Writing: Get In The Holiday Spirit

5 Holiday Suggestions For Writers

With the holiday season in full swing, many writers and bloggers may want to hide from their computers until the New Year. The reality is who wants to write when everyone else is celebrating?

Let me share a secret with you. Contrary to popular belief, the holidays are a great time to write (Of course, it helps if writing is a habit!) Writing during the holidays has benefits. Here are five of them.

1. The holidays provide a variety of engaging hooks. Who can resist using some aspect of the holidays as a starting point for their articles? Whether you’re writing about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus or New Year’s, you’ve got an array of story lines upon which to base your post. For example, I used Thanksgiving as the centerpiece of three articles during an otherwise quiet week. WRITING TIP: Create evergreen holiday content related to your topic that can be used every year. Need extra help? Here are 21 Attention Getting Holiