Gleick invited everyone to participate in the discussion, and while he managed everything smoothly, the mindset gap between the lecturer and the audience was easy to notice.

Referring to his experience working as a science reporter for the New York Times, Gleick contrasted the old media world and its leading newspapers and journalists with the new googlized world and its drowned-in-information citizens.

If you haven’t had a chance to read his book on Information, reading his article titled How Google Dominates Us will give you a grasp of his ideas on this topic.

Although various points were discussed in that highly interactive session, I just want to draw your attention to one of the issues discussed there: the concept of serendipity.

Definition of Serendipity

The Oxford Dictionary has defined serendipity as the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Horace Walpole coined the word serendipity from the Persian word Sarandib, referring to the old Persian fairy tale about three Sarandib princes who were always making accidental discoveries (Sarandib was Persian word for Sri Lanka).

The happy accident of discovery is another general description used for the word serendipity.

But in the context of the information and media, it’s easier and more helpful to consider serendipity as finding information which you were not looking for.

Referring to the old newspaper-age, Gleick provides a simple example of serendipity:

while reading the newspaper page by page, you see a short article about an event in a far country. You were not looking for such an article and never thought that it could be interesting for you, but now you are engaged with the article and may find it helpful or insightful.

Serendipity in the Digital Age

Because of their nature, serendipities were a common incident in the traditional media. Reading, watching and listening was linear and you had no other choice except following the content from the beginning to the end.

However, with the current digital tools and technologies, the user/audience has much more power in managing the inflow of information.

Most of search algorithms are proud of customized search results. Social media platforms filter the information and present you a handpicked set of the most relevant published content.

Filter bubble and echo chamber are coined to describe the situations where there is no chance of confronting with the serendipities.

As it is discussed in the video, someone may argue that the duty of the search engines is not to provide the user with the experience of serendipities. Users of the search engines, reach them with a specific question and expect to get the most relevant answer as fast as possible. Therefore, it’s the duty of the other institutions, such as universities and magazines, to make serendipities for their audience.

In his party controversial discussion, Gleick says that many users of the search engines, do not have a specific question in mind. They just start with a keyword and there’s still some room for providing unexpected answers for them (or at least consider a few serendipities in the search engine results page). But one of the attendees told him that usually, user refines its query and Google considers this back and forth communication as a dialogue. Therefore there’s no reason to derail such a purposeful conversation with irrelevant information called serendipity or whatsoever.

A Book about the Concept of Serendipity

While searching the web for the concept of serendipity, I learned that there’s a book dedicated to serendipity: Accidental Information Discovery.

I’ve just read a few pages of the book, but it seems to me that there are many fantastic ideas about the serendipity concept for anyone interested in this topic. The book is published in 2016, five years after the discussion of Gleick and Googlers in Mountain View.

The post Search Engines and the Future of Serendipity appeared first on webmindset.

Here I’ve listed some of the most popular revenue models used by content-based businesses.

While I admit that this is not a comprehensive list of all possible revenue models, it can be a good starting point for anyone interested in generating revenue with content creation and delivery.

Direct vs. Indirect Revenue Models

Generally speaking, there are two fundamentally different types of content revenue models:

• direct revenue models
• indirect revenue models

While direct revenue models consider the audience (or content consumer) as their source of revenue, indirect revenue models differentiate between users and customers.

It means that the audience consumes the content freely and the content business generates revenue through third parties.

Some Examples of Direct Revenue Models

Here you can find a list of the most popular direct revenue models used by content-based businesses:

• Content as the facilitator of the selling process
• Selling Content as a product
• Subscription-based revenue models
• Collecting donations

Content as Facilitator of Selling Products and Services

This is one of the classic approaches to revenue generation in the online world and most of the first e-commerce websites were grounded on such a basis.

For example, you have a CRM solution, and create a large amount of content around this topic.

There are various roads to revenue through this approach to the content creation:

• Attracting visitors who are interested in CRM products (inbound marketing) and introducing/selling them your solution.
• Educating people and aligning them with your approach to the CRM (It will be easier to convince them / their companies to buy your product)
• Building brand awareness for your company/product and using it as a competitive advantage in the market

Selling Content as a Product

The content itself can be sold as a product. Selling audiobooks, pdf files, research papers, and market reports, are still popular in various topics and can be considered as a source of revenue.

However, you have to find your own ways of dealing with the content piracy.

Subscription-based Revenue Model

Subscription-based revenue model, sometimes call time-based access models, are very popular in the content industry.

Many news outlets offer different packages for monthly, quarterly and yearly access to their articles.

But such a model is not limited to journals and news publishing companies. Many streaming services (such as NetFlix and Spotify) use a similar model for selling their content to the audience.

Further Reading: Subscription Revenue Model (Definition & Examples)

Collecting Donations

Yes. Collecting donations can be a revenue model for content creating organizations. In this model, you provide content to the audience and ask them to donate if the content is helpful and they are happy with it.

Brainpickings and Wikipedia are just two examples of the content creation services based on user donations (Brainpickings as content pipeline and Wikipedia as a content creation platform).

Collecting donations can be considered as a crowdfunding business model in which funders are not looking for their principal money and its interest.

