The Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time

Evergreen Content vs News Content

Evergreen Content

What’s Evergreen Content? For a piece of content to be evergreen, it must sustain its value over time. Meaning: The content must be relevant today, tomorrow, and the foreseeable future.

While news content might have a more significant short-term impact, Evergreen Content accumulates over time.

There are different ways to leverage evergreen content. I recommend a few axioms for Evergreen Content:

Two years. To be considered evergreen content, I think the content must be relevant and valuable for at least two years. It’s an arbitrary time frame, but if an organisation can produce content lasting for two years, it will typically last for much longer.
Actual interest. To be considered evergreen content, there must be an existing volume of search engine users looking for the information. The content will never be ‘ever’ without ‘green’ search volumes.
Gentle gardening. Evergreen content will only stay evergreen if you tend to it occasionally. To check if everything’s working, add something helpful if needed, and perhaps clean out some unnecessary stuff. It’s a bit like gardening, I find.
Personal touch. It’s difficult to publish something unique. However, adding your brand’s tonality and flair to the content is always possible. The objective is to establish trust and authority, so a touch of personality matters.

Evergreen Content is also helpful in building Content Themes, Content Packages, Deep Content, and Content Skyscrapers.

Learn more: The Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time

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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

Above is an example of an online content structure that’s five levels deep.

In the example above, five layers of evergreen content are stacked:

Level 1: Articles
Level 2: Content Upgrade
Level 3: Resource/Lead Magnet
Level 4: Ebook
Level 5: Online Course

Deep Content is centred around providing increasingly higher quality to Content Divers (clicking vertically) since they’re more valuable than Content Surfers (clicking horizontally).

As for the importance of structure and depth, the logic is the same as for Iceberg Publishing and Content Themes.

Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy: Win By Going Deeper

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PR + Evergreen = Ouch

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. Please consider sharing my public relations blog with other communication and marketing professionals. If you have questions (or want to retain my PR services), please contact me at jerry@spinfactory.com.

PR Resource: Content Themes

Content Themes

Let’s use a fictitious example of an IT company. First, they decide on a Promise Filter for their content strategy:

Promise Filter: We make IT easy to understand.

Then, the IT company breaks their core message down into four business-critical Content Themes:

Q1 Content Theme: We make people understand the Internet of Things (IoT).

Q2 Content Theme: We make people understand business automation.

Q3 Content Theme: We make people understand cloud computing.

Q4 Content Theme: We make people understand managed services.

For each quarterly Content Theme, they produce Content Packages (to build Content Skyscrapers). Each Content Package could contain the following:

Infographics
Blog Articles
Whitepapers
Social Media Updates
Landing Pages
Lead Magnets
Swipe Files
Template Files
Content Upgrades
Online Courses
Podcast Episodes
Livestreams
Email Send-Outs
Events
Case Studies
Webinars
Video Tutorials
Interactive Quizzes
Press Releases
E‑Books
Testimonials
Influencer Collaborations
Mobile Apps
Slide Presentations

Learn more: The Content Themes PR Strategy

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PR Resource: Inbound vs Outbound

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Inbound vs Outbound

The inbound mindset is a fundamental shift in the PR- and marketing industry.

Historically, many PR- and marketing departments have argued:

“Why should we spend our PR- and marketing budgets on ‘already acquired’ audiences?”

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

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://doctorspin.net/publics-in-public-relations/

Jerry Silfwer speaking about inbound marketing — *Jerry Silfwer (Doctor Spin) speaks about inbound marketing.*

If your Inbound Shift PR Strategy is good, you might not need to prioritise outbound PR strategies — because your inbound audience will attract outbound publics.

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