The Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time

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 is also the worst-kept secret in the world of online content.

Still, the PR industry struggles with the concept.

Here’s why (and how to get it right):

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 impact short-term, ever­green con­tent instead 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. Without search volumes, the con­tent will likely be ‘ever’ without the ‘green’.
• 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.

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 since they’re more valu­able than sur­face browsers.

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

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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?

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. 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

Inbound vs Outbound

The inbound mind­set is a fun­da­ment­al shift in pub­lic relations.

Instead of focus­ing on try­ing to spawn non-exist­ing audi­ences, PR can do so much more with exist­ing online pub­lics. ¹See also The Publics in Public Relations (Doctor Spin).

If your inbound PR strategy is good enough, you might not even need an out­bound PR strategy.

Read also: The Inbound First PR Strategy: Beauty From Within

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PR Resource: More PR Strategies