for the next 6 months, while keeping your publishing schedule fresh and audience intrigued with regular injections of topical content.

(and if you need help just reach out to me, there are a bunch of ways I can make that process easier and more effective for you).

Finally, just remember that for most businesses evergreen and topical content should work hand in hand and both should be part of a robust content strategy, regardless of whatever is your preferred medium (video, written, audio) and whatever platform you’re on.

Confused about content? Watch my FREE MASTERCLASS "The 3 Secrets to Content that Builds Your Authority and Gets You Paid"  that will help you make sense of “all the things” you feel like you should be doing when it comes to content marketing.

Simply watching it will help you give overwhelm the boot, as it shows you exactly what to do in the right order and why. Which is why so many are getting huge value and breakthroughs just from watching the class. Watch it the class on-demand now!  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nina Christian is a Marketing & Brand Strategist who helps business leaders and social-change-makers use thought leadership content to build their authority and widen their impact.

She is the Director of Braveda, (est 2000), which was recognised as  "Best Marketing Agency" at the Australian Marketing Excellence Awards.

She is a Certified Practicing Marketer (CPM), a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute & AMI State Chair (Vic) and runs two businesses of her own.

She has a knack for simplifying the complex which comes from being a hands-on mum to five young children, and uses this to turn time-sucking activities into easy to follow systems and processes that get outcomes fast.