Advice I commonly hear from other writers is to write evergreen content. Write an article that will last and still be relevant a year, two years, or even five years from now. The term "evergreen content" is derived from evergreen trees, which are symbols of eternal life because they retain their leaves over the seasons.
Evergreen content focuses less on current events and trends and more on more universal, existential content that we all struggle with, all the time. Evergreen content has a timeless element. Evergreen topics include how to guides, case studies, and a lot of articles about being more productive, self-improvement, or making more money.
However, I disagree with the sentiment to try to create evergreen content. Instead of evergreen content, I suggest you go full-force in the other direction. Write time-sensitive content. Write about what you're focused on and what grabs your attention now. Ironically, trying to create evergreen content will make your content less evergreen, while focusing on time-sensitive content will give your piece more of a chance to be relevant later.
Yes, there's a chance that time-sensitive content about the Coronavirus might not be as relevant in six months than an article about how to write great headlines, or how to make more money. But who is to say that time-sensitive content will not be as relevant as articles about self-improvement, making more money, or being more productive? We can't tell the future, and who's to say that what is time-sensitive now won't be relevant later? I will share an example from my own writing experience that brings this lesson to light.
Three years ago, I wrote an article titled "How To Make Trump Supporters Change Their Minds," on an older blog, a political satire deriding liberal elitism and shaming of Trump voters. Even though I am a staunch liberal who voted for Bernie Sanders, attitudes towards Trump voters made me increasingly frustrated. I won't get too much into the thought process and the politics, but I randomly decided to re-publish the article on Medium on one July evening in 2019 when I didn't have any ideas.
At the time, I honestly didn't expect much from the article, at least commercially. I was just putting more of my work out there. After all, I wrote it three years ago. It was a political article written in January of 2017, and politics changes very fast.
For all these reasons, I became really surprised when this article blew up and became my most successful piece:
The stats of my most popular story.
As you guys can see, traffic for the piece didn't spike until six months after I re-published the piece, around December of 2019. It has continued to be one of my biggest earners on the platform, even exceeding money I make from the articles I've had in Medium publications.
What the article did was generate a discussion. You will see a lot of different points of views in the comments, and a lot of very vicious comments. That is the nature of the piece, but if you were to tell me, in 2017, a satire piece about how many of my college friends talked about Trump voters and conservatives was going to generate 10,000 views and almost $300, I would have thought you were crazy.
The lesson here is that I wrote what I believed at the time. I wrote time-sensitive content of my thoughts, opinions, and feelings in an authentic way. I wasn't trying to write for an audience. I was trying to write for myself and express my feelings with a courage that I didn't have before.
A lot of the success from the piece is likely luck, but I recently listened in on a call from Medium platform editors where the editors talked about knowing when a draft was forced. It's easy to tell when a writer's heart isn't actually in what they're actually writing, and easy to know when a writer is just trying to make an editor or publication happy instead of making a genuine effort.
Trying to make evergreen content, to me, is often an act of forcing. If I'm going to write an article about "How To Be More Productive," it's going to look exactly like every other viral article on the Internet about how to be more productive. My heart isn't in the topic. I don't believe in it. I would be selling myself out all because someone told me to write evergreen content.
However, time-sensitive content is unique in that you're traversing wild west territories that other people haven't. You're writing and giving perspective on issues you care about that other people haven't — and that's what makes a piece genuine and authentic, instead of trying to replicate another person's success. You're writing about now, and since no one can tell the future, don't be so quick to say "no one is going to read this in six months," because you might be surprised. Yes, that means if you want to write about the Coronavirus, then please do write about the Coronavirus. Give your own take, experience, and perspective. Don't write about what you think everyone wants to you, but write what's close to home. Time-sensitive content is given that label because "time-sensitive" conveys a sense of urgency to write about now, and publish very soon. If there's urgency about it now, why wouldn't we think there would be urgency for readers later? If evergreen content is going to be relevant any time, then what's going to make it urgent to read at any time?
I listened to Nic Pizzolatto, the writer for one of my favorite shows, "True Detective," about how he wrote the show. Close to the end of the video, Pizzolatto emphasizes not trying to be a personal assistant, a replica of other writers. Stop trying to be Hemingway, for example. There was already a Hemingway. As a writer, the best thing you can be is you.
Write time-sensitive content because writing about now will help you get through now. Document this moment not because a lot of people might be interested in it in the future, but so you can go back to it in the future, too. Timeless, universal content is most effective when it's grounded in a moment, not when it's grounded in a series of abstracts.
And what's the most powerful moment to write about? Now.