No matter you call it donation game or crowdfunding, sure the success of this type of revenue model depends heavily on the audience culture and type of the content you provide.

Many of the donation-based revenue models, use it just as a complementary revenue stream. It means that they have a primary revenue source (such as creating and delivering sponsored content) and use donations to complement or cover the other revenue streams.

Some Examples of Indirect Revenue Models

Here I have listed some of the popular indirect revenue models used by content creators:

• Selling Advertising Space
• Collecting User Information
• Sponsorship

Selling Advertising Space

Selling advertising space is still the most popular indirect revenue model in the online content-creation world.

Many social media companies, news websites, personal blogs, and professional forums, rely on selling advertising space to the other businesses.

Some of these businesses (usually the ones with a large audience base) sell ad-space directly to the others, while smaller ones, use the third-party platforms such as Google’s Adsense service.

The Ad Space Selling (ASS) Revenue Model is as old as the modern content industry itself. This practice got popular even before the digital age by newspapers, radio stations, and other mass media.

Collecting User Information

Latest advances in big data and data mining practices have resulted in various opportunities for turning the user information into money. Here are just some of the marketable user information which many companies and organizations are willing to pay for them:

• Market Demographics
• User Values and Preferences
• Search Terms
• Product Comparison Cases
• Contact Information
• Market Gaps
• User Needs

As such reports need a large user base, it’s more often used by content platforms (e.g. social media) than content pipelines.

Extracting and selling this kind of information has always been a source of debate, with many ethical activists criticising them as unethical. However, the companies usually refer the critics to the not-read-but-easily-signed terms and conditions while users register for the service.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship contracts are used by businesses as a part of brand awareness or brand identity management efforts.

In this model, a business covers the whole business costs (sometimes with a markup) and asks the content creator to guarantee a certain level of some performance metrics.

Alexa Rank and total monthly visitors are among the most popular metrics used

These kinds of sponsorship contracts are not limited to the companies. Nowadays, you can find many individuals who enter sponsorship deals with content creating businesses, to improve their competitive position in the professional services market.

The post Digital Content Revenue Models for Online Businesses appeared first on webmindset.

Mass amateurization occurs by removing or weakening the entry barriers to a professional field.

However, we should keep in mind that Clay Shirky has used the notion to address an emerging trend in the media.

He describes the trend as follows:

 …Most professions exist because there is a scarce resource that requires ongoing management.

…Our social tools remove older obstacles to public expression and thus remove the bottlenecks that characterized mass media.  The result is the mass amateurization of efforts previously reserved for media professionals.

Mass amateurization diminishes what he calls “professionalism.” In his view, professionals often enforce strict and difficult-to-achieve standards in their profession, not only to maintain high work quality but also to protect their turf from amateurs.

It’s no longer necessary to be a professional photographer for your work to be noticed. Even for a non-professional, far-from-standard photo, there will always be some audience. The reality is even more bitter for professionals: Their work may no longer get noticed, as it might become buried forever under millions of photos taken and shared by amateur photographers.

The same trend holds true for other types of content, including but not limited to articles, podcasts, and ebooks.

Who coined the term “mass amateurization”

In some textbooks and articles, I have seen references to Wolske, Johnson, & Adams (2009). They titled their paper: “Citizen Professional Toolkits: Empowering Communities Through Mass Amateurization.”

However, Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody was published a year before the above-mentioned paper. Therefore, although Wolske and his colleagues did not mention Shirky’s name, the credit belongs to him.

Mass Amateurization and Media

Shirky has titled the third chapter of his book “Everyone Is a Media Outlet.” He believes that effortless publishing leads to many more outlets, and the news provided by media will get diluted in this ever-deepening pool of content.

He describes the effect of mass amateurization on the media (specifically the news industry) in a brief yet convincing statement:

[news will change from an] institutional prerogative to news as part of a communications ecosystem.

The post What does “mass amateurization” mean? appeared first on webmindset.

Both authors have magnificent titles: Eric Schmidt as executive chairman of Google and Jared Cohen as director of Google Ideas, Google’s think tank dedicated to understanding global challenges and applying technological solutions.

Although it’s usually said that never judge a book by its cover, you can’t overlook all the big names who’ve endorsed the book: Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk and Madeleine Albright.

Before digging deeper, let’s have a short look at the chapter titles. The book is arranged in seven chapters each one talking about future of something:

So at first glance, it seems that we are facing with facts from future!  Although the drawbacks of technology in different areas are not forgotten, the overall view of the book is overoptimistic about future of the technology and you can classify it as utopianistic as it is expected from directors of one of the technology giants.

In the rest of this post, I have quoted a few excerpts from every chapter. But before looking at every single chapter, here you can find some central passages of the book:

Blended facts and the missing chapter

There are many other interesting and important points discussed in the book. However, to be honest, it’s much easier to read a review than reading the book itself.

It’s full of facts and reports from many different political stories around the world. You will face with a mosaic of useless news and stories glued together with some insightful and thought-provoking passages like the ones I quoted above.

