How To Build An Historical Mindset for Digital Audiences
The title of this post also could be how to get ready for the next big thing in digital but the truth is: you cannot as we all already know. However, you can build a mindset that prioritizes adapting to change.
To learn how to adapt to change, I think deconstructing the idea of evergreen is a great way to start. Evergreen is, simply, a misunderstood buzzword. So, the ultimate goal of this post destroy the concept of evergreen and face the fact that marketing -along with almost all other efforts- requires optimization and consistency. What I’m suggesting is simple, we just need to admit digital contents are fragile and require effort, and there is no shortcut.
There’s been a lot of talk about the power of creating evergreen content, posts that provide value to search engines and provide your readers with great information. Content marketing, along with search engine results, is changing and adapting to the ever-changing digital landscape but everybody keeps saying they are creating evergreen.
We’d generously say that content marketing is one of the most important forms of marketing in existence today because it gives you the privilege of creating messages in your very own channels. Moreover, it is effective as paid media if you do it right and “not evergreen”.
To increase brand awareness, website traffic, and eventually sales; you need to create relevant content via consistent posts on an ongoing basis in different channels. However, most of the time what you post today is valuable for today and it’s ok.
Changes in digital are something that gains acceleration every single day. So, it’s not very easy to say any content will stay valuable over time. If you are selling a product or service, it’s very unlikely that your posts will remain relevant months after they were published unless you are writing a glossary.
So, there is one big issue with the idea of evergreen content, it doesn’t exist. You should stop trying to create “the post” that will work for you for years and understand you should take care of your content constantly.
Hi, I’m Kübra. The issue I want to write about in this post is, that evergreen content is a lie since the digital ecosystem changes rapidly. Changes are not just about expanding technological possibilities or making existing technologies more usable but changing the way people interact with machines. I’m not suggesting sticking with techno determinism and accepting concepts like information superhighway or technopoly.
What I suggest is, to learn the history of the web and understand how media is changing regularly and how we consume media content. Viewing today as a part of a bigger picture of the web will lead you to create better content without pushing the evergreen concepts.
The word evergreen is pretty much everywhere in content marketing these days. It seems like every blog post about content marketing published this year will tell you to create evergreen content. Yet, it makes nonsense to push yourself to produce evergreen content about every single thing, every single trend, every single update. It is lowering the quality of content and the culture of knowledge.
I’m not talking about how hard it is to create evergreen content, which is not when the subject is “evergreenable”. I’m talking about the fact that there is no such thing as really evergreen. In a world that is evergreen still means time-consistent content, maybe there are encyclopedic contents that can be considered as one since they can be readable and still makes sense 30 years later. Yet, in a world that is evergreen means popular all the time, there is not.
There is important, valuable content from 10, 20 years ago. Maybe they will stay as valuable for another 10 years. However, none of them is a pr material. It makes no sense to do both at the same time. The information that is contained by them, the format they should be, the tactics you used, and even the ideal length of paragraphs, will change. Optimal distribution channels changed more than once in the last 2 years. Google and other big tech companies keep changing their content guide. New players are popping out of nowhere.
What I believe, is it’s important to build an understanding of digital with a historical framework to be ready for the next thing. Understanding the digital environment as a part of human history and changing with it is what you need to write for the future.
So, What is Evergreen?
Check this definition: Evergreen content, like trees that never lose their leaves, is material that stays relevant regardless of the season or time frame. It is material that never loses a residual level of traffic in terms of value. With the appropriate method, evergreen content will constantly create interest over time, and people will continue to seek it out for months, years, and even decades.
However in real life, evergreen content, whilst it can bring in organic search traffic and social shares for a long time, will sooner or later be deemed irrelevant by the online community. Evergreen content isn’t the only solution for everything. A much better way to draw attention to your blog or website is by creating evergreen thought leadership and an online community that furthers your brand’s reach, influence, and authority in the industry.
This way you are developing a relationship with your readers which requires consistency and dedication instead of constantly producing content that Google might rank highly for some time only to then find it has been replaced by something new and exciting.
Features of an Evergreen Content
Let’s create an evergreen content checklist:
🟢 High quality
🟢 Comprehensive
🟢 Helpful
🟢 Educational
🟢 Accurate
🟢 Timeless
🟢 Aligned
🟢 Optimized
🟢 Compelling
Aren’t these what any good content should have with different combinations of them? Evergreen means, seems like according to all of you, applying all of them in every single thing and keeping it relevant with everything?
It’s visibly not applicable for a subject like “our new features” or “our limited time offers”.
Let's take a look at the history of the web while keeping in mind the digital audience and their habits, shall we?
A Historical Approach To Digital Audience
Tech history in terms of end-users can begin from literally any point of human history, it is easy to merge it with math history for example but I will try to stay on the surface, I promise.
It is a very mainstream history, by the way, most of the credits can (and should) give different efforts, yet it is not the idea of this post.
