Evergreen content: why your startup needs it and how to get started

‍TL;DR: Creating evergreen content provides several direct and indirect benefits for you and your startup:

1. Create content once and reap the rewards for a long time. Evergreen content generates consistent traffic, engagement, and conversions over time, and is a high ROI way to get your ideas in public and establish yourself as a thought leader.
2. Boost your SEO rankings. Search engines reward evergreen content with higher rankings. Evergreen content helps you remain top-of-mind for your customers or potential investors.
3. Become more of an expert. As Paul Graham says, writing or creating content about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn't know it as well as you thought. Put ideas into words and push yourself to become a clearer thinker.

Evergreen content stays relevant and valuable to readers long after you publish it, unlike news articles or content about trending topics, which quickly lose relevance. All forms of content can be evergreen. You can make evergreen blog posts, how-to guides/ tutorials, videos, podcasts, FAQs, or any other content you prefer.

Some examples of evergreen content are:

Videos

• Tips for technical startup founders: Whether you watch this video today or in five years, it will be relevant and helpful if you’re an early-stage technical founder looking to get things off the ground. 
• How to have a credit card and what to use it for: Tips for people managing their first credit card that hold true over time. 

Articles

• The Ultimate Habit Tracker Guide: Why and How to Track Your Habits: Timeless tips for people trying to improve their habits.
• The Underestimated Latin American's Founder's Guide to Raising Venture Capital: This guide will help underestimated founders who read it 5 years ago, today, or 5 years from now. 

Podcasts

• Dan Green, Gunderson Dettmer: Legal Structures for Startups in Latin America: Unless there are large legal changes, this legal structures guide will continue to hold up over time.

Thinking of creating evergreen content from scratch can be daunting. Start by focusing on a few key points:

Identify your area of expertise

Evergreen content is valuable because it stays useful in the long run. You’re never sure when someone will come across your content, but you want to make sure people get value from it when they do come across it. Pick specific problems to establish a connection and position yourself as a trusted source. Start with your areas of expertise.

When you make evergreen content, avoid trending topics that might become outdated quickly. This doesn’t mean you should never create content about important news or trending topics, but just understand that news-of-the-day content is a different game. Most good evergreen content solves problems, offers guidance, and provides valuable insights.

Choose the right format to share your content

Choose a format that you like the most and are best at. Evergreen content doesn’t have to be blog posts. Try out podcasts, vlogging, infographics, or anything else, and see what you like most. Take the time to experiment, step outside your comfort zone, and find what suits you best

Find the format that not only aligns with your skills but also allows you to effectively communicate your ideas to your audience. 

Seek inspiration from others

Talk to your colleagues to get ideas for potential topics. Experts often struggle with the curse of knowledge, assuming topics that seem simple to them are simple for their audience. These ‘simple’ topics are often the topics that resonate most with the largest audience.

Forget about self-imposed limitations and share your knowledge. Everyone has a unique set of skills and knowledge, and what may seem simple or basic to you could be groundbreaking for others.

Research

Once you pick a topic, start to research it. Even if you already consider yourself an expert, when you’re creating the content, you’ll refine your thoughts. Check out relevant books, articles, podcasts, reputable online resources, and academic papers to get good data and be good sources of information for your content. The more reference points you have, the more informed your perspective gets, and the better your content gets. 

Keep a critical mindset and play devil's advocate against your thoughts. Ask yourself “Why?” “How?” or “Am I sure this is true?” as you create content to evaluate different viewpoints and identify potential gaps or weaknesses in your argument.

Use statistics and data to support your points

Incorporate reliable data into your content to make readers trust you fast. You can run a study or gather in-house insights from users or clients to use your data, or you can use data from external sources like government agencies or academic institutions. Make sure you credit the source every time you use an external data point.

Use graphs, charts, infographics, or other visual elements to convey your message in a more digestible format. 

Add links to make it easy for people consuming your content to find the resources you mention. If you’ve already created helpful content on a relevant topic, put it at the readers' fingertips. Make it easy for people consuming your content to find additional context so they can understand the topic better.

Be clear, concise, and engaging

Clear content makes it easier for the audience to understand your message. Avoid jargon or overly technical language unless your audience specifically seeks that level of detail.

Stay focused and avoid unnecessary fluff. Structured and straight-to-the-point information is more likely to be remembered. Keep paragraphs short, use subheadings to help readers scan and navigate your content, and use bullet points to break up information.

Tell a story, pose questions, and use examples or anecdotes to make the content more relatable. Engage your audience with images or videos.

Make your content accessible to a broad audience. People consuming your content want to learn something new that they can use, not navigate through something long and unorganized to try to find value.

Promote it 

Don’t bury your content on your website, make sure it is highlighted and accessible to anyone who visits your site. Use tags, filters, and categories to make people more likely to find it.

Encourage comments and discussions, and make it easy to share your content on socials to increase visibility and foster a community around it. 

Review and update regularly

Regularly review and update your content to make sure you’re taking into account new information, trends, or developments that impact the topic. We recommend you check your content every 6-12 months to make sure it’s still accurate.

Practice, practice, practice

Make more evergreen content and keep improving. Your first article, byline, podcast, or video will be far from perfect, but you need to start somewhere. Creating content consistently will make you better, just like any other skill. Over time, you’ll get more comfortable and efficient making evergreen content.

Publishing even just a couple of good pieces of evergreen content can drive long-term value for you and your company. Your evergreen content will help you generate leads and engagement long after you publish it.

Remember, it’s always better to finish one piece of content before you start working on the next. It’s better to publish one article than have 10 articles 50% done. Write down a couple of evergreen content ideas you’d most like to create and set aside the time to work on it.

Magma helps portfolio companies create all types of content. Don't hesitate to reach out to our team if you need help to create your content strategy.