Digital assets can be hugely valuable to your business. But like many things, they’re not all created equal. While some digital assets are time-sensitive, purpose-specific or topical, others are referred to as ‘evergreen’.
In this post, we’ll discuss what exactly is meant by evergreen when it comes to assets, some examples of them, and how to make the most of your evergreen assets.
Look up the definition of ‘evergreen’ online, and you’ll find something along the lines of:
A tree or plant that doesn’t lose its leaves
In contrast to seasonal plants, evergreens stay green throughout the year. So how does this relate to your digital assets? Put simply, evergreen assets are those which are continually relevant and usable regardless of the season, the year or the changing business landscape.
Consider a branded image of your products under a Christmas tree, or a blog post looking at industry trends for a specific year. They’re great pieces of content for the time, and certainly valuable in their own right. But they’re not evergreen. If you really want to get the most bang for your buck, evergreen is the way to go.
Because they can be used again and again, there’s potentially no limit to the return you’ll get on your investment into evergreen assets. The same is true for their impact, whether that’s continually driving traffic to your site, generating leads or just raising brand awareness.
While it might seem like a basic essential rather than an asset, your logo can and will be used and reused countless times each week, month and year. From printed documents and digital watermarks to placement on your products, there’s no end to the places your logo is used, which is why it’s so important to get it right from the start.
Every business has its own way of doing things. That could be a day-to-day process or the way you style your brand’s images. Creating how-to guides or brand guidelines that puts these processes and preferences into words can continue to save you time and maintain high standards as more and more members of staff use them.
Remember that, while generally evergreen, you can still update guides and guidelines to reflect small changes to how things are done.
While many of the images and documents you create will be topical or tailored to a specific product or purpose, you can cut asset creation time and improve consistency by creating templates. That could be anything from a pre-designed document template with your logo and address or a video template with a branded intro and outro.
With evergreen assets being used again and again over time, it’s important that they’re easy for employees to access and retrieve whenever needed. It’s also paramount that they’re stored securely, given how valuable they are to your business.
That’s where digital asset management can help. iBase’s feature-rich software allows you to store digital assets in a secure, central repository which all staff can access. Using sophisticated metadata, you can tag files with keywords, locations or other data, so they’re quick and easy to retrieve when needed.
Want to find out more? Book a free one-to-one demo with our expert team, who can talk you through all of the software’s powerful features.
