I'm gonna say something that I thought would take years, years and years and years and years and years for me to say, as a podcaster. But we're getting close to of creating and published almost 1000 podcast episodes. I know 1000 1000 Since 2018. It's really crazy. And the more that I think about it, I've asked so many questions about content creation, about community about marketing, just so many different things that we have covered on this podcast.
And there was one thing that I was like, I know, we have talked about this somewhere, where have we talked about this, and I was literally up until I just hit record. I was trying to find the previous episodes, where we have talked about this because it's so important. And I was like, I know, like, I was having a deja vu moment of, I'm gonna record this episode. I know, I've
talked about it somewhere. Why do I feel like I'm talking about like, I'm just talking in circles, because when you've done 1000 episodes, y'all between the body report and the Bravo vodcast. We are almost there. But what I wanted to talk about today is timely versus evergreen content. And I wasn't losing my mind y'all. We have talked about this before, but it was called something else. And the focus of that episode was
something entirely. And so I'm going to dive into that you'll know I'm going to tell you all the other things that you should go do and go listen to if you have not listened to the previous times that we've talked about this today. But I just think it's so wild, that I've almost created 1000 podcast episodes, and we still have so much more to cover. Is it wild and arrogant? And to just say we're barely scratching the surface of what we can talk
about here on the show. No, no, it's it sounds it sounds so crazy to me. Yet. Here we are for another episode about creating your content with confidence and what that can look like. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Proffitt Podcast where we teach you how to start launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, Krystal, Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out
with me today. Because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we?
Okay, so here's what happened. Like I said, I knew that we have talked about this before. So if you're a longtime listener, you probably even know your light Krystal. I know exactly. When you talked about it. It was this time a year ago. And it wasn't even that long ago. This is the embarrassing part. I was sitting there. If you go into your Buzzsprout account, you can go into stats, and then go into
Episode downloads. And there's an area in that section that allows you to search by title keyword, like whatever you want to search for. It's usually with whatever's in the title, I guess I should take that back. It's not going to search all your descriptions of your podcasts. But I will search all your podcast titles, and I will do this. Whenever I'm doing research like oh, you don't want to think I talked about this. That would be helpful in this
episode. So whenever I'm doing the planning, I want to make sure I'm referencing old episodes. That way, if you're interested in the topic I'm speaking about, you can go follow up and listen to the other ones in case you missed them. Right. in case they're ones that if you're a newer listener, you would have no idea. You haven't gone back and listened to every single episode. I hope that you do. Well. That's a lot to ask. Right? Like, I hope that you go back and listen to the ones that
are most important to you. But I don't want to repeat myself. That is something that I've always really tried hard to do, we will circle back around to the same topics and themes, but I don't want to just regurgitate something I've already said on here. That doesn't make sense to me. I don't like it when other podcasts do that. I know I'm gonna say the thing that you're not supposed to say. I do not like it when someone reuses a piece of content that they've
already done. Put a fresh spin on it, like give it a little paint job do something to it that makes it a little bit different, a little bit better, I might add, but I don't like to just regurgitate everything that I already said that it makes no sense to me. With all of that being said, this is the episode about timely versus evergreen content. And there's a reason why we're bringing this up. One reason is because it is that time of year, we're getting
closer to back to school. And I always treat back to school time as like a mini New Year's Eve. And I like to pretend that it's a fresh start, because it is it's a fresh start for my kids like, Why? Why are the kids the only ones that get a fresh start, right? I want to kind of clean up my house and get things a little bit more organized, because I'm like, okay, everybody's gonna find their shoes in the morning we had no backpacks are, I just like treating this as a fresh start
and the middle of the year. And so whenever I'm doing that, I'm also doing it in my business in my content, I'm reevaluating goals and looking at things to making sure that I'm on the right track with what I'm trying to accomplish. And so when I look at my evergreen versus timely, it This typically happens at least once a quarter, where I evaluate the content I'm producing. And yes, every single time I create a piece of content, I ask, Will this be relevant? Five to 10 years from
now? Or is this something that I'm just putting out now? And that's what this piece of content is going to be? Because it's fine. It's totally fine. This isn't an episode where I'm going to pit like, okay, timely content in this corner and evergreen content in this corner. We're gonna fight to the death and whichever one wins is what you're gonna do. Oh, my gosh, what is that? claymation show deep. Please tell me you know, I'm talking about it was
