The Evergreen Content PR Strategy

Evergreen con­tent is the gift that keeps on giving.

Instead of strug­gling to push out news­worthy inform­a­tion daily, focus­ing on pub­lish­ing long-last­ing con­tent has many benefits.

Evergreen con­tent might be the worst-kept secret in mar­ket­ing, but the pub­lic rela­tions industry, infatu­ated by the idea of ‘news,’ often over­looks the concept.

Here we go:

Evergreen Content

What’s ever­green con­tent?

Evergreen con­tent is an inbound approach to build­ing core mes­sages, con­tent themes, con­tent pack­ages, deep con­tent, and con­tent sky­scrapers.

For a piece of con­tent to be ever­green, it must sus­tain its value over time. This means the con­tent must be rel­ev­ant today, tomor­row, and the fore­see­able future.

While news con­tent might make a more sig­ni­fic­ant short-term splash, ever­green con­tent accu­mu­lates online impact over time—which requires patience.

Now, forever is a long time. I typ­ic­ally apply these arbit­rary rules to determ­ine what con­sti­tutes ever­green content:

Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy

Evergreen Content + Deep Content = Boom

I might be knock­ing down open doors here, but:

Search engines gen­er­ally have no prob­lem with “old con­tent” — as long as the con­tent per­forms well, Google will likely see the con­tent as good. And if your ever­green con­tent is excel­lent, it’ll have more time to attract links from oth­er platforms. 

However, the most obvi­ous bene­fit is that the ever­green approach will allow you to build deep con­tent over time:

Deep Content

Deep con­tent is focused on provid­ing increas­ingly high­er-qual­ity inform­a­tion to con­tent divers (as opposed to con­tent surfers).

In the example, five lay­ers of ever­green con­tent are stacked ver­tic­ally on a quarterly timeline:

Example of a five-lay­er deep con­tent structure:

This inbound logic is sim­il­ar to ice­berg pub­lish­ing and con­tent themes regard­ing struc­ture and depth.

Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy

The Inbound Shift

As pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als, we must rethink how we think about pub­lics. Traditionally, many PR depart­ments have argued:

“Why should we waste budgets on ‘already acquired’ audiences?”

The truth is — it’s the oth­er way around.

The inbound shift is a fun­da­ment­al mind­set change in the pub­lic rela­tions industry.

Instead of “spam­ming” non-exist­ing audi­ences, pub­lic rela­tions and mar­ket­ing can do much more with exist­ing online pub­lics. ¹Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

Inbound vs Outbound: The Difference

Inbound vs out­bound is the online equi­val­ent of draw­ing the line between those who know you and those who don’t.

Drawing a line between those who know you and those who don’t know you is noth­ing new:

If your inbound shift PR strategy is strong, you might no longer need to pri­or­it­ise your out­bound PR strategies since your inbound audi­ence will attract out­bound publics!

Learn more: The Inbound Shift PR Strategy

PR + Evergreen = Struggle

So, why is the PR industry strug­gling with a basic concept like ever­green content?

The answer is simple:

Traditional PR pro­fes­sion­als are hard­wired for news.

New = Great for PR
Old = Unusable for PR

Our fix­a­tion on news­wor­thi­ness is help­ful in tra­di­tion­al media rela­tions but a han­di­cap in digit­al PR.

There are oceans of know­ledge read­ily avail­able for pub­lish­ing with­in many organ­isa­tions, but no one is con­tem­plat­ing mak­ing all of this valu­able inform­a­tion avail­able on the inter­net. Why? 

When I bring it up, I’m told, “Who cares about this stuff? It’s old!”

I used to counter with, “It might seem old to you, but it’s not old to every­one.” But it has been a weak argu­ment befall­ing deaf ears.

The Online Wisdom Argument

So, how do you pro­mote ever­green con­tent to a seasoned PR pro­fes­sion­al who sees the world through the lens of newsworthiness?

I find that it works to talk about search engines:

First, I ask them if they use search engines. When they say yes, I ask them how often. When they say often, I ask them how often they search for news. When they say not often, I ask them what they search for — if it isn’t news.

Turns out also seasoned PR pro­fes­sion­als use search engines primar­ily to find ever­green content.

Then I ask them if they want people seek­ing ever­green know­ledge only to find com­pet­it­ors. They don’t.

Then I say, “What if mak­ing tried-and-true wis­dom avail­able online could be a power­ful strategy?” This sort of argu­ment hits home every time with seni­or pro­fes­sion­als. No sur­prise, right?

THANKS FOR READING.
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Public Relations Strategy 101

• The Bad PR Strategy
• The Magical PR Question
• The 1‑Page PR Strategy
• How to Create a PR Strategy That Actually Works

Public Relations Strategies

• The Inbound Shift PR Strategy
• The Stupid Majority PR Strategy
• The Extra Mile PR Strategy
• The Thought Leadership PR Strategy
• The Hidden Arena PR Strategy
• The Superhero Solution PR Strategy
• The Easy Street PR Strategy
• The Surround Message PR Strategy
• The Rebel Yell PR Strategy
• The Laser Focus PR Strategy
• The Blue Ocean PR Strategy (to be published)
• The Deep Content PR Strategy
• The Evergreen Content PR Strategy
• The Content Themes PR Strategy
• The Honeymoon Outreach PR Strategy
• The Level 5 PR Strategy

Grey-Hat PR Strategies

• The Triangulation PR Strategy (to be published)
• The Media Attack PR Strategy (to be published)
• The Muzzle Velocity PR Strategy

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