One of the most significant moments in web history was when Tim Berners-Lee decided to invent the World Wide Web while working at CERN. While giving a lecture in 1990 on how CERN could use hypertext, Berners-Lee went on to explain his idea for a web of notes or hypertext project. At this point, the web is for scientists.
The first clickable banner was used in 1993. HotWired, an online magazine, purchased a couple of them to promote the publication and encourage subscriptions. Thus began the age of digital marketing shift. With the introduction of new technology and the debut of Yahoo!
The evolution of digital marketing was well underway. In its first year, Yahoo got roughly a million hits, causing company owners and marketers to reconsider their marketing approach. They started optimizing their website to meet search engine standards. Meanwhile, researchers start to talk about how the audience is not passive anymore. But it was relative.
Lou Montulli introduced cookies in 1994; they are little data files produced by the web server when you browse a site and stored them on your computer. They are used to get access to websites; they may also track your activities, such as the websites you visit and the actions you take.
This allows businesses to learn about your interests and give you tailored incentives. Accessing and using data about the audience became easier. And, there was no rule. They were legally able to gather any data they could gather.
1996 had seen the introduction of new search engines and tools such as Alexa, LookSmart, and HotBot. The idea of digital search engines pre-dates the invention of the World Wide Web. However, it was not until 1989 that Archie, a searchable index of FTP sites, was introduced by Alan Emtage and Bill Heelan.
Then, Matt Scott developed Gopher in 1991. It was the year that marked the beginning of a new era in search technology. However, due to some lagging in innovation, they didn’t see much action until 1997, when an article at Slate.com coined the term “search engine”.
In 1999, a turning point in digital marketing history occurred when web 2.0 was introduced, allowing users to contribute and share material rather than merely consume it. According to researchers of the time, users were no longer passive recipients, but rather active players.
This set the groundwork for broad sharing, social media platforms, and other similar systems. Not for the first time, or even the second, the Internet changed how we operated.
In 2002, LinkedIn, a professional social network, was launched utilizing the Internet’s power to connect people. Sociality changes everything. By originally focussing on college students and graduates in professional roles, they helped connect people with others who shared a common bond, a mutual acquaintance that could be used as a means of introduction.
MySpace was the first social networking site to go live in 2003, followed by Orkut and, subsequently, Facebook. First “virtual famous” started to occur. Businesses began to take notice and saw the possibilities that these platforms provided. They could reach thousands of consumers in minutes, if not seconds, at very little cost. Companies began aggressively marketing their products and services on these platforms, heralding the start of a new age in business.
In 2004, the revenue from online advertising in the United States alone was approximately $3 billion. The digital marketing business not only established itself but also made its presence known, signaling to the rest of the globe that it was here to stay.
You probably know from now on. In 2005 Youtube was born. 2006 was a great year with lots of changes that impacted the Internet and search engines. The biggest change was the launch of Facebook in February 2006.
Other major changes included Microsoft shutting down MSN and replacing it with Live Search; with the introduction of AJAX, Google and Yahoo clashed; Chrome and Firefox were introduced, causing sluggish growth in other browsers; Apple debuted the iPhone, and YouTube’s popularity was was was skyrocketed.
2007 was another great year for the internet but was not without its ups and downs. Netflix expanded this year, as did Apple and Flickr. Spotify was launched. Twitter emerged to join our growing list of social networking accounts.
It was 2009 when an online product changed the way we use search engines. On September 25, Google Instant was launched, enabling users to get real-time search engine results.
In 2010, WhatsApp Inc. was founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton. In February 2014, Facebook acquired Whatsapp for US$19 billion. In 2011, Internet usage continued its steady growth around the globe and in the U.S. with an 11% increase (making it a total of 3.2 billion users worldwide).
Twitter gained popularity and launched their IPO, Google + and Google Panda were launched, and the young generation continued to make use of web use more than TV viewership. It’s possible to say 2010 changed the daily communication and media consumption we know.
I believe you know the rest.
When you see singular content as a part of a bigger digital ecosystem, it’s very clear to turning ideas into “evergreen” templates is nothing but harmful.
Not every content should be “a complete guide” or list “98 different ways of something”. You should also create things search engines may not like today. You should also create to represent your idea, your product, and your perspective even if you are creating for commercial purposes.
Especially when it comes to marketing materials. There are high-volume queries and long-tail keywords people look for since always but it’s not mean that your content will last forever.
To sum up, I believe evergreen is a buzzword and a lie everybody seems to want to believe in.
This is shadowing the fact that you should reflect your uniqueness to create more than another post. You should also implement this idea for success, since you should control your posts’ performance, collect meaningful data about them, interact with readers or viewers, then optimize to increase conversions; this is not how evergreen is perceived by most people.
So why is it important to look back at what happened? Because it reminds us of how quickly systems can change or even disappear.
Maybe it will be more meaningful if we creators see content as a part of the flow and create for the moment, to be optimized for other moments.