on MTV. It was like the celebrity Smackdown where they would pit these clay dolls are like the claymation animate. Y'all know what I'm talking about? I hope somebody is nodding along and is laughing right now. And you're like, oh, my gosh, and it would have the guy that say let's get it on. And then they would like fight each other kids of the 90s. I hope that you're nodding along and you're like, Yes, Krystal. We know what you're talking about. It was absolutely ridiculous. Like, rip MTV. I
know, MTV still around. But you know, without TRL? Is MTV really anything? I don't think so. Anyway, back to what we're talking about here today, I'm not going to pit timely, an evergreen content against one another and one of them is going to come out the champion, they are both very important to my content strategy. And I use them
in very different ways. So like I said, I don't want to repeat myself and tell you all the things if you've already listened to these other episodes, where we've talked about timely and evergreen content, I wanted to come out of the gate, and let you know which episodes you could go back and listen to. So I'm gonna have them linked in the show notes. The show notes for today are KrystalProffitt.com/episode363.
That is for today, it's where you're going to find all these other episodes that I'm going to mention. But the first one, and it's really funny, because all of these have come out in the last seven months. Here we are first of August, right? These have come out in the last few months, all in 2022. Okay, this is a little not evergreen reference. I'm publishing this in August 2022. Therefore, that reference will not be really
anything important later. But everything that I've created that talks about this has been in 2022. So that tells me the need for me to repeat, the same theme over and over again, is pretty important in this year. It's pretty important for a few reasons. And I think it's because a lot of people and this is going to depend on your industry, what you talk about your topic, your niche, all those things. But I think it's important for you to consider whether what you talk about is
timely versus evergreen. So the quick thing to mention is the definitions of those. But before I say that, here's the episode, how to create content for our current and future audience. If you're like, oh my gosh, Krystal, that's the one that's the one I've been thinking about. Because it was the one I was literally losing my mind earlier. I was like, Oh my gosh, I know we talked about it.
That's what it was. I created this episode about creating content for an audience that you have today, or the audience that you're growing that will listen to this in the future. It was kind of one of those like we were jumping back and forth between Present day and future. It was fun. If you like time traveling, like imagination stuff. We definitely did that. A
lot of that in that episode. But it's why it was so important is because I want you to serve the people that listen to you now, whether it's two people or 2000. I want you to serve those people but I also want you to be thinking about a future audience. So that's the one you Ready to go listen to.
But now I want to give you the definitions, right? Because you're like Krystal, you're saying timely, you're saying evergreen? What do you mean? When I say timely content? I'm talking about something that is happening now. So think about news. Think about things that are happening in your industry. Think about trendy things, think about things that are relevant now, that may or may not be relevant five to 10 years from
now. So I imagine and this was really funny to think about fads or trends that have kind of come and gone over the years. And I think about planking to very, very vivid, my imagination. I didn't understand it, then I still don't understand it. Today. I think about the ice bucket challenge. And how big that was for I mean, I was a while like that had a moment in time. That was a really big
deal. I think about these tic tock dances that come up and go right, like they just explode, and then they're kind of gone. And then by the time they get to Instagram, and you know, folks my age are doing it. People are like, Y'all that was so two months ago, what are you even doing now? You look dumb? Yeah, this is why I don't do a lot of that stuff. But you see, I'm saying like, that stuff is fluid, it's moving. It's changing. It is happening
really, really quickly. And it may not be something that is going to be around forever, y'all TikTok wasn't even mainstream five years ago, it was there. It was there, whether it was musically but or Musicaly, however you say it like that's what it was back in the day. And then it got, you know, turned into TikTok and it's it's been there. It's been there. But not everyone knows, knew what it was right? Like you couldn't ask someone of an older generation, do you know what
TikTok is? And they're like, it's the sound o'clock makes Right? Like they would have no idea like me, I would say, that's a song by Kesha from the early 2000s. Like, this would have been my, like honest to God answer because I didn't know what it was five years ago. It's timely now. Maybe it's evergreen, maybe people are gonna know what it is for a long
time. But the things that happen on TikTok may not be something that we are talking about five to 10 years from now, because they're coming and going and you're probably forgetting about what you did last week on the platform. And another way that I think about timely promotions, I was gonna say TikTok. I'm like no other thing. See, it's like getting into my, like, just subconscious now and I'm just yeah, anyway, timely content. I think about live promotions.
