With Easter behind us and summer just around the corner, we thought we’d address the topic of seasonal content marketing.
There’s no doubt that producing content associated with a particular season – think summer holidays, Halloween, Christmas – can be a really successful way to engage customers. By outreaching fun and topical content you are more likely to reach a wider audience, which will boost brand awareness and have a knock-on effect on long-term sales.
So where do you start? We know it can be really hard to cut through the noise and come up with a seasonal angle that genuinely suits your brand identity. Which is why we’ve listed our top 5 tips to make your seasonal content marketing more effective.
1. Plan ahead
This one should go without saying, though often it doesn’t. Think about it, how many times have you ‘missed the boat’ with a topical event or seasonal celebration? By creating a content calendar for the year and filling it with important dates you’ll be able to see what’s coming up well in advance. Ideally you should aim to start creating content at least a month in advance of when it needs to be outreached.2. Stay on-brand
While filling your Instagram feed with cheesy pictures of eggs and chicks at Easter might seem like the most obvious way to execute seasonal content marketing, it’s not very on-brand for say, a furniture retailer. Instead, perhaps you could post a photograph of one of your kitchen tables featuring a beautiful bowl of Easter treats? Or write a post about Easter decorations? Whenever you’re coming up with ideas, make sure there is a clear and relevant purpose for the content, which should link back to your wider business goals. You’ll also want to try and use brand colours and style guidelines as much as possible – remember, just because it’s Valentine’s Day, doesn’t mean you have to use pink!3. Utilise keywords
Keywords can be the difference between a campaign that takes off and one that totally flops. Do your SEO keyword research at the ideation stage to help you decipher what customers want to read about. Then, use those keywords strategically in the content you write, focusing on including them in headers, page titles and meta descriptions. If you’re posting content on social media, you could also do some research into which hashtags are often used in relation to the season you’re creating content for. As ever, it’s a fine balance between choosing keywords (and hashtags) which are popular but not too competitive.
4. Write outside the box
Nobody likes a cliche, especially not at Christmas or Thanksgiving when we’re already overloaded with them. Make your content stand out by thinking outside the box with your ideas. As we’ve already mentioned, you’ll need to make sure your ideas stay relevant and on-brand, but that doesn’t mean they have to be boring. One of the best ways to make your seasonal content stand out is to subvert the cliches and write something unusual. Instead of writing an article about the best Valentine’s Day holiday destinations (if you’re a travel company) you could write about the ultimate solo travel trips for single people instead. You get the jist.5. Think evergreen
There will be some seasonal content that is very specific to one year or another, but try to mix it up and produce other pieces which you can reuse again and again. Articles like ‘the best activities to do with kids during the summer holidays’, or ‘popular Christmas party hairstyles’ will always be relevant. Remember, this is where doing your keyword research is essential. If you’ve chosen an idea based on real search data, chances are it’s likely to be a popular search term year on year. So if your content doesn’t rank in time for this year’s seasonal event, it should do next year.We hope we’ve helped inspire you to start creating some seasonal content. Our final piece of advice is simply to give it a go, content creation is all about trialling ideas and figuring out what works for you – so what have you got to lose?
And if you simply don’t have the time or resource to dedicate to content strategy and copywriting, get in touch and let us help.
