Holiday Content Marketing: 13 Tips Any Business Can Use

How to Decorate Your Content For The Holidays

Before you say bah humbug, think about what you can do to your content marketing for the holidays, regardless of what celebrate, if you let yourself be a kid for the teeniest, tiniest moment.

My husband has a friend who takes the role of Santa seriously. 365 days a year he looks and acts like Santa. What began as a joke has become a professional calling.

His cold weather red parka bears the name Santa embroidered in white thread. Regardless of the time of year or occasion he shows up, dressed in holiday reds and greens with his white hair and beard flowing. In fact, he’s always on the look out for festive clothes and accessories.

The important point for marketers is that he has fun being Santa. It’s not about embracing a particular religion or point of view but rather getting into the holiday spirit whether it’s Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice or New Year’s Eve.

13 Holiday content marketing tips

To help you with your holiday content marketing, here are 13 actionable tips any business can use. Just like the ornaments you put on your tree, you can pack them away and reuse them next year.

1. Decorate your business for the holidays.

The winter holidays are the time when people pull out all of the stops and dress their home and gardens with lights and Christmas decorations. My mother and sister-in-law love to drive around and look at how neighbors decorated their homes, the more over-the-top and gaudy the light displays the better.

Actionable Content Marketing Tips:

• Trim your content home(s) such as your website and blog. Make them festive with holly, Christmas lights, candy canes and other decorations. The goal is to make it feel festive and different to get readers to stop and pay attention.
• Add some Easter eggs. Give readers a reason to spend time with your content. Like a Hirschfeld cartoon where readers looked for the hidden “Ninas”, incorporate a game into your content.

2. Dress up in your holiday finery.

Clothes show your holiday spirit, even if you don’t dress like Santa. Coke Zero put a fun twist on the traditional holiday sweater.

Actionable Content Marketing Tips

• Create holiday theme photographs for social media platforms. Change your profile photographs to be aligned with the holidays. Don’t just modify the background with Photoshop, think about adding fun in terms of symbols and charms.
• Add a holiday touch to author photos. Photoshop photographs with holiday symbols or dress up in holiday clothes. You can allow your writers to create their own festive look or ask everyone to use a consistent color or accent such as a Santa’s hat or reindeer ears.
• Put your images in holiday frames.  Incorporate Christmas decorations or holly around your photographs and other visuals. Use visual cues to set your content apart.

3. Reinvent the holidays for your target audience.

Everyone has their own holiday traditions, whether it’s a new tree decoration or special foods. Of course, there’s the opportunity to create new traditions for your business through your content.

Actionable Content Marketing Tips

• Collect holiday stories from your employees. Get your organization involved in the content creation process. The key is to make it easy to execute and remove the risk of failure.
• Use the power of holiday traditions to engage with your customers. Collect holiday traditions from your fans. For example, their favorite holiday cookie recipe or the last minute gift pattern.
• Provide product instructions they need. Create a set of product articles or short videos (via Vine or Instagram) to show parents (and others) how to use those wonderful holiday presents. Even more important don’t forget to show the elves how to put together the gifts!

4. Make your holiday picture perfect.

Holidays are an important time to capture photographs. When I was young, my parents sent holiday cards consisting of a photograph of my siblings and me. Why not make it easy for your customers and fans.

• Ask your customers to upload their photographs of you on social media. It’s the perfect medium for sharing images.
• Take a new spin on the Santa visit. Give your customers a reason to stop and take photographs in your store or other location. Put up a fun background that screams to people to get into the picture. Of course, don’t forget to include your branding and website address so that it’s in their photographs!

5. Give them the gift of recognition.

Put a holiday spin on the Andy Warhol phrase: “15 minutes of fame”. Put your customers in the spotlight.

Actionable Content Marketing Tips: 

• Take a new spin on the idea of an advent calendar. Feature a different employee every day leading up to Christmas with their favorite product.
• Highlight a different customer everyday. The objective isn’t just to go through the motions of putting up a photograph. Rather it’s to celebrate them as people.
• Collect holiday wishes. Let your community share their wishes for the coming year on a page of your website or social media.

The goal of holiday content marketing is to have fun while building your brand and extending customer relationships. You can think in terms of real time marketing or evergreen content that you use every year.

Enjoy the holiday fun.

What else would you suggest adding to this list and why?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubberdragon/6640597557/