Well! It’s 2021.
I’m not the “new year, new me,” type, but I am the “take advantage of a fresh start” type.
I eat up that new year, new quarter, new month, and new week energy.
Hell, I’ve even been known to take a midday nap after a crappy morning to get a fresh start on the day.
I will take literally all the fresh starts I need, thank you very much.
And so should you.
Harness your new year’s energy however it’s showing up.
But also, make sure that includes giving your content a lil review.
Why a New Year’s Content Refresh is More Important Than Ever in 2021
Because I was talking with a friend yesterday about content calendars, as marketing nerds do in their free time, and we realized a few things…
First of all, 2020 was a prime example of how planning is only productive to a point…planning too far into a future you can’t see can be a waste of time.
After all, how many marketers probably planned out their entire content calendar last January, only to throw at least 9 months of it out by March? 😬
Or even worse, how many stale content ideas were published for a world that no longer exists?
I remember seeing a post go live on a personal finance blog in the very beginning of the pandemic about ways to make extra money. Readers were pissed because it was announced as a brand new post of things to do now, and only 1 of the dozen or so ideas were COVID-safe.
I think I emailed you about it at the time, but I don’t remember for certain so I don’t expect you to either. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Second of all, it was proof of my theory that truly evergreen content is a myth.
The idea that a piece of content can keep getting continued results for you with literally no continued effort long-term?
It doesn’t exist anymore.
Nurturing Your Evergreen Garden
Since the pandemic got me into gardening and plants, let’s think about the plant that gives evergreen content its name.
When a plant is evergreen, that doesn’t mean it’ll stay green through neglect and starvation.
It doesn’t mean you can ignore all care and nurturing.
The term simply means if you continue maintenance, if the plant continues to get light, water, and nutrients, it will continue growing for multiple seasons.
Ahem…
IF YOU CONTINUE MAINTENANCE.
And if evergreen plants need light, water, and nutrients, evergreen content needs updating, repromotion, and repurposing – the 3 components of content remixing.
There’s probably a lot of content sitting at the top of search results that are totally irrelevant post-2020, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they drop quick.
For example, in Work Brighter (my other business), all of my planning and productivity content gets a surge this time of year while people are all enthusiastic about their resolutions.
So what did I do in December?
Made sure the most important pieces of content expecting a surge were up to date. Evergreen maintenance I do on those posts every year at that time.
And the final thing my friend and I (or really, I) realized during our chat together is that all this means I really need to remind you of the minimalist content planning process and toolkit.
You need to be building content refreshing and repurposing into your regular content calendar.
For example, if you normally publish content twice a week or 8-10 times a month, take two of those slots per month and set them aside for content updates or remixes.
Ideally, you want to take a proactive approach with those slots and use them to update, optimize, and repurpose content before it even becomes outdated.
But if you’re newer to minimalist content marketing, you’ll have a big backlog of refreshing and repurposing to do.
That’s okay!
In that case, just start with what has the biggest gap between evergreen potential and evergreen reality.
For example, if a blog post has high traffic but is wildly out of date and therefore converting poorly, start there. If any of those posts also follow any seasonal trends, schedule them for updating slightly before they’re in-season.
All of this is laid out step by step in the minimalist content planning toolkit, btw.
Or if on-demand isn’t your thing, you can hire me for a content audit or strategy call to prioritize your content refreshing and repurposing.
Or if you can do it yourself, do it yourself! What matters is that those evergreen content plant babies get their nutrients. 😝
