Envato Reveals: The Secret to Year-Round Success
- Kristin Brodie
- September 13, 2023
- read
Ever wondered how you can ensure you’re getting sales on your items year-round? The trick is making sure you have a solid content strategy!
Today we’re covering just one approach to a content strategy: creating a mix of generic content, content based on trends, and some based on seasonal events. By strategically blending evergreen content with seasonal and trending pieces, you can ensure a sustainable revenue stream and maintain a strong presence in the creative stock market.
To help you understand the theory behind this content strategy, we’re going to break the 4th wall and show you how the Envato Author Hub content maps onto each of these pillars.
Having a balanced content strategy that considers the short-term (trends), medium-term (seasonal) and long-term (evergreen) is a recipe for success!
Jo Birleson Senior Author Engagement Manager, Envato
Quick links
- Harnessing the power of evergreen content
- Anticipating and embracing seasonal demand
- Riding the waves of trends
- Finding a balance
#1: Harnessing the Power of Evergreen Content
‘Evergreen’ is a term that is used to describe content that is always relevant. This pillar is named after evergreen plants, which retain their foliage and remain green all year round.
Like their leafy friends, evergreen content stays fresh and topical all year. It has a steady flow of customer interest and traffic, and can be produced and published at any time.
Evergreen content offers a lasting ROI (Return On Investment) as it continues to attract customers long after its initial creation.
Because of this, evergreen content is a valuable investment of your time and energy. It can generate earnings for years to come, provided it doesn’t look out of date or old-fashioned.
Some examples of search terms that we see throughout the year and would be considered evergreen include:
Evergreen content forms the foundation of your portfolio and helps you to build authority in organic search. Having a strong evergreen offering can also help you rank better for seasonal or trending keywords—especially when related to similar topics.
Helmut Berié Senior SEO Manager, Envato
Breaking the 4th Wall
Our Envato Reveals series is an example of evergreen content on the Author Hub. It doesn’t matter whether you’re reading this article the day it’s published, or 6 months after—the messages are still relevant!
Evergreen content on Envato Elements
#2: Embracing Seasonal Content
Seasonal content relates to these predictable fluctuations in demand for certain topics based on the date or time of year. Many seasonal spikes in demand happen at a predictable and recurring rate—often annually.
Publishing seasonal content taps into the pulse of the moment and captivates audiences by aligning with specific times of the year.
Examples of seasonal events that drive content trends include:
- The seasons: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring
- Religious festivals: Easter, Diwali, Ramadan, Christmas, Passover etc
- Calendar events like New Year’s Eve, Back to School
- Cultural events like Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween
- Country-specific events like Independence Day
In order to meet seasonal demand, you need to know how long it takes you to create and submit content, and work backwards from there. Customers begin to look for seasonal content several weeks before the event itself.
That’s why we recommend submitting your seasonal content well in advance of the event. For example, we suggest you start submitting your Christmas-related content in October!
To discover holidays and seasonal events that are likely to create spikes in demand, do some research about upcoming festivals and events. You can start with simple searches like “what global events happen in <month>”, and go from there.
Many Envato Elements and Market customers are based in North America. Due to this, we suggest you tailor some of your content to the major events celebrated there, like Thanksgiving.
A diversity calendar is a great resource for planning your seasonal content.
Seasonal content is an important part of every marketer’s strategy. It helps creators connect with their audiences by meeting them where they’re at.
Adam Noonan Marketing Director, Envato
Breaking the 4th Wall
We publish articles at the end of every calendar year like our 2022 Wrapped and Most Popular Items of the Year. These would be considered seasonal content, as they happen at the same time each year. We also start to think about them in the months before publishing.
Additionally, we publish Seasonal Trend Alerts to give our Authors a heads up on the global events and movements that are likely to impact customer demand.
Examples of seasonal content on Envato Elements
#3: Riding the Waves of Trends
The last content pillar we’re covering in this article is trend-based or topical content.
This pillar refers to content that emerges from pop culture trends and cultural ‘moments’ that have huge spikes in popularity. These eventually fall away only to be replaced by the next big thing.
One way to think about trending content is to consider how social media trends rise and fall.
“When a particular topic, joke, or look is trending, it means audiences are pre-primed to recognize content that aligns with that trend, and therefore they’re more likely to engage with it,” says Envato’s social media manager, Rachel Ramsay.
That’s why embracing a trend—and putting a unique spin on it—is a great way for brands and creators to connect with their existing audience, and reach new ones.
But here’s the thing, says Rachel: you have to be fast.
To be successful with trend-based content, you need to be reactive. Unlike seasonal-based content where you know in advance that demand is going to rise for a particular theme, trends can feel like they come out of thin air.
Trends can rise and fall in a matter of days, and if brands and creators post content once the trend is already feeling ‘old’, they could appear out of touch—even more so than if they hadn’t bothered embracing the trend at all! So as an Author, if you spot a trend, it’s best to drop everything, and create assets as fast as possible—potential customers will be hot on your heels!
Rachel Ramsay Social Media Manager, Envato
Examples of content trends
- Barbiecore / Barbie pink / Barbie movie
- 2000s nostalgia and the Y2K aesthetic
- Global events like the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Met Gala, the Super Bowl, royal weddings
Breaking the 4th Wall
The articles we publish with the shortest lead time usually fit into the news and announcements category. They’re generally much more reactive than our evergreen or seasonal content. One example of this is our article highlighting when Elon Musk’s X logo reveal used a video template available on Elements.
Another example of the Author Hub’s trend-based content is our Trend Deep Dive articles. In these, we analyze a trend that we’ve noticed popping up in our customer search data.
Other trend-related content we produce includes the ‘most popular items’ articles (like this one on the Most Popular Fonts in December 2022), and our Item Opportunities articles.
Trending content on Envato Elements
Anything related to the global craze that has been Barbie! Check out the Elements Blog to see our roundup of items that help customers get the Barbie look!
Finding a balance
Having a balance of evergreen, seasonal, and trend-based content is important to ensure you’re meeting the needs of your customers all year round.
Investing in quality evergreen content allows you to stay relevant at all times and generate consistent revenue. Seasonal content allows you to capitalize on global events and preempt customer demand. Getting on board with trends allows you to take advantage of quick flashes of high demand in a short period of time.
Overall, a holistic approach to content creation can help to protect you against slumps in sales and bring customers to your items every day of the year!
If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more from Envato’s in-house experts, check out the rest of our Envato Reveals series.