Okay, this is where you as a content creator, as someone that's doing blog posts, podcast episodes, YouTube, all the content, you're creating timely content is relevant for live promotions. And what I mean by that is something that has in in date, or in a beginning date, I guess I said that in the reverse order, a cart open and a cart close, right? Like we're looking at something that opens on one day, and it closes on another.
So when you're creating this thing about in a podcast episode, you're talking about, okay, so on this day, the cart is going to open. But if you're listening to this in a future day after cart, closed date, then I'm sorry, the offers not there, like things can get a little weird. I'm not gonna lie in the middle of recording a live promotion piece of content, because you have to think about the audience you're currently
talking to. And then consider, Well, should I talk about my future audience because hopefully, right hopefully, people don't abandon you. As soon as your promotion is over. And they no longer listen to hopefully, you still hopefully have more people listening to you, after this promotion is over. And you have to consider well, do I acknowledge them? Or do I just pretend that they weren't invited to this party? And it's not that big a deal?
These are all questions. I don't want answers to these questions. These are questions you have to answer for yourself, right? Because something is going to happen or even if you have a live event, I have a friend on a shout out Ana. She is the founder of Black pod festival. And she does this. Like she had one earlier this year in Atlanta. And she was talking about it it was leading up to it but then it happened and now it's over. It doesn't mean it's
never gonna happen again. No, she's doing amazing things over there. I hope she does it every single year, multiple times a year would be amazing. But she had it and then it was over. So the content that she created leading up to that is like okay, well, this is kind of documenting what was going on at that time. There's the timely aspect Have it. So it was coming, it was coming, it was coming, then it happened. Now it's over. So that is how you can think about timely content.
So if you're launching a course, you're launching an event, you're launching a book, you're launching a thing, whatever it is, and you're creating content leading up to that, I think that's amazing. One, please do this, I encourage you to do this. But I also want you to think about the future pacing of your audience, and what it's going to sound like to them. Whenever someone brand new discovers what you're doing, or what you've done in the past.
And you could choose to acknowledge that audience or not, again, this is totally up to you, I'm not going to tell you a right way or wrong way. Because if you've been around here, you know, I don't believe that there are rules and content creation, I think that there are guidelines that we can stick to, but there are no rules, you can literally do whatever the heck that you want to do. Okay? I
cannot stress this enough. If someone tells you there was only one way to create content, please run in the other direction, okay, because I don't buy into that strategy whatsoever. So that's timely, those are timely things.
Now let's talk about evergreen. Now, when it comes to Evergreen, it doesn't matter if someone hears what you're saying, what they're gonna read on your blog, what they're gonna watch on your YouTube, any of that it does not matter when they hear it, it is still relevant. So someone could listen to this podcast today. Because, you know, meta or not, this was created as an evergreen
piece of content. I created this for an audience that could listen today when you're listening to it, or five years from now when someone else listens to it. Because what I'm saying today is evergreen content. And now we got really Russian doll nesting like into each other on that, but it's so important that you distinguish, and maybe you even have that as part of your content strategy is like, you know what, I have a checkbox that says, This is evergreen, or this is timely.