Anyone with experience of writing an elaborate report can guess that the book is written by a large group of Googlers gathering information and evidence from every source (sure google search is one of them) as the text has not the expected continuity. I’d prefer to call the book as a collected report endorsed by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. Although it’s still a valuable source to know the mindset of the google and other similar technical giants.

Sure there’s a chapter missing in the book: The role of global corporations like Google in the future world. Which is not logical to suppose that it’s forgotten or discarded because of the book volume.

The Verge has published a review of the book with the following subheading:

In ‘The New Digital Age’ we learn what happens when Google stops being polite and starts getting real.

I should confess that from my point of view, it’s not far from reality. Not because of all the wills which could be substituted by woulds and coulds. But because of the clear message of the book which could be read between all the lines: The technology looks for a larger pie from the cake of power and politics.

[ Related article – Tribes: after effects of the technology and rise of the micro-media  ]

Our future selves

Reading the chapter title, you might expect a philosophical analysis of the human identity (or self-perception) affected by technology. However, the first chapter is nothing more than an appetizer.

What Schmidt and Cohen call “our future selves” is nothing more than a summary of recent technological achievements and, an optimistic account of the technology landscape in the next few decades.

Although it has some valuable clues inside, still it was more satisfying if the chapter had a more humble title (e.g., technology and our everyday life).

The Future of Revolutions

The fourth chapter of the book is divided into two distinct sections. The first part, about one-third of the content is talking about the future of revolutions in an optimistic sense.

You may even fill that the authors are supporting every single act of rebellion against the established structures. However, rest of the chapter emphasizes a very important point.

Technologies are facilitators of change, but the change is ultimately a human thing. Therefore, as authors conclude in this chapter, future revolutions are easier to start but harder to finish. Or to rephrase it in other form, revolutions are easier to happen, but the revolutionary outcomes will be harder to achieve.

Kissinger and politics of the Facebook era

As I have mentioned above, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have dedicated the fourth chapter of their book ‘The new digital age‘ to the future of revolution.

In the middle of the chapter, authors state their opinion about leading future revolutions considering the unprecedented connectivity tools provided for the rebels and opposition.

Authors believe that the technology can be a lubricating tool for starting revolutions. However, the leadership role is fundamentally different from digital herding facilitated by social networks and other new media.

Here is a passage of the book, quoting Henry Kissinger, about future of leadership in the Facebook era:

The future of states

The future of identity, citizenship, and reporting

The story of the Stuxnet (as Eric Schmidt explains)

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have dedicated the third chapter of their book, The New Digital Age, to the future of states.

One of the sections of the third chapter talks about digital provocation and cyber war.

Schmidt uses a cyber war definition offered by Richard Clarke:

Actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation’s computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption.

To illustrate the possibilities and the potential extents of the cyber wars, he refers to Stuxnet virus as one of the most harmful cyber warfare’s ever developed.

Here I have summarized the Schmidt’s account of the story.

The Story of Stuxnet (pp.105 – 107, 2013’s edition)

Stuxnet was discovered in 2010 and was considered the most sophisticated piece of malware ever revealed, until a virus known as Flame, discovered in 2012, claimed that title.

Designed to affect a particular type of industrial control system that ran on the Windows operating system, Stuxnet was discovered to have infiltrated the monitoring systems of Iran’s Natanz nuclear-enrichment facility, causing the centrifuges to abruptly speed up or slow down to the point of self-destruction while simultaneously disabling the alarm systems.

Because the Iranian systems were not linked to the Internet, the worm must have been uploaded directly, perhaps unwittingly introduced by a Natanz employee on a USB flash drive

… Initial efforts to locate the creators of the worm were inconclusive, though most believed that its target and level of sophistication pointed to a state-backed effort.

The resources involved also suggested government production: Experts thought the worm was written by as many as thirty people over several months.

Sure enough, it was revealed in June 2012 that not one but two governments were behind the deployment of the Stuxnet worm.

Unnamed Obama administration officials confirmed to the New York Times journalist David E. Sanger that Stuxnet was a joint U.S. and Israeli project… Initially green-lit under President George W. Bush, the initiative, code-named Olympic Games, was carried into the next administration and in fact accelerated by President Obama, who personally authorized successive deployments of this cyber weapon.

After building the malware and testing it on functioning replicas of the Natanz plant built in the United States – and discovering that it could, in fact, cause the centrifuges to break apart, the U.S. government approved the worm for deployment.

… Less than a month after the public revelation about these cyber weapons, security experts at Kaspersky Lab, a large Russian computer security company with international credibility, concluded that the two teams that developed Flame and Stuxnet did, at an early stage collaborate.

The post Book Review: The New Digital Age by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen appeared first on webmindset.

Chief Content Officer as a corporate position

The first point we should bear in mind is that the Chief Content Officer or the CCO, like many other C-suite roles, is a corporate position. It means that in a small or medium-sized company, the content strategist or even the content marketer position would be more than enough for handling the content affairs.

• How did the CCO position emerge?
• The best-known drafted job description for CCO position
• My Criticism of the current versions of CCO’s job description
• What does a chief content officer do?
• The Chief Content Officer’s salary

How did the CCO position emerge in the organizational chart?

