Holiday Content Marketing – 5 Easy Tips [Examples]

Are You A Content Marketing Scrooge?

The holiday season is in full swing. Walk down most streets and you’ll see stores and homes wrapped in colorful seasonal lights. While retailers have filled their stores with Santas and holiday spirit, many marketers have missed an easy opportunity to engage prospects, customers and the public with holiday content marketing. Are you one of these content marketing Scrooges?

Before you respond that incorporating the holiday spirit into your content doesn’t apply to your business, remember that Google uses any celebration as an excuse to get dressed up. Here are four examples that deck their content marketing, namely their blogs with holiday cheer.

Southwest Airlines, a company that doesn’t sell holiday gifts, dressed up its blog called, Nuts About Southwest, with a gingerbread house and cookies during the day, and a moon and Christmas lights at night. While Southwest hasn’t incorporated a holiday theme into its content, it’s not important since it’s posts are stories about people that strike a chord with readers during this holiday period.  

Home Depot’s blog, The Apron, went beyond decorating their blog header with Christmas balls and provided lots of DIY holiday content. Additionally, this content goes a step further and supports sales by linking to specific products where appropriate.

New York based, Kate Spade, quietly integrates the holiday theme into its blog and Tumblr. Both carry through the whimsical branding her customers expect from her. Instead of a heavy dose of holiday content, it’s sprinkled throughout the month of December. Like Home Depot, Kate Spade incorporates links to product where appropriate.

 

While baking-focused King Arthur Flour didn’t dress up for the holidays, its recipe filled blog provides holiday treats. The blog posts give detailed recipes that don’t miss an opportunity to link to King Arthur Flour products. To ensure that the content remains evergreen, there’s a photo at the end that shows how to make a Spring version of the cake. 

Here are five easy tips based on these examples to decorate your content marketing for the holidays. Of course, it’s critical to incorporate these plans into your editorial calendar.

  1. Know your readers. Understand who reads your content and what their needs are. Go beyond your basic marketing personas and consider what help your  audience wants at this time of year?
  2. Be true to your brand Infuse your content with the key elements of your brand. Kate Spade serves up holiday and seasonally relevant content to support her product line. Both the blog and Tumblr continue a consistent use of color and voice.
  3. Integrate the holidays into your content design. This is an easy solution to show you’ve got the holiday spirit. Like Southwest’s blog, choose design elements that are non-denominational.
  4. Create evergreen content. Borrow from King Arthur’s Flour and show readers how to use your information beyond the holidays.
  5. Support sales. Where appropriate, link to seasonally relevant products. Remember, content marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s goal is to support the purchase process.

No one wants to be a marketing scrooge. Therefore, regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice or nothing, incorporate a sense of holiday fun and goodwill into your content marketing.

What other suggestions do you have for incorporating the holidays into content marketing? Do you have any examples?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


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Photo credti: http://www.flickr.com/photos/singhmv/5222288045/

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