And maybe you're asking Krystal, why does this matter? Why does it matter whether it's timely or evergreen? Well, I believe it's important because as someone that listens to shows, you should be able to know this. I was in a lot of podcasts, like even still today with my limited time and resources. I still listen to a lot of podcasts. I said limited time and resources. I didn't mean resources because I mean, you all you need is your phone, I got my phone isn't like
my resources time. And I still find time to listen to podcast, I still find time to listen and watch YouTube videos that I think are important that are relevant to me. And so I know that that is how other people which I know I'm not everybody, everybody has different habits of how they consume content. But I also know people will find someone go back to every single piece of content they've ever created. You've done this. You're You're nodding along right now, aren't you? Yes. Just
say yes. Out Loud. Yes. Okay. Maybe you just freak somebody out. Because you're like, well, this chick on the podcast told me to say yes. And I did it. And now it feels weird. Awkward. Hi, can we be friends? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you don't want to be friends with the person that just saw you say yesterday yourself. But you see what I'm saying? Right? This is so so so important for you to understand, because the "Evergreenness" of your content is what feeds the
SEO monster. And you've heard me talk about SEO, if you've been around here. It's the thing that everybody loves to hate. Because it's complex. It's complicated, but it is the thing that I go back to time and time again. Because SEO has been the thing that has helped me get further faster with my content. Because SEO at the end of the day, I'm gonna link to all the things of your life because auto SEO is we
don't have time for that. In this episode, I'm gonna link to resources that you need to go check out look, I'm gonna add it to my notes right now. Add SEO resources because I just threw that one in there. I wasn't even planning on talking about SEO. But at the end of the day, it's why so much of my content is evergreen. Because I want that SEO juice. I want to feed that SEO monster like today's episode is why I've spent 20 minutes and Buzzsprout saying oh my god, I know I've talked about timely
versus evergreen content. I know that I've talked about this, and then I go And I'm like, oh, it's because I did not title that podcast episode that I did in January 2022. I did not call it timely versus evergreen content. It's why we're creating this new piece of content today. I'm not regurgitating. I'm not just saying everything that I've said before. But I am reinventing
this idea. Because it is that important, because solid foundational principles like what we're talking about here today, don't change, timely versus evergreen. This title? It is it's evergreen, by definition, because people will keep asking this question, when someone is brand new to content when they've been doing it for a while. And they're considering Well, what's timely versus evergreen? Like, this is a question people will still have
five years from now. Because it is kind of one of those marketing questions that you have to think about as a marketer. And you know, maybe you're like Krystal, I'm not a marketer. I'm a podcaster, I'm a YouTuber, I post stuff on social media, I write to my email list, like I'm a blogger, you are a marketer. If you are trying to convince someone to consume your content, you better be a damn good marketer to otherwise it's
not gonna happen. It's not sorry, like, tough love, like shoving in here in the middle of the episode, but you have to be really good at marketing. Maybe that's why you're listening to this podcast, you want some more marketing principles and how to do it. But marketing is one of those foundational principles like marketing, does it change? No, hang on? Because you're like, Wait, hang on a little, we were just talking about tick tock, tick tock, well, okay, you
got me there. Marketing, at its core, does not change from the idea that you are trying to convince someone who may or may not know about the thing that you want them to know about. And then you want them to do a thing, right? Like this is you have a product, a service, a podcast, a YouTube channel, that you want someone to consume, and you have to tell people about it. And one of the things about marketing that I love that never
ever, ever, ever changes. This has been around since the dawn of time is word of mouth marketing. It is legitimately the most evergreen principle in marketing that we can have. Now does that like ebb and flow and twist and turn with you know, you have email marketing, you have direct mail marketing, you have phone marketing, telemarketing, I guess what's called telemarketing. You have so many different ways of sharing the principle of marketing. But your word of mouth never goes out of style.