In the definition of the content strategy, I’ve mentioned some symptoms of the weak content strategy. But listing such symptoms doesn’t help if we can’t hold anyone responsible for solving those problems.

We know that the disagreement about the content issues in the companies is already a major source of conflict in the corporates. This happens because many departments consider themselves as one of the pillars of the content creation and dissemination process and expect to have the loudest voice in the content-relevant decisions:

• Public relations department prefers to oversee every single communication with the outside world. So PR expects to own part of the content strategy pie (preferably the largest pie).
• The marketing department considers itself as the sole department with the ability and knowledge of designing and running advertising campaigns. Campaigns are often the most costly content publication activity ever happens in the content realm. So who will be more competent than marketing department to devise, implement, and supervise the content strategy?
• On the other hand, the accounting and finance department is the only department implicitly allowed to comment on every single decision in the company. Content-related decisions are not an exception.
• The sales department, emphasizing its close touch with the customers, has its own understanding and logic. Armed with many cases and previous experiences, the sales department is able to cast shadows of doubt on every plan not previously checked with it.
• Besides all these challenges and claims, the IT department considers the digital and online activities as its exclusive territory. Therefore,  as every comprehensively designed content strategy would include many digital initiatives, the IT department may consider itself as the main player in the field.

In such situations, the emerged content strategy, if you decide to call it a strategy,  would not be anything more than a fragmented action plan resulted from power negotiations between various stakeholders with conflicting interests and attitudes toward the content.

This situation is noted in the power school of strategy by Henry Mintzberg in Strategy Safari: Formation of strategy as a result of negotiation between internal and external stakeholders.

The outcome of the strategic planning in such a situation is often not the best strategy for the organization. It’s the strategy of the most powerful, with minor adjustments to keep the other stakeholders silent. This is the point where the necessity of the Chief Content Officer (CCO) role emerges.

The best-known drafted job description for CCO position

ُhe most detailed and elaborated job description for the chief content officer seems to be provided by Content Marketing Institute. However, in my opinion, taking a more detailed look at the document, you will find it closer to an inspiring pool of ideas rather than a practical job description.

Let’s take a look at the brief description of the role:

The Chief Content Officer (CCO) oversees all marketing content initiatives, both internal and external, across multiple platforms and formats to drive sales, engagement, retention, leads and positive customer behavior.

This individual is an expert in all things related to content and channel optimization, brand consistency, segmentation and localization, analytics and meaningful measurement.

The position collaborates with the departments of public relations, communications, marketing, customer service, IT and human resources to help define both the brand story and the story as interpreted by the customer.

Source: Content Marketing Institute

My Criticism of the current versions of CCO’s job description

As I have stated above, the main idea behind the CCO position is to align all content-related efforts and activities, assuring the maximum possible effectiveness and efficiency.

Therefore, it’s understandable that the chief content officer (CCO) has to be able to oversee all the content-related activities and minimize potential conflicts of interests through collaboration with different departments.

However, here lies the central question:

Is it necessary for Chief Content Officer to be jack of all trades or an expert in everything related to the content?

When we talk about the content industry, we are talking about many specialties such as content creation, content curation, content delivery, and content identity development. They are all included in the content industry. However, each one has roots in different sciences:

• Content creation talks about authorship, credibility, and reader engagement.
• Content delivery is a complex bundle of technology, sociology, and psychology.
• Content identity is a territory claimed by many kings including but not limited to branding specialists.

How can a person be an expert in all of them?

The same story happens when you put yourself in the position of Chief Marketing Officer or any other C-Suit position. Is it logical or acceptable for them to be the jack of all trades?

Now, take a second look at the CMI’s definition of Chief Content Officer position mentioned above.

Therefore, it seems that the most of the CCO job descriptions are overly inclusive and following them may lead to serious organizational conflicts.

By the way, there’s no real boundary between Chief Content Officer (CCO) and Content Strategist in most of the job descriptions.

In many cases, you can change the title of the CCO’s job description to Content Strategist’s job description without any noticeable problem.

What does a chief content officer do?

It seems that the best way to reach a useful job description of the CCO is to take a look at the other C-suite positions (e.g. CFO, CIO, CEO, COO).

There are some elements in common between all CxO positions: Supervision, Coordination, Planning, and Operation:

With the term supervision, we mean supervising all the activities inside the respective territory.

With the term Coordination, we mean collaborating with other departments outside the respective territory.

With the term Planning, we mean macro-planning for the performance indicators inside the territory as well as the contribution to the higher level organizational performance indicators.

With the term Operation, we mean assuring smooth operation of all tasks and activities within the respective territory.

Considering all the points mentioned above, the Chief Content Officer has to supervise, coordinate, and plan to ensure low-friction and high-efficiency of the content-related operations in the Corporate’s Content Machine.

Once more, it’s important to underline that the mentioned duties are mainly administrative and not operational, while a major part of content strategists’ job description is expected to be operational.

All the other positions such as content strategist, content curator, and content creator are line functions with their respective job descriptions, and their tasks should not be included in the job description of the chief content officer. Otherwise, CCO would be considered as an aggressive, useless, territory-builder and conflict-arising position and will never find a respectable seat on the executive board.

