When it comes to planning your marketing content, there is certainly no shortage of tactics, tools, and techniques to embrace. But sometimes it can get really overwhelming going down the rabbit hole and trying to organize macro pieces of content like blogs and YouTube videos and how that relates to micro pieces of content like social media posts and reels and stories. It’s important to ask yourself, is all this content you’re creating making an impact, or is it just creating more noise?  

As I sat down to plan out my business in 2023, there were three main things that I focused on to help simplify the process: legacy content, evergreen content, and content pillars.

Legacy Content

Legacy content is somewhat new for me. Or at least the term. I was listening to my friend Nina’s Elevated Visibility podcast the other day when she referenced legacy content. This is content that you want to be known for in your industry and something won’t change seasonally or as trends come and go, but when someone thinks of you and your business and your products or services, what do you want to be known for? For Ellen Grace Marketing, it boils down to growing sales by working smarter. Creating a strategy using data and analytics so you really dive into what will move the needle for your business in the future and then consistently executing that strategy.   If you followed me for a while, you know that I often discuss this topic at length and try to weave it into everything we do.

Evergreen Content

This one you’re probably more familiar with.  This content can live and be shared anytime throughout the calendar year. There are tips, tools, and techniques that you can share with your audience that will resonate with them no matter where they are along the customer journey. For Ellen Grace Marketing, this may be topics like Marketing Strategies, Content Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Customer Loyalty, Driving Profits, Marketing Implementation, etc.  You can learn more about evergreen content here.

Content Pillars

And last but not least, content pillars. These pillars help you group together nuggets of information from your high-level content, breaking them down into bite-size pieces. This is ultimately how your messages get in front of your audience.  These content pillars often rotate through topics that are promotional, educational, and drive engagement. For my business, they tend to focus on areas such as blogs, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, analytics, strategy/planning, and personal stories. Here are some tips on how to layer all this in. 

Here’s a simple Gantt chart visual of how these all work together from our 2023 Marketing Calendar in Airtable.  The blue is Legacy, the turquoise is Evergreen and the green and pink are content pillars.

If you are interested in organizing your content like this and creating a solid plan in 2023, check out our Marketing Roadmaps Packages­ – 3 levels specific to your needs.  If you have spent money on plans that never seem to make their way off the paper and onto your blog, emails, or social posts, check out our full-service Marketing Execution Plans, where we do all the execution for you!