Today we’re looking at how to turn your seasonal content evergreen.
You can watch the livestream where we chatted all about this topic below. (It officially starts at 01:40 if you want to skip ahead.)
If you’re more of an audio learner, listen to it right here.
- Defining seasonal content
- Defining evergreen content
- Similarities between seasonal and evergreen content
- How can you add longevity to seasonal content?
- For the skim readers
Defining seasonal content
The first question to think about is what is seasonal content?
It could be content that is year specific or dated, or even related to a holiday like Valentine’s Day or Christmas. An example would be 7 Content Marketing Tips for 2004. No one is really going to look at that because, you know, it’s 2004 and the marketing landscape looked very different back then.
Defining evergreen content
Next we need to ask: What is evergreen content?
This is my favourite type of content, because it can be used to create a whole lot of things if you’re diving into content repurposing.
Evergreen content is relevant year after year and continues to show up in search engines. If it’s blog content, video content, or even audio content, it continues to serve your clients. It’s always relevant, and touches on different pain points that your dream clients are looking to satisfy.
Evergreen content also builds your authority. Authority building content is great because if people ask you questions, you can share the link with them as a helpful resource showcasing the value you can offer them.
An example of evergreen content would be something like “5 ways to repurpose your blog content” as that’s something people are searching for and will likely always be relevant.
Similarities between seasonal and evergreen content
Now we can look at how seasonal content and evergreen content are similar.
Firstly, each type of content offers value.
If you want to write seasonal content about Christmas or Valentine’s Day, it’s definitely relevant to your audience because they may be searching for Valentine’s décor or recipes.
Or maybe they’re looking for something more general, like content marketing tips, which falls under the evergreen content umbrella.
Although there is an overlap, each type of content reaches different people at different times of the year.
How can you add longevity to seasonal content?
So now we can look at how can we add longevity to seasonal content? Because we spend a lot of time creating content and it’s really great. So we don’t want it to just die off and not be relevant anymore. We want to keep it fresh and exciting to reach new audiences. The obvious answer is obviously to update it but we’re going to look at a few ways on how to do that and what feels right for your content.
Option one is to keep a content bank of date specific content.
Here’s an example of a very basic content bank:
| Title | Topic | URL |
| Title of blog post, video or audio | What category it falls into | Undated “generic” URL |
You can definitely make it more extravagant if you’d like to.
Top Tip: I recommend having a generic URL for seasonal content. Leave off the date and opt for a shorter, more concise URL. E.g. “Repurposing blog content” instead of “Repurposing blog content in 2023”.
Once you have your content bank up and running, you can update that piece of content and reshare it across your platforms.
It’s a good idea to check Google Trends, or Pinterest Trends, to see when the demand for your content is high. Searches for seasonal content peak at different times of the year depending on the season or the holiday your content is about.
Option two is to write seasonal content without reference to trends or dates.
An example of this would be “10 ways to use content marketing for Valentine’s Day promotion”. This title isn’t referring to any specific trends and it’s a bit more general, meaning that you can update it every year.
If there’s something new that you want to add to your seasonal content piece, you can update it to include more points and just keep your URL generic. That way your piece of content isn’t limited to a particular number.
Option three is to select evergreen extracts from your piece of seasonal content if it really can’t be updated.
If it’s super specific, like affiliate marketing for Pinterest in 2023, and it either can’t be updated or things have changed so much that you need to create a new piece of content around that topic, then you can repurpose valuable key points across your other channels.
There’ll definitely be extracts of value or advice that you can take out of that seasonal piece of content and put them into different social media posts. You could even use it as a base for your next piece so you’re not creating from scratch.
For the skim readers
- Keep a content bank of date-specific content to easily reference when you need to update it. It’s much easier than having to search through all your content at certain times of the year!
- Write seasonal content without referencing dates or trends. For example not Valentine’s Day 2023, but rather just referring to Valentine’s Day on its own.
- Repurpose quotes or pieces of value from your seasonal content. In your seasonal content that’s hard to update, there’s sure to be evergreen bits and pieces that you can extract and share across your social media.
If you’re looking for a place to start with creating content, whether it’s evergreen or seasonal, try this easy mix and match method to create limitless content ideas.
