If you had to choose one piece of your content to show a potential client, what would you pick? You might be tempted to show a case study or an extensive project, but neither will present what you do as well as evergreen content will. Evergreen fits all kinds of content needs, from lead magnets to course material. Ready to learn how to make an effective evergreen presentation? Let’s dive in!
Evergreen content is content that retains its relevance over time. The information included will always be of value, regardless of the year, place, or prior use. Investing in the creation of evergreen content is a great decision, because it creates foundational content for your business. This saves you time and money, can be used to draw in new leads, and can be used to maintain your organic website traffic.
Evergreen content is also content that offers valuable information in a way that meets your audience’s needs. Allowing people access to this valuable information and the ability to apply it, will grow their interest in your business and content. This type of quality content drives organic traffic to your website and builds your reputation as an expert in your field, because it answers your audience’s questions efficiently.
Now that we’ve established the what and why of evergreen presentations, you might already have ideas brewing and be ready to get started. Why not, right? Before you dive in, there are a few caveats I would like to share to ensure you content is well created and drives the results you’re looking for. While I’ve seen lots of good evergreen content, I have noticed three common mistakes that weaken the value of evergreen content:
While numbers are generally used to illustrate detailed information, add gravitas, or relay how old information might be, in evergreen content, numbers aren’t always wise to include. While you might want to include impressive financial metrics or audiences reached, be sure to weigh how these numbers might be perceived a few years from now. For instance, stating what current earnings are might not be impressive in the future–but sharing how quickly a company went from launch to its first financial milestone can be impressive regardless of when the information is presented. A prime example of this would be sharing that Apple was profitable just 2 years after it was founded, vs saying that it had $2 million in profit. At the time, that may have been an impressive number, but compared to Apple’s 2022 profits of $170+ Billion, $2 million does not stand the test of time as an impressive figure.
Specific dates are even more likely to foil your evergreen content. Dates impact the reader’s perception of applicability. Old dates (more than 5+ years) may inadvertently signal to your audience that your presentation is no longer relevant. Avoid using dates unless it’s important to mention them for context or to increase audience understanding. For example, you might want to note the year you founded your company, but using cited information published 5+ years ago may be less impressive and make it seem as though you aren’t aware of the latest information in your industry.
As a designer with many years of experience in brand development, and now specializing in creating brand-consistent PowerPoint presentations, I am biased, but not without reason. Effective evergreen content incorporates strong and memorable branding. Any piece of well-developed evergreen content is likely going to be a foundational piece of content for your business, so don’t miss the opportunity of using it to solidify your brand in the marketplace through both the content quality AND being visually consistent. Make your content valuable, informative, representative of your business’s voice, and be sure it is visually compelling and consistent with your brand. The logo, colors, imagery, and overall design of each page should properly incorporate your brand guidelines. Need help with this? Contact me for a consultation call to get started!
One of the very biggest mistakes one can make with evergreen content, is choosing the wrong topic. This is a big challenge for a lot of business owners, but choosing a “hot topic” to elaborate or teach on, is integral to creating evergreen content that is effective in building your business. After all, no matter how fantastically you’ve branded your evergreen content, or how well you’ve done avoiding dating the information, if the topic is not one of interest to your customer, no one will ever know what it consists of in the details, because no one will bother clicking through to look at it.
So how do you figure out what a hot topic is? “Hot topics” are concepts or ideas in your business or industry that will gain attention and drive traffic. These topics can range from beginner introductions to a topic, to demonstrations, to deep dives on the details of a portion of your industry. Evergreen hot topics will always be valuable to current and future audiences and drive online traffic, so figuring out which ones you should focus on is key to creating the right content.
One of the easiest ways to identify which topics are hot topics in your field is to look at keywords people are searching in your industry and then incorporating those into your content title, content, and teaser information. Keywords will help your content rank higher on search engines, and that means more clicks, and your content and business being seen by more people. If you don’t have tools you are already using to track keywords relevant to your customers, you can try Google Trends to identify some topics to consider focusing on.
Over time, you might actually need to update your evergreen content with more relevant keywords and phrases as they emerge to ensure your content still receives the attention it deserves… but generally these are going to be minor tweaks to ensure you content converts, but generally this won’t need to be done very often unless your content was to trend-oriented and not really evergreen in the first place.
As a side note: It’s okay to update and edit evergreen content! Improving and updating the content does not compromise its previous relevance. Most people will never know you have revised it, but even if someone does realize it, it simply shows that you are always growing your skills and knowledge and changing with the latest research and trends in you industry.
Once you’ve created your evergreen content, there are endless ways to use it in your business! The best format for your evergreen content depends on your goals. The following are just a few of my favorite ways to use evergreen presentations.
Make a PDF version of your slide deck available as a lead magnet or freebie. Providing your audience with the knowledge they want and making the acquisition low effort is a surefire way to gain a new lead and grow your email list. You could make a presentation about general industry guides, statistics and data, tips and tricks, how-to’s, tutorials, or best practices. If you use this idea, be sure to end your presentation with a call to action, like a link to your website or your email subscription form.
If you’ve ever taught an online course or given a lecture, consider recording your presentation to post for your audience. If your slideshow is evergreen, your recorded presentation is evergreen as well. Use this presentation as part of a new course you’re developing or a content package.
Advertise this content by using short snippets to tease the relevant information your followers can unlock. Since this one requires more effort and development, consider gating it behind a paywall or making it accessible through payment… of you can break it up into clips that you share on social media, offering the PDF as a download to direct followers back to your website, thus both growing your social media following if the content is shared, but also getting those followers to connect with you on your owned platform (your website) and diversifying away from social media platforms that may not be stable (hopefully you’ve never had your social media page inexplicably shut down and lost all of your followers, but it could theoretically happen to anyone at any time, and is often a system error, but one that can really hurt a business if it is overly reliant on social media traffic).
Creating an evergreen branded presentation is a great way to inform your audience about your business and past success. In this presentation, discuss what your business is about. You can add more time-sensitive slides on the services you offer, your current prices, and available slots and then use this deck at your next conference or industry meet-up to tell your business story or how you achieved success. You can then use the evergreen core of it online and refer people to the “always latest” information on your website.
When you take the time to develop and integrate an evergreen presentation, you’re creating content that is impactful, relevant, and accessible to your audience. Evergreen content doesn’t happen in one day; it takes research and thoughtful design to create a successful presentation, but once you make that investment, you’ll be happy to have high-quality, business-building content you can share again and again.
