Having a strong content strategy in place is essential to keep your website feeling fresh and updated, and to share your industry and wider business expertise with your audience. But what does a strong content strategy look like? And how does seasonal and evergreen content fit into it?
Having a strong content strategy in place is essential to keep your website feeling fresh and updated, and to share your industry and wider business expertise with your audience. But what does a strong content strategy look like? And how does seasonal and evergreen content fit into it?
The biggest takeaway is that you need both seasonal and evergreen assets in your content pipeline. While it might be tempting to prepare a stock of “always-on” evergreen content to upload when needed, carving the time and resources for more time-sensitive assets is just as important.
Seasonal and evergreen content have different goals, and both play an equally critical role in creating an effective content marketing strategy. Planned and executed correctly, the right mix of both will help you stay relevant to your clients all year long, while also capitalising on trending topics.
So, how do these types of content differ, and how should they be used to achieve the perfect content mix?
Evergreen content
Evergreen content is content that remains relevant and true well beyond its publication date, because it is not tied to any specific event, breaking news or seasonal updates. The main benefit of this type of content is that search volumes around evergreen topics in your industry remain fairly consistent over time. As such, evergreen pieces, if well optimised for web search, can bring in a steady stream of traffic to your website.
Another advantage of evergreen content is that it can be planned well in advance, allowing content writers to prepare assets around clusters of topics that are going to feed your content strategy.
How should you use evergreen content?
Timeless content should form the basis of your content strategy. However, like for every other type of content, you should prioritise quality over quantity. Avoid writing volumes of content just for the sake of it. Instead, do a comprehensive SEO analysis to understand what your audience is asking about, and try to write content that answers those questions.
This can take the form of top tips, “how to” guides, interviews, tutorials, case studies, reviews or FAQs.
Done correctly, this will allow you to write genuinely helpful content that will create a steady stream of traffic to your website and will contribute to building trust in your brand.
Seasonal content
Seasonal content is topical and covers issues that are relevant at a specific moment in time. This can be linked to a specific industry event, breaking news, new regulations, or just yearly occurrences such as holidays and awareness days. Its main benefit is also its Achilles heel, as it drives traffic quickly but loses attention and relevance just as fast.
For this reason, it’s important to plan a regular audit of your seasonal content to update it or replace it as needed.
How should you use seasonal content?
The goal of seasonal content is to keep your brand on point, timely, and in tune with your audience’s interests. It shows your audience that you keep up to date with what’s going on in the industry, and that you can react and contribute to topical conversations in a timely manner.
Moreover, the issues discussed in topical content are likely to feel urgent to your audience at that specific time, making your assets way more shareable. For example, you can create content around the highlights of a local or international event in your industry, inviting your audience to comment and share.
For B2B marketing, it can be a good idea to create a calendar of which events are relevant to your audience, and plan content ideas to keep it populated throughout the year.
Achieving the right balance
Finding the perfect mix of evergreen and seasonal content can provide your website with enough variety to keep your audience engaged. However, this doesn’t mean that there should be an equal split between the two types of content. A better rule of thumb is to keep about 75% of your content evergreen, and focus on seasonal topics for the remaining 25%.
The ideal mix will be different for every organisation, so it’s also important to test different approaches and see what works best. Ideally, your content strategy should always be data-driven, and with tools such as HubSpot and SEMrush, you can easily keep track of which type of content tends to drive the highest level of engagement.
However, continuously monitoring and adjusting your content strategy can be time-consuming, so why not get some help from The Marketing Pod? From planning to execution and monitoring, our content and digital marketing experts can make sure you’ve got the right strategy to keep your brand front and centre of your audience’s mind.
N.B. The information contained in this entry is provided by the above supplier, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher
