There are two types of content:
- Content that is made to go viral
- Content that is made to be evergreen
Let’s get into each one of them and settle on which one is better.
Viral Content
Viral content is the one in which a content creator tries to identify a trending topic and make a piece of content on it with the hope that it will resonate with a lot of people on the internet.
For example, one of the most heated topics on the internet in 2021/22 has been NFTs.
A lot of content creators made videos on it with their opinions, and then others made reaction videos on the opinions of others.
And then, every magazine, online newspaper, and meme page tried to weave their content around it.
What you need to know about this is that it is a continuous cycle.
Because old trends keep dying out and the new ones keep emerging.
If you are playing this game, you will have to keep making content that has a very low shelf-life.
This is not at all sustainable.
Evergreen Content
On the other hand, we have evergreen content.
This is the one that is positioned from the beginning to be everlasting and designed not to follow a momentary trend.
Evergreen content rarely goes viral, because the content is positioned in a way, that it’s going to stay true, useful, and relevant for years to come.
I make every piece of content with a 10-year mindset.
If you go to my Instagram or my YouTube, you will see that almost every piece of content is positioned in a way that the content will be true years from now.
Even this article is written in a way that you can be reading it 5 years later and still using the material in it to develop your Personal Brand.
Why You Should Make Evergreen Content
The first major advantage of evergreen content is that platforms like YouTube keep promoting your content for years to come.
I have seen multiple examples where the content made 1-2 years ago has gotten from traction and views after a year or two.
And the second advantage is that on platforms like Instagram and Facebook – where the content goes down after a while – you can reposition it.
If it was a piece of video content, you can recycle it and post it in written format or make an infographic out of it.
In 2018, I posted a video on “How To Deal With Smartphone Notifications Anxiety”. It was a huge success.
In 2019, I came up with an infographic with the exact content of that video and reposted it.
Since the video did well, I knew that people would find the same content helpful for years to come irrespective of the medium in which it is communicated.
And sure enough, they did.
This is the power of evergreen content.
Two Ways to Create Evergreen Content
There are a lot of strategies to create valuable, evergreen, and profitable content.
When you see most people who are making content, they’re not following a strategy. Instead, they are just putting content out there with the hope that something would work.
That’s something you should never do.
To make it simple for you, I will share the two most important strategies that will help you to accelerate your content creation game.
Both of them are tested by me and have been used by people that I have helped build their content brands. So, they will work for you as well.
The two strategies are:
- Thirty Pieces of Content
- A-to-Z Content
30-Pieces of Content
In 30 pieces on the topic, each piece is independent and stand-alone. This strategy positions you as a Thought Leader on a topic.
What you do is that you choose a topic and you make 30-pieces of content on that topic by approaching it from 30 different angles.
I will share in the next section what model you can use to approach a certain topic from 30 different angles.
An example of such a strategy is my #OneMinuteShow on Instagram.
Before starting my #OneMinuteShow, I conceptualized 30 videos on the topic of Personal Development and wrote a one-minute script for each of them.
Once those 30 scripts were ready, I could feel that I am ready to start making videos and posting them 2-3 times a week.
This made me worry-free as to what topics to think of for new content. I had about 3 months of content planned in advance.
If you look at my Instagram now, I have made 100+ episodes of my #OneMinuteShow that have been watched over 5M times and gathered 30K+ followers in the process.
This meant that as I started recording videos and posting them, I could focus my attention on understanding how to market them, increase their engagement, and in turn increase my followers.
Each one of these episodes has a distinct theme. Each of these is dealing with a different idea or a concept – ranging from how to get better at negotiation skills to having a winning mindset.
So, I recommend planning about 30 short pieces of content, or 10 long pieces of content in your niche ahead of time.
Above all, this will give you clarity in your direction and ensure that you don’t get confused and give up, like most people, after just 3-5 pieces of content.
A-to-Z Content
In A-Z content strategy, you pick one topic that is let’s say related to sports, fitness, education, communication skills, music instruments, or anything you’re good at and you create content in pieces that will lead your audience from a beginner to a pro-level.
You can create a chain of 10, 20, or 50 pieces of content on the topic to create your viewer through an entire journey over months.
A person who consumes all the episodes in the series on a topic will become your fan for life.
