Choosing the best types of content to build into your marketing initiatives

Here, Rae Steinbach, Freelance Editor for Taktical Digital (https://taktical.co/) headquartered in New York City, explores successful content strategies that drive increased audience engagement and excitement. Steinbach is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese Degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. She is passionate about travel, food, and of course, writing.
Content and marketing strategies benefit from both one-off and evergreen content. When used thoughtfully, the two can combine to powerfully support all of your short-term and long-term marketing aims. One-off topical content can give instant exposure and create a sense of urgency or timeliness around your product, compelling your audience to act quickly or lose out on the opportunities you’re presenting. This type of content is frequently used in newsletters, enticing customers to read more. One practice you should always keep in mind for one-off content (and for all messages, really) is to use an email checker to make sure your messages get delivered, as the information tends to be time-sensitive.
Conversely, evergreen content provides equal value to both old and new customers. This is the sort of content that answers commonly asked questions, provides further information on topics of interest, and builds customer knowledge of your brand, products, or business aims. It stays relevant in the present, as well as for months or even years into the future. Given that both have their place in a strong marketing strategy, how do you decide when to use each one? Here are some tips to help you decide.
Build excitement for your product launch. Trending or one-off content gets more attention than evergreen content – in the short term, at least. Most people are interested in the latest news and trends, and one-off content takes advantage of this by linking to specific events or opinions from high-profile people. This type of content will immediately benefit from a high rate of shares, which often drop off dramatically after only a short period of time. Anyone who discovers it outside the relevant time frame will immediately move on. Also, the content will be considered out of date regardless of the useful tips or information that remain relevant to your audience long after your ‘hook’ grows old.
Everlasting, Evergreen. It can be difficult, although not impossible, to create excitement with evergreen content. This is mainly because the very purpose of it is to be informative and provide useful information for readers for long stretches of time — months or sometimes even years! Evergreen content by its very nature will collect backlinks over the course of its life, pushing up it’s SERP ranking and helping your overall SEO efforts. Evergreen content stands alone, untied to trending issues or specific events. It’s difficult to manufacture a sense of urgency, or the need for immediate action, with evergreen content. It is, however, extremely helpful for moving customers through your marketing and sales funnels. It also helps to position your business as a leader in its vertical market.
Deciding which to use. Promotional plans and long-term marketing goals should inform your choice to use one-off or evergreen content. Of course, all good content strategies will include both types. Keep in mind other issues that can impact which type of content you decide to run and when. Below are three areas you will need to consider when making your decision.
Making a splash. Creating a sense of immediacy and relevance is what one-off content is for. It attracts customers by linking to current events and encourages them to move quickly or risk missing out. For product launches, this is the perfect type of content to use for building momentum and injecting urgency into an otherwise majority evergreen content strategy.
Time and workload. One-off content requires a significant amount of work before it’s released. But, once you’ve gone to launch, you get to enjoy the fruits of your labour as the campaign plays out. Your one-off content is more likely to be shared among social networks and bring potential customers to you. A more sustained approach is required for evergreen content. According to Agency Backlinks, if effort is continuous and spread over time, allowing you to create a number of useful pieces that will build your SEO and your reputation while collecting backlinks.
Business peaks and valleys. Most businesses have times in which their product sells more or faster than a competitor’s, creating financial highs and lows for the company. One-off content can be used to generate buzz around your products. This attention then converts to higher sales while the content is new. The high decay rate of one-off content means that these sales will likely drop off as quickly as they picked up. Similar to the lower but more stable effort creating evergreen content takes, the sales it garners for a business are lower than one-off content when compared monthly. However, it’s important to keep in mind that total conversions will span a longer period of time. A robust e-mail plan and sales funnel that incorporate evergreen content can combat these slow rates and generate more sales. When combined, both content types work well together and can mitigate the natural sales ‘valleys’ that a business experiences, and build excitement and interest around new products or features. To ensure you get the most from both types of content, it’s important to consider the time you have available for content creation, your overall marketing goals, and the audience you’re reaching out to.