Chief Content Officer’s Salary

As I’ve noted before, the Chief Content Officer (CCO) is a new emerging role in today’s organizational charts, and Chief Content Officer’s salary lies on the top of the payroll lists.

Unlike many other job positions which you can check their salary via services like glassdoor and indeed, it’s not so easy to find relevant and helpful details about the chief content officers’ salary and compensation package.

This can be due to the small sample size available or the nature of this job which often push CCO’s to conceal their salaries.

Anyway, here are some points I have found on the web about the salary of such a position:

• According to the comparably, the salaries of the Chief Content Officers in US range from a low of $68K to a high of 230K.
• Glassdoor claims a range of $295K to $318K for the annual package of a CCO in the US. The same website reports an annual salary of £115K – £125K for a chief content officer in the UK.
• Salaryboard, a website dedicated to reporting salaries in Singapore, reports $125K for a CCO with one to three years of experience and $146K for a person with more than 8 years of working experience.

The post The Chief Content Officer’s Job Description appeared first on webmindset.

Here I’ve provided some answers to the most popular questions about evergreen content and its application in content marketing:

  What does evergreen mean?

  Definition of evergreen content

  Guidelines for creating an evergreen piece of content

  Examples of evergreen content types

  Evergreen content as a gap filler or as a component of the content strategy?

  Evergreen content examples and ideas

  Tips for creating evergreen content

  Evergreen content vs. other content types

What does evergreen mean in marketing

The term evergreen is much older than marketing. It has roots in botany and describes the plants that have leaves throughout the year.

In marketing, the term evergreen is used for the products, segments, and strategies that stay relevant over a long period. In another word, evergreen marketing is an umbrella term for any marketing idea, concept, action, or initiative that will last a long time while staying relevant and practical.

Evergreen segments, evergreen niche, evergreen products, and evergreen approach are just a few terms currently used in marketing and other management realms. Let’s take a look at the definition of some of these terms:

• Evergreen industry: An industry that always has a viable market.
• Evergreen business: Businesses that have a long life and are not much affected by seasonalities. Selling books or teaching English as a second language are examples of evergreen businesses compared to selling camping equipment.
• Evergreen stock option: An employee stock option with no expiration date.
• Evergreen design: Any design with enduring popularity and long life in the market. Minimalism is an example of an evergreen design style. Many different styles come and go, but the minimalistic style always has its own demand.
• Evergreen brand: An evergreen brand is a brand that never goes out of style and never gets old.
• Evergreen product: A product that always has market demand and retains its relevance over the long run. Pens, wallets, and bottled water are examples of evergreen products.
• Evergreen funnel: An autopilot marketing sequence that turns website visitors into customers. Landing pages with good call-to-actions and permanent incoming traffic (e.g., with SEO) are examples of an evergreen funnel.
• Evergreen advertising: Advertising that is not related to specific events or periods of time and stays relevant for a long time. So they stay on websites and billboards for longer or even permanently on the city walls and other outdoor placements.
• Evergreen books: Books that don’t stop selling and their content and context remain relevant for a long time. Classic books are examples of evergreen books. But many contemporary books can also be considered evergreen. Just compare a book on SEO techniques versus a book on the life of Barack Obama. Although the latter is not considered classic, you can still classify it under the evergreen category.

Definition of evergreen content

In the simplest definition, evergreen content is a piece of content that does not expire in the short term. But here you can find a more elaborate and formal definition of the evergreen content:

Evergreen contents are attractive because of driving more traffic, having a lower maintenance cost,  getting a higher SEO rank, and receiving more social shares for a prolonged period.

Guidelines for creating an evergreen piece of content

Although every content without an expiry date can be considered green, there are many hints, guidelines, and statements about the properties and characteristics of an evergreen piece of content:

• Evergreen content can’t include news, statistical reports, seasonal topics, and current trends.
• Evergreen content shall preferably aim at narrow beginner topics. Such contents are best choices for creating evergreen content.
• Evergreen content should seek for higher stay time or long click (What is a long click).
• Evergreen articles are typically longer.

Examples of evergreen content types

Here you can find some examples to have a more clear picture in your mind:

• Most of the definitions are evergreen articles (e.g., definition of longform content, definition of complex systems, definition of content strategy, etc.)
• Resource lists are the other popular type of evergreen content (e.g., list of content strategy blogs, list of technology blogs, leading thinkers of the technology age, etc.)
• Checklists are another type of evergreen content that is attractive to beginner and expert readers.
• How-to articles can be easily designed in an evergreen format and can be helpful and engaging. You can take a look at the following topics as examples of such content:
  • How to decide on what to do with your life!
  • How to market in a recession (HBR)
  • How to learn speed reading

Evergreen content as a gap filler or a component of the content strategy?

Every content provider has a portion of evergreen content in its content portfolio.

Reading any newspaper,  you will find a mixture of green and non-green content that, in most cases, the ratio is not chosen deliberately and on purpose.

Most newspapers and news companies fill their content gaps with evergreen content. These companies would prefer to talk about last night’s blasts, and when there is no hot news available,  fill the gap with a report about an old and forgotten place in the city’s suburbs!

