What Do Evergreens Have to do with Marketing?
Written by niki juhasz
That’s why smart marketers use the power of evergreen content to push out tweets and Facebook messages during winter break.
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is a message you can post any time. Its lifespan isn’t tied to an event (or season).
Ok, sounds intriguing. What’s an example?
If your organization writes stories or articles, this is a great time to re-share those. For example, if you wrote a story about a child who went from Ds to Bs with the right tutoring resources, you could re-purpose this story and add a nod to the holidays.
Here’s just one example:
“Remember Billy? He’s excited to take his report card home this holiday season. Read his story here!”
What else could I try?
Share the latest research and stats that impact your audience, and what it means for them — they’ll appreciate that you’re looking out for them with smart data.
Think through your past year…
Did you release an infographic this year? Brochure? Annual report? Share it again! You’re guaranteed to reach some followers who haven’t seen it yet.
We can’t stress this enough — PEOPLE LOVE CUTE PHOTOS. If you have pictures of your clients and staff, time to use them.
Do you have go-to content that stands the test of time? We would love to hear about it!
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My first job after college was at a PR agency.
I was working with – and I’m not sure how else to phrase this – men’s men. Think: veterans starting their own government contracting businesses, construction CEOs, cybersecurity leaders and more. There was plenty of little lady-ing.
But there were also many, many lessons that I’m still using in my career today, 15 years later. I’m including one of my favorites, and some additional best practices, below.
You know those days where you just want someone to tell you where we're going to dinner?
Sometimes, I get really tired of making decisions – partly because as busy leaders, we make decisions at work all day, every day.
We ask questions such as:
Should we complete this grant application?
Which events should we go to?
Is that conference worth it?
And sometimes, your teammates don’t agree on the answer.
That’s why at Forthright, we use – you guessed it – a data-backed approach to make these decisions.
In our world of child and family advocacy, few communicators have navigated the trenches quite like Marrianne McMullen.
From managing high-stakes crises in the Obama administration to shaping narratives at DC Public Schools – where I had the immense privilege of working for her – Marrianne has spent her career masterfully championing policies that support children and families. Today, she serves as the Director of Communication & Dissemination at Chapin Hall, an independent research and policy center focused on child and family well-being.
To celebrate the two-year anniversary of her book, Persuasive, I sat down with my former boss and mentor to reflect on what it takes to effectively move the needle.
When I say the word hope, I can hear some of you out there sighing through the internet tubes. And honestly, fair enough. In our field right now, hope can sometimes get packaged up like a vague platitude or a promise that misses the point.
But, hear me out. Today, I’m talking about the kind of hope that’s fierce and very, very practical.
Data consistently tells us that messaging has to trigger a sense of hope if you want to make sure your audiences don’t default to defensiveness.
Age gaps exist all across the organization.
From your eager intern to your seasoned board members (and your program staff to your executive director), you're likely communicating across up to 40 years of generational differences.
Here are some tips and tricks to help you stay aligned.
When we launched our research process – the one that led to our new Frenemies + Jargon: Breaking the Habits That Stall Child and Family Advocacy report – I had suspicions about what we’d find.
We heard that as a field, we’re often fake friends.
Let’s break down what we heard and what we can do about it.
Our average coaching client is a communications director. For the sake of this blog, let’s call her Chloe.
Chloe typically works at a public school district, a foundation or a nonprofit.
She landed in her director role coming from the policy, program or development team. She may only have a few years of direct communications experience, but she’s a natural.
Most of the time, she’s a team of one, and she’s carrying everything communications for her organization.
That’s where we step in as a coach.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at what we normally help out with.
So, you need to tell your board of directors or your school board some bad news.
First, blerg. Sorry about that!
Second, we’re here to help.
I've had the opportunity to be involved in some excellent examples of how to do this well – and, unfortunately, I’ve also had to help clean up a few, um… shall we say, less-than-stellar attempts.
Here is a key approach that I’ve seen work well over the years.
We know that right now, the families you serve, the partners you need, the funders you want to attract and the policymakers who need to know your work have completely changed how they use the internet.
The way they use conversational search on platforms like ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, and Gemini means we simply need to make sure your organization is the trusted AI citation your audiences find.
My cats have me trained.
Yeah, you read that right.
THEY trained ME.
Are we suckers? Oh, absolutely. No question.
Yet, there are some very solid communications lessons to be learned from being a human… trained by… a cat. Here’s what we can all learn.
We’re so used to chasing perfect. Perfection in our work, presenting the perfect image online.
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I’m the first to admit it: I’m a nerd for data.
If something is going wrong – I want to know why, so I can fix it.
If something is going well – I want to know why, so I can keep doing it.
That’s why I love a good communications audit. Here’s why you should join me in my nerd-dom and hop on the communications audit train.