The individual isn't the strategy. Editorial Intelligence is.

When Search Engine Journal published “Evergreen Content Is Over – The Individual Is The Only Strategy Left”, it captured something many content teams have been sensing for months.

The old playbook is breaking.

Create keyword-focused evergreen content. Rank. Build traffic. Repeat.

That model isn’t disappearing overnight, but it is becoming far less valuable than it once was. If an AI can answer the question directly, your article increasingly becomes source material rather than the destination.

I agree with much of the diagnosis.

Where I see things differently is the proposed solution.

I don’t think the individual is the strategy. I think Editorial Intelligence is.

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Most organisations don’t have an expertise problem

They have an activation problem.

Walk into almost any organisation and you’ll find extraordinary knowledge:

• Researchers producing reports
• Sales teams hearing customer objections every day
• Product specialists solving difficult problems
• Executives speaking with customers and partners
• Webinars and events generating conversations that never make it beyond someone’s notebook
• Customer success teams discovering what really drives adoption

The problem isn’t a lack of expertise.

It’s that almost none of it compounds.

Knowledge gets published once, presented once, discussed once — and then disappears into folders, decks, Slack threads and meeting notes. Six months later, another team starts asking the same questions. The organisation begins again.

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Expertise isn’t the product

One sentence from the Search Engine Journal article stood out:

“Expertise is the product.”

I think expertise is something even more valuable.

It’s the raw material.

Raw expertise doesn’t create authority. It doesn’t create thought leadership. It doesn’t improve AI visibility. It doesn’t help sales teams or customers unless someone turns it into something usable.

That’s the missing layer.

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The missing operating system

Editorial Intelligence sits between organisational knowledge and public communication. Not as another content process — as the system that transforms expertise into reusable assets.

Content is simply one output.

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The shift isn’t from brands to people

The article argues that trust increasingly attaches to individuals rather than brands. I think that’s largely true. People trust people.

But organisations still possess something individuals rarely have:

• Accumulated knowledge built over years
• Proprietary customer conversations
• Original research and data nobody outside the organisation can access
• Thousands of implementation experiences

The opportunity isn’t replacing brands with individuals. It’s helping organisations organise their expertise around identifiable experts, clear narratives and evidence that only they possess.

Individuals become the voice. Editorial Intelligence becomes the engine.

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AI has changed the economics of knowledge

Generative AI has dramatically reduced the value of generic information.

Explaining a concept is no longer scarce. Summarising public knowledge is no longer scarce. Producing another “ultimate guide” is no longer scarce.

What remains scarce is knowledge that couldn’t have come from anywhere else:

• Original research
• Customer evidence
• Practical experience from real implementations
• Strong editorial judgement
• Clear points of view grounded in evidence

Editorial Intelligence exists to make those assets visible and reusable — precisely because they are the things AI cannot replicate.

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From content strategy to knowledge strategy

For years the question was: what should we publish next?

Increasingly, I think the more important question is: what do we already know that nobody else can say?

• How do we preserve it?
• How do we connect it across teams and time?
• How do we build coherent narratives from it?
• How do we make it discoverable by customers, AI systems and future employees?

Those questions feel much more durable than debating the future of SEO.

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The next competitive advantage

The organisations that succeed over the next decade won’t necessarily employ the smartest experts. Most already do.

The winners will be the organisations that build the best systems for capturing, connecting and activating what those experts know.

That’s why I don’t think the individual is the strategy.

The strategy is building an Editorial Intelligence capability that allows expertise to compound rather than disappear.

Because in an AI-powered world, creating content becomes easier every day. Turning knowledge into lasting organisational advantage does not.