However, for some content providers, evergreen content is something beyond a gap filler.

Content providers who deliberately include evergreen content in their content portfolio fall into two categories:

• Evergreen content businesses such as IMDb or Study.com
• Other businesses which use evergreen content for SEO purposes and as a driver for inbound traffic

Guardian serves as an excellent example for the second category.

Besides publishing up-to-date news articles, Guardian considers publishing evergreen articles as a permanent part of its editorial content calendar.

While the articles such as successful content strategy and dos and don’t of content marketing are outside their expected scope, Guardian insists on publishing such articles regularly to drive traffic to its website.

Most universities serve the same purpose by publishing part of their educational content as educational resources and proudly providing them free of charge to every website visitor.

While providing evergreen content as a traffic driver in the content strategy is more costly than direct advertising in the short run, this approach pays off well in the long run because of better rank in search engines and lower content maintenance cost.

Evergreen content examples and ideas

Here I have collected some ideas and examples of evergreen content. I am confident you will be able to list many other ideas after reading the following examples.

Write about persisting questions

Just think about the first questions your first readers (or customers) asked the first time they visited your website. Among them, you will find issues that are still relevant, and most of your new audiences are still looking for the answer to those questions.

Write about the structure of your industry

No matter the industry, it’s always helpful and fascinating for the audience to read about the structure of your industry.

Industry structures do not change very fast, and such informative content can live for years without needing a fundamental change and adjustment.

Write a glossary for your topic of interest

Glossaries are one of the best options for creating evergreen content. Glossaries have a long lifespan, and your audience will love them, especially if they are comprehensive and relevant.

You can check the following documents as examples of this content type:

• Mobile marketing glossary
• A short glossary of marketing terms
• Knowledge management glossary
• Concise dictionary of management terms

Create a list of useful resources for beginners

Advanced articles and resources are usually subject to change. But basic documents and resources remain valid for a relatively long period.

Therefore, preparing and publishing resource lists for your novice user is a good idea.

Check the following articles to have a better idea about this content type:

• Kissmetrics’ content marketing resources
• Content marketing resource list provided by VisualNews
• Digital Content Marketing Roadmap
• Content marketing resources provided by SingleGrain
• Free SEO and web analytics tools
• Curata’s resource list for content marketers (don’t miss out)

Worst practices for obtaining a specific goal

Although it’s quite popular to write about best practices, writing about worst practices can be a gold mine for your audience too.

While this type of content benefits your readers, it’s much less competitive than the best practice lists provided by virtually all the great players in the field.

Check the following articles:

• Five worst practices in content marketing
• 14 sales worst practices
• Top five worst practices in business intelligence

Historical examples and case studies

When you cite a recent case study, very soon, it will get outdated.

You have to change words and edit phrases, and still, your blog will look outdated.

Your audience will probably be more impressed by a story from five decades ago than a case study that refers to a two-year-old story. While the former looks like an informative case, the latter may be perceived as outdated content.

Tips for creating evergreen content

Your content needs not to be timeless to be considered evergreen

Some of the contents are literally timeless. These contents are valid even centuries later. Just Imagine the following articles:

• The fall of Rome: How did it happen?
• How did Steve Jobs start his career in the digital industry?
• 20th century in literature
• How to face stress and anxiety in your daily life?

But there are many topics and articles which are not eternal but have a much longer life than the average life of the popular articles. These articles are valid and relevant until a disruption happens or some progress happens in a field.

This type of evergreen content is usually called sustainable content.

Here are two examples that I consider sustainable (but not timeless):

• 10 SEO tips to consider when writing short-form articles (Such article can stay relevant for one or two years)
• How to choose the right mobile phone for yourself? (May remain relevant for two or three quarters and even more with minor modifications)

I think it’s more logical, feasible, and rewarding to consider sustainable content as a part of your evergreen content strategy plan and not rely solely on timeless content.

Don’t get stuck in one particular content type

Most content creators are inclined to certain content types.

For some of them, evergreen content means a ‘how-to’ article. Some others use checklists and questionnaires as evergreen content. But remember that evergreen content has many forms.

Don’t let the social media trends overshadow your content strategy

Social media is an invaluable source of ideas for your content creation. However, be careful not to be distracted by hypes and trends.

You can learn the taste of your audience and the ingredients of their current content diet. You can also find their questions and what they are willing to pay for.

But evergreen content is not meant to satisfy the transient and temporary needs of your audience. There you have no chance to compete with real-time mostly-free easily-accessible social content.

The evergreen content’s competitive advantage lies somewhere else.

Start with your current content assets

If you are not new to blogging and currently already have a collection of articles on your blog/website, first look for already existing evergreen articles on your blog.

Check the Google webmasters tool and look for old articles that have a high click rate (or even a high impression with low CTR). These low-hanging fruits are much easier to pick and have more potential for immediate results and draw more traffic to your blog/website.

Moreover, prepare a list of your evergreen content and schedule a regular update and optimization plan for them. Each piece of content may need a different check/update frequency.