Your valuable content might have improved their level of understanding of a certain skill, or a certain mindset.
No matter what topic you choose for the next series, that person will be there to consume your content, support you, and help you build your brand further.
Remember, A-to-Z content is always long-form. You can deliver it in bits and bites – ten minutes per episode, one minute per episode, one blog post per week, or three hours of master class at a time.
It takes viewers or readers from one place to another, through this entire journey.
My Digital Nomad Academy is a great example of the A-Z strategy.
I plan to take you from A-to-Z in building your own brand, becoming location independent, and developing your own laptop lifestyle.
This article is one such building block in your journey.
If you are making content for a long-form platform, such as YouTube, where the content keeps running for years to come, the A-to-Z approach is usually better.
The 30-Pieces of Content approach, on the other hand, is better if you’re making content for platforms like Tik-Tok, Instagram, or Facebook.
But either approach can be used to make Evergreen content. You cannot compromise on that.
Endless Content Ideas With TPEC Method
Now that you know how you can present your content, you still need to learn how to come up with the ideas.
All you need for this is a THINKING MODEL which is based on the TPEC strategy. It stands for:
Tactical approach
Psychological Approach
Expert’s Approach
Case study Approach
When you use TPEC Model, you not only have endless content ideas, but you also attract a different set of followers by consistently repositioning your content in different ways.
TPEC Method helps you see the same problem from different angles. This helps you make content from different perspectives to resonate with a different set of audiences.
Tactical Approach
In the tactical approach, you give people tricks and hacks to improve their lives in a number form.
This approach works because that’s how people consume content these days online. It gets instant attention.
They find it easy to crack a skill in the form of numbers. It’s one of my favorite approaches. Therefore, I’m sure it’s going to work for you as well.
Examples:
5 Ways To Improve Your Productivity
3 Ways To Make Money Online
5 Lame Excuses Unsuccessful People Make
Psychological Approach
Secondly, in this approach, you evoke a certain emotion in the viewer by giving them a what-if scenario.
You let them imagine how their life would be if they did a certain thing.
You give answers to people for what they are looking for. It’s the psychological way of thinking and it will help you to come up with tons of content ideas.
Examples:
What Happens When You Reach 10,000 Followers?
What Happens When You Start Earning $10K Per Month In Passive Income?
What Happens When You Stop Making These 5 Lame Excuses?
The third example is the same piece of content that I mentioned in the Tactical approach. But, it is positioned differently.
In this variant, you do not stop at just listing down the 5 lame excuses. You also throw light on how the person can be more productive and successful if he/she stops making the lame excuses.
When you approach it differently, a different set of people get attracted to your content that might not have stopped to consume your previous content.
For instance, some people like consuming more Psychological approach content as compared to the Tactical approach content, and vice versa.
Expert’s Approach
This is what is popularly known as the How-To approach.
It’s called the Expert’s approach because you think and create content from an expert’s perspective.
Examples:
How Can Introverts Improve Social Confidence?
How To Become Good At Public Speaking?
How To Create Your Personal Brand in 30 days?
Case Study Approach
The Case Study approach is also a variant of the How-To approach. The difference is that this approach has the subject as yourself or a third person.
When you use this technique, your entire positioning of the video will be around a personal experience of an individual. This will make that piece of content much more relatable.
A 25-year-old might see my content on travel and feel, “This guy is of my age. If he could be a Digital Nomad, why can’t I be?”
This has an incredibly positive psychological impact on the individual.
See the difference:
How To Make A 6-figure Online Business In One Year: Expert Approach
How I Made A 6-figure Online Business In One Year: Case Study Approach
Examples:
How SHE Lost 10 kgs In 10 Weeks Following A No-carb Diet?
How Did Elon Musk Start His First Business Using This Strategy?
In conclusion, if you use these methods, you will never run out of valuable content.
You can continue creating evergreen content and will never have to rely on the hope of your content going viral.
You will still need to have ideas that make you stand out from the masses which you can learn about from this article.
Over on my blog, Digital Nomad Academy, you can find several other articles and masterclasses that will teach you different aspects of building your own laptop lifestyle.
Also, for behind-the-scenes mischief, you can follow me on Instagram and join 30K+ others like you who are in different phases of building their location independent lifestyles.
Hope to see you around globe-trotting one day 🙂
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