That is evergreen word of mouth is me watching a movie we actually just got back from watching BJ Novak's new movie vengeance. Yeah, there's a little timely plug right? Because maybe that will be relevant five years from now. But my husband and I just went and saw vengeance. It was really good. It was really, really good. I love BJ Novak. You know if you've been around here, you know how much I love the office office ladies, number one, but guests love it so much. But I
love this movie. And here I am telling you about it. I'm telling you about it. I can tell you about what I loved about BJ Novak's riding or Issa Rae is acting oh my gosh, she was so good. Or Ashton Kutcher and his absurdity or the fact that all of this was set in Texas and the references for Texas like the inside Texan jokes were so good. So, so good. And I'm sitting here telling you about it. This is marketing. This is the basic principle of word of mouth
marketing. And again, it is evergreen, it's not going anywhere. It is not, you probably told someone recently how much you love a brand new salad dressing that you bought at the store, or some sort of chips that you have, or your brand new socks that you bought at Costco and you're like, you know what, they were only $7 I don't think they're gonna be that good, but they're really comfortable. This is all word of
mouth marketing. And I just I feel like I could maybe I shouldn't do another episode and word of mouth marketing, because now I'm getting all fired up about it. And I have so many other marketing ideas that I want to share with you. But we're getting off topic. Let's go back to the timeline evergreen, because I want to wrap this up in a pretty little bow for you. Because like I said from the beginning, I don't think that one of them is better than the other. I believe that
you need both. If you are someone that is going to sell products, sell services, do affiliate promotions have sponsors on your podcast, or you know create a YouTube channel that blows up and it goes viral and all the things things you're going to need to know about evergreen versus timely content.
And at the end of the day, I wanted to share with you some of the questions that go through my mind whenever I'm creating a piece of content, because remember, I was like, Okay, you could add a little checkbox in your content calendar that says, This is timely. This is evergreen, you could put a T or an E next to it that way, you know, the reason why is because it's all going to depend on your goals. What are
your goals? That's another episode that we're going to link to in the podcast hanging, I'm added to my notes. One are your podcast goals. I think I have multiple episodes about this. We have launched goals, overall goals, like all the things, I have lots of episodes on goals, but depending on your goals, you're gonna decide is this timely, or evergreen? For me, it depends on a few things. One, it depends on the platform and that platforms audience. Here's an example, YouTube versus a
podcast. So YouTube, in my experience, and the way I create content on YouTube, YouTube is better for an evergreen content approach. It's why it is keyword heavy. It is why it is titled The way that it is it is why I concentrate on the tags and the descriptions and how I name everything and very strategic things that I do on YouTube, that's evergreen baby, that is all as an evergreen machine. If I've ever seen one, a podcast,
it's a little bit different. My podcast is a combination of both, you will see lots of content here that is evergreen that will be relevant five to 10 years from now, if you happen upon this podcast at that time. But it's also me talking about current promotions give you an example. Here's it, here's a little timely plug for you. I did a promotion in June called BC stack, I do it every summer, it's something that has been a
lot of fun to do. But that has a very clear, cart open cart close comes around once a year, it's here and then it's gone. And I create content about that. I will do it on my podcast in our YouTube channel. But mostly on the podcast because it's where I share that information because I believe this audience is more of a timely, like, you're gonna see the notification in your phone or wherever you're listening.