Although it’s easy to check the history of organic traffic to each URL (via a simple query in Google’s webmaster’s tool), I do strongly recommend making a separate table (in paper or digital format) and registering the total number of visitors landed on each URL every month. Such a table can be an indispensable source of insight if you update it regularly.

Don’t make it over-green

To make our content evergreen, sometimes we deliver over-green content to the audience. Such excessive efforts often lead to dull, boring content.

To take an extreme imaginary case, suppose a blogger who wants to use Twitter in a sentence. He thinks that one day Twitter won’t exist, and my sentence will look outdated. So he decides to substitute the word Twitter with the following phrase: “one of the popular social media tools that helps you to share short messages.”

Of course, such an extreme case won’t happen. But there are many milder cases in which we deliberately use over-green words and phrases to make our content evergreen.

Experts are rarely your audience

Sure, there are some cases where an evergreen article targets experts and becomes successful. But usually, experts are not the audience of evergreen articles. Even if they reach such articles, most probably will skim over the articles to find references and resources.

So unless you have a sound strategic reason, it’s recommendable to target non-experts. These audiences are more likely to have a longer stay-time and deeper click-throughs, leading to better SEO scoring.

Don’t sacrifice relevance for better search results

Many content creators try to make their evergreen content as comprehensive as possible.

Such a strategy may lead to better search engine scoring and higher impression and click rates. However, don’t forget that your final goal is conversion, and sacrificing relevance for whatever reason would hardly lead to more conversion.

The same logic applies to keyword stuffing. Besides the fact that most search engines recognize this strategy and penalize it, this approach won’t result in more conversions and will just decrease your credibility and dilute your relevance in the eyes of the audience.

Don’t forget downloadables

The importance of downloadable stuff can hardly be overstated. As I have said many times, downloadable files resemble physical commodities in the digital world.

Any website with a long-term content strategy must have a dedicated page for resources (Including downloadables and valuable external links). However, evergreen articles will become more attractive if you consider a download section in their design.

Evergreen content vs. Other content types

Although many content strategists emphasize the importance of evergreen content, we have to accept that there have to be other alternatives to evergreen content creation.

Here I’ve listed a couple of alternatives to the evergreen content type. Although they are not totally different, and there might be some overlap, it helps to regard them as separate categories.

Topical Content

As you may have noticed, most of the introductory contents are (or can be) evergreen.

When you dig deeper into a topic, the chances are that you shorten the lifespan of your content because you have to mention current trends, up-to-date tools, relevant news, and many other short-life content pieces.

Therefore, the so-called topical content that goes into detail usually has a shorter lifespan and is regarded as an alternative to the evergreen content strategy.

Seasonal Content

Seasonal content can be evergreen too. However not suitable for all the seasons. Consider an article titled “How to minimize chances of getting a cold this winter?”.

Such an article will be helpful this year, next year, and even a decade later. But it will be helpful in a few months when the weather gets colder.

Guides for choosing schools, attending entrance examinations, finding a new home, and many other similar topics are usually classified as seasonal content.

Real-time content

Sports and stock market news websites are among many other content creator businesses that are heavily relied on real-time content.

Although such contents have a very limited lifespan, there are still various ways to generate revenue based on real-time content.

Dated Content

Most of us do not consider dated content as a valuable asset. However, take a second look at The Internet Archive to see 300 billion archived web pages that are literally dated content. They are still a really valuable asset not only for the organization itself but for humanity as a whole.

Viral Content

Viral contents are another example of non-evergreen content types. Most viral contents have a very short lifespan. However, many content marketers use this type of content to promote products, businesses, and social moves.

Newsjacking Content

There are various definitions of newsjacking. But there’s a common element in all of them: Newsjacking, similar to hijacking, uses the trending and popular news as a platform for promoting a personal or business brand.

Just consider one of the recent social media contests that got popular in your community. Sure, you can remember a few bloggers or social activists criticizing the contest and publishing articles against public opinion.

Such articles will be of no value after a short period, but the content creator has made an audience with this newsjacking technique. The evergreen content usually does not provide such opportunities on a large scale.

The post What is evergreen content and how you can leverage it in your content strategy? appeared first on webmindset.

He starts his argument with describing the context of the curation. The long boom, as he calls it, has brought with itself an inevitable

Michael Bhaskar dedicates the fifth chapter of his book to the principles of the curation. However, you will get disappointed if you’re expecting some clear and straight curation rules.

In fact, for the most part of the chapter, he re-emphasizes (or re-phrases) what he has stated before. The waves of abundance which the new technology has brought with itself and the problem of choosing which gets more complicated every day.

The age of retailers

At the dawn of the industrial era, despite the productivity growth, still, the market was not saturated. So distribution was yet the critical ring if the chain. Retailers popped up everywhere to fill the gap between consumers and the mass producers.

The efficiency and convenience were the most valuable benefits provided by retailers.

The age of curators

The exponential growth of productivity while demand was not increasing fast enough lead to the problem of overchoice, as it is called by the futurist Alvin Toffler.

Here’s where the consumers felt the need for curators to offer them a more restricted choice. The consumers were even ready to pay for their efforts.

Most of the chapter content here is cited from the research of Sheena Iyengar and Barry Schwartz as it’s mentioned in the paradox of choice.

