Introduction – content that’s both relevant and evergreen

Back in the Summer of 2016, Pokémon Go was all the rage. Everywhere you went, you saw people walking around staring at their phones trying to find little AR creatures hiding behind mailboxes and lampposts, all in the hopes to “catch ‘em all”. Within no time at all, marketers couldn’t help but take notice.

Over the course of that summer, the number of blog articles written about ‘Pokémon Go marketing lessons’ was out of control. Since Pokémon Go was so incredibly relevant, it was an easy springboard to talk about marketing strategies for any company blog. The issue is Summer 2016 came and went and now Pokémon Go has just become another fad of the past.

(Google Trends interest report for Pokémon Go, July 2016 – July 2017) 

While these posts might have been popular during the summer of 2016, there’s a good chance they’ve lost their relevance factor over time.

What’s a marketer to do? You want to write relevant content for your audience but what’s the use if it’s going to be passé in a matter of a couple of days, weeks or months? You spend good time writing blog posts, and you want them to last in relevance until the end of digital marketing’s time.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s first understand relevant and evergreen content.

Relevant Content

Relevant content rocks. When done right, you tell your readers that you’re with the times, and you understand who they are, their interests, and what’s on their minds. To do that, you’ll need to do a couple of things.

1. Understand the buyer’s journey. More than writing about the season, upcoming holiday, or latest ‘must have’ gadget, truly relevant content speaks to where your reader is in his/her buyer’s journey. Do they have a {insert your vertical here} problem they’re looking for help with? Are they looking to assess potential solutions to a known challenge? Are they ready to buy, but just not sure if you’re the best fit for them? Make sure each piece of content speaks to one of these stages in the buyer’s journey. A reader should finish a blog post and say, ”wow, that article was really on the same page as me.”
2. Buyer persona/ vertical research. This is your chance to step into your reader’s shoes and walk around for a bit. Each buyer persona has their own unique lifestyle. Get to know their taste in movies, blogs, tech, and music. In other words, speak their language and culture. Same goes for their vertical. What else is going on in your vertical besides for the challenge that you solve? What other industry news are your prospects thinking about? If you’re shrugging your shoulders, you’ve got yourself a new research project.
3. Seize the day. Or holiday. Or season. You get the point; time is of the essence. When you make content sensitive to the here and now, it becomes within itself a call-to-action. People want to read things while they’re still hot (but more on that later). Take-away lesson: If you call, they will follow.

(Courtesy of Convince and Convert)

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is compared to an evergreen tree because it survives throughout the seasons without getting old or irrelevant. In addition to never ‘going out of style’, evergreen content is helpful because these are posts that you (and others) can link to in other posts, giving you better ranking on SERPs and positioning yourself as an authority to your readers.

B2C companies are less likely to write evergreen content because their prospects tend to have a flavor of the week when it comes to just about anything and everything. These companies work endlessly, creating timely and stylishly relevant content that will be read now and scrolled over tomorrow, with new material to take its place.

B2B companies know their personas and their challenges, and for the most part, those are consistent. So for them, evergreen content can be helpful to readers no matter when they read an article. What’s most important though is that it still sounds relevant and engaging.

So how can B2B companies write content that’s both relevant and evergreen?

Here are some hybrid relevant-evergreen content ideas:

1. Socially evergreen content. Tools like Qzzr or Fyrebox can help you create interactive quizzes that can give readers a good laugh, insight, or uncover pain in their business strategy. These can also be used for knowledge assessments to aid readers in understanding where there might be gaps in their knowledge. From there, you can position yourself as the company that can offer advice about how to fill those gaps.
2. Annual reporting and predicting. Time relevant blog titles like “What MarTech companies can learn from 2017” and “Upcoming digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2018” can be eye-catching. It’s important then to set yourself reminders for when the content won’t be relevant anymore, so you can reassess if you want to write follow-up articles. This is a great way to take readers on a journey through time and discuss trends in your field.
3. Follow up on case-studies. Case studies are an excellent way to get decision makers to seriously consider the work you do and how it might be an effective solution for them. That being said, everyone likes a movie with a good sequel, so feel free to create a follow up article after the case study comes out to discuss the long term results. Give a Q&A with a client’s CEO down the line, and let them sing your praises about how you changed the way they do business.
4. Separate the fads from the faves. So Pokémon Go’s popularity didn’t last forever, but you could have seen that coming. Before creating token trendy B2B content, consider what is popular now, and what will stay popular in the future.
5. The right content, on the right channels. More trendy content is great for your social channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. Since these are ‘now’ mediums of information, they can be a great place to share industry news, wish followers happy holidays, and showcase new features. On your blog, try to keep your content evergreen. This is a place to add value, so make sure it does that no matter the season.

Conclusion

Whether you’re looking to build content that’s trendy, evergreen, or something in between, there’s one golden rule: all content should add value. Regardless if you’re offering them a case study or wishing them well before a national holiday, your goal is to let your followers and readers know that you’re thinking about them.

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