And you're gonna say, okay, Chris will put a new episode out today, I'm gonna go listen, that is how the behavior of podcast listeners tend to be YouTube. I'm subscribed to all kinds of YouTube channels, I don't get emails, notifications, I don't even care. I don't even care when they put out new videos. This is just me again, this is my behavior. But I don't go back to a lot of YouTube videos, or
YouTube channels. And immediately like, oh, my gosh, I have like 20 New videos, I will go back and try to find videos that I need right now. The Evergreen stuff that maybe they've been put out two years ago that I'm like, Oh my gosh, I love those people. I don't even care if this is all video. I love what they have to say I'm gonna go watch it. So that's how I look at the platform and the audience perspective to decide, is this going to be timely is
going to be evergreen. And then the next thing that I consider is, what am I trying to do? Six to 12 months from now. Now I don't ask this question. Obviously, before I create any type of content, I'm not always like playing the guessing game of like, where are we going to be like, I don't have a crystal ball. Pun intended, right? I don't have a crystal ball to say, well, this is where I'm
going to be pretty y'all. If you've been listening, if you've been around here, you know that things have changed in the last six months, like things have changed drastically around here. In the last six months, I was creating two podcast episodes around here, I was creating three YouTube videos, I was creating all kinds of social posts, emails to my list, like all the things we were creating was content on steroids around here six months ago, things have
changed dramatically. And so what I like to do and you know this, I plan my content a quarter at a time, I like to look at what's on the horizon. And how important is the topic that I'm speaking about going to be in a few months. And the reason why I bring that up is I think about the holidays, right? Because I can see based on trends of my content. If you're new to content, you won't have this data and statistics to look
at. But I know the behaviors of my audience tend to ebb and flow around the holidays, like typically, in the beginning of December, it'll be pretty busy. And I'll see my numbers pretty much around the same. And then right around December 21, until around January 3, things take a step back, like, things go a lot slower. And I don't freak out about it. I'm like, Oh my gosh, like, nobody's gonna say ever is the baby me. What do I do? What
do I do? I'm like, oh, yeah, my audience is probably driving on the road. Maybe they're actually talking to their family and hanging out with him. Maybe they're traveling, and maybe they've listened to one episode, but I don't have time to catch up on these other ones. That's okay. It's okay. Like, I don't hold myself accountable for what my audience is doing in that time, I give myself grace, to
just go with the flow. And just say, okay, you know what, I think that I'm going to create a piece of content that is going to be timely, because I want to speak directly to my audience and say, Hey, I know you're probably traveling right now, when you're listening to this, because I'm releasing this in December, it's the middle of the holidays, but I just want to, you know, share that I'm
thinking about you. And you know, I hope you have a good holiday or that you are having, I don't know, something, something heartwarming, right? Like, I feel like my Grinch heart is here right now. And it's like, it's two, it's three sizes too small. And it can even think of something really sweet to say, but you know, just wait till December, I'm thinking of something good. Okay, I'm cooking it up. Now. It's going to be great. By the time I say it in December, but you get what
I'm saying. I think it's so important for you to evaluate timely versus evergreen, maybe it doesn't even have that much weight on you, right? You're right Krystal, this isn't even relevant for me. I don't even think about this as as much Well, I think about content all the time, every single day, literally every single day, I'm thinking about content. And so the questions that I have, I can only assume other people have
them too. And so I just want to share with you my thoughts on timely versus evergreen content and a few things for you to consider.
Again, we have so many resources for you to listen to, in the show notes, go to KrystalProffitt.com/episode363. To find all of them, there's one for how to create content for our current and future audience. I'm also including two really great episodes we did earlier this year, about content creation definitions, you need to know it's actually a part one and part two series. Because that is just a great one like talking about foundational
principles. If you want an example of evergreen content, those are basic baseline evergreen pieces of content. Then I'll add in the ones about SEO resources and ones about goals because those are all super, super important when you're looking at your content overall. Y'all we got through this, oh my gosh, I feel like I could have ranted for so many
other marketing things. And but you know what, here we are, we're at the end, I'm going to save that we're gonna talk about word of mouth marketing again, because it's one of those that, you know, things just come up whenever we're here. And I think about other ideas. And like I said, we're almost at 1000 episodes. And I'm still going because I love this so much. I love it. So so much. So thank you for being here with me today. And I hope that you learned something. I would love
it. If you would take a screenshot wherever you're listening to this. tag me on Instagram Stories. Let me know what you thought about today's episode if it was helpful if you learn something, or if you're like, oh my gosh, she talked about evergreen versus timely content again, and I had to hear it again. But maybe it was the maybe third time's the charm, right? Maybe you needed to hear this to really like let it sink in. I hope that that works for
you. But if you're brand new around here, make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button wherever you are listening and remember, as always, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.