Platforms as curators

Bhaskar notices a third wave in the abundance era: prosumers.

With the rise of social media and digital platforms, it got easier for the consumers to become a producer at the same time. Now with a large number of producers dealing with a large number of consumers in the market, the curation industry has to upgrade itself to the next level: the curation algorithms.

Bhaskar here notes that, although algorithms have reached greats success, still the pure machine curations have not been as successful as expected and it’s better to combine them with human operators to get the best results. At least until they get much better than today.

Related articles:

• Curation: the power of selection in a world of excess
• The context of curation: computation as a GPT
• Curation and the overload problem

The post The principles of curation appeared first on webmindset.

To prove his claim, he has collected a wide variety of data and statistics, some amazing and the others irrelevant, just to take you to the border of impatience when you reach his claim.

Anyway, besides all excessive data provided in the second chapter, the main idea is really important to note: we’re facing a world with so many excessive materials.

Citing James Wallman’s book, ‘Suffocation’,  Bhaskar argues that more than any era in human history, we are eager for getting more without being concerned about having more.

Overload as a good problem

Bhaskar refers to overload as a good problem. By ‘good’ he means that this problem is not a genuine problem, but a problem arisen from our solutions to the scarcity as a more fundamental problem.

However, he emphasizes that having a good problem doesn’t mean that we haven’t any problem. Even good problems can become more fundamental if we leave them unattended:

The acceleration of flows – flows of capital, ideas, data, products, people and media, takes its toll on us as human beings.

The new locus of value

The entire chapter revolves around the new locus of value.

Since the industrial revolution, the largest portion of financial value was generated through increasing the production capacity. But as we have oversupply in many areas now, the locus of value is shifting to curation.

People, companies, and products that help people to filter the world around and pick a few useful items will be the winners of the new era.

Information overload, in Bhaskar’s view, is one of the leading fields with the overload problem. However, the problem is emerged on a global scale and beyond a specific sector.

Related article: The context of the curation

Related article: Curation as the power of selection in a world of excess

The post Curation and the overload problem appeared first on webmindset.

Bhaskar dedicates the second chapter to the context of the curation. He tries to depict the last centuries as a continuous trend of productivity growth in every aspect of the global economy.

He cites various numbers and statistics from the early days of industrial revolution to the present to show the scarcity giving its way to the abundance.

Computation and connectivity as general purpose technologies (GPTs)

The concept of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) was introduced by Bresnahan and Trajtenberg in 1995-6. They argue that a GPT should have the following characteristics:

• Being pervasive in various sectors
• Being able to improve over time
• Help to foster innovation and making new products and services

Bhaskar believes that technology and connectivity can be considered as a GPT:

Productivity growth has always relied on general purpose technologies like steam and electricity to unlock new waves. There is a good argument that computation and connectivity are  just such a GPT and that we are currently living through its consequences.

Based on the statistics and assumptions he provides, Bhaskar argues that we are not reached to the secular stagnation that was predicted to happen soon.

Data creation and data storage are not the only territories affected by the digital technology

This is on the primary ideas presented in the first chapter of Bhaskar’s book.

Here’s how he emphasizes on this point:

We think of digital technology, among other things, as leading to a huge boost in data storage and data creation.

This is true, but it is far from the only way digital technology has transformed conditions of scarcity into conditions of abundance.

Digital tech has led to vast supply increases and price falls in communications, access to markets, inventory space, content creation and publishing, software, consumer choice, services, and processing power.

In each of these areas the past twenty years have seen the dominant trend switch from scarcity to excess.

This abundance has led to rise of the curation as a field of expertise. And this is the way Bhaskar convinces his readers to follow him thorough his book.

The post The context of the curation: computation as a general purpose technology appeared first on webmindset.

At first glance, the book may seem rather boring. Michael Bhaskar’s book, ‘Curation’,  starts with reciting trivial facts and statistics on content abundance. He refers to the vast amount of generated data, the number of daily Facebook posts, increased computational capacity, and many other similar well-known points.

But as you go further into the book, it’s a pleasant read.

To be honest, I didn’t experience any wow moment while reading this book. However,  If you are concerned with information abundance and want to think about this topic, your most creative and inspiring times will happen while you are busy reading curation.

I will dedicate a few posts to quoting author’s ideas that are worth mentioning and re-emphasizing.

The Tsunami of data

The tsunami of data is the term Bhaskar uses to describe the current state of the data economy.

In the introduction of his book, he calls the current time as the post-digital era with the following characteristics:

• Information abundance
• Pervasive connectivity
• The blurring of offline and online environments

We are conditioned for creation and growth

This is the second post he emphasizes in the introduction of the book. And the point he refers to many times in his discussions and arguments.

Bhaskar believes that we are evolved and conditioned to create more and more. The age of scarcity and hunger have conditioned us to secure tomorrow by creating more today.

But now, abundance is not a goal anymore. It has become the new challenge. The case is similar to hunger which is now substituted by obesity (at least in many parts of the world).

Here is how he defines curation:

Related articles:

• Curation and its context (the key points of the first chapter of the book)
• Curation and the overload problem
• The principles of curation

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