Compounding 📈 vs Decaying 📉 Content

Hello Reader,

One of the things about marketing that I find most maddening is that so often it feels like we put a whole lot of work into creating a message, a post, an article, what have you, and it's so very ephemeral. We make it, and then it just... floats away into the ether.

It's kind of the worst, right? A step up from screaming into the void. Maybe.

In my summer group program, I introduced the concept of Compounding Content vs Decaying Content. Now, before I get too deep into this, I want to say—despite the icky name—there absolutely is a place for decaying content in your marketing ecosystem. Most social media is decaying content by its very nature! Now, you may not want to use socials at all (absolutely fine) but that doesn't mean you are going to want to one hundred percent avoid decaying content either.

Here are the two concepts illustrated (I stole this from one of my presentations—sorry it's not one of my infamous drawings).

Compounding Content grows over time, and gets more eyes on it and has more reach, either organically or through repurposing, as it gets older.

Decaying Content declines in reach over time. This can be by the nature of the medium (social media) or the nature of the content (for example: "Seven Design Trends to Watch in 2024" would be expected to decay over the course of a year).

My content strategy approach is heavily biased towards the compounding content side.

This is truly because I'm pragmatic. I know people are very limited in time and mental bandwidth and I'd rather guide them towards marketing that works more over the long haul. It is absolutely the worst to be on a sales call with a great potential client and say, "Oh don't go look at my website, it's all out of date." Compounding content that's true, meaningful, and distinctive a year, two years from now, and even beyond prevents that problem. You always look up to date.

Cool, right?

To that same point, I want to be extremely clear that one type of content is not BETTER than the other—one is simply more efficient in the long term than the other. If you have limited bandwidth, prioritize that which will grow over time, and save you effort in the longterm: compounding content. Then, as your schedule lightens up, you're getting business from your content marketing, you can mix in the fun stuff that's less sticky.

Next week, I'm opening up registrations for Hit Refresh: Revitalize Your Business Blog. If you're ready to freshen up your compounding content marketing, this pop-up program may be a good fit for you. It is NOT an SEO program, it's designed to be more fundamental and foundational than that—we're going to get you in the habit of using this powerful tool on your website (your blog) so marketing is more efficient and more effective over time.

Talk soon,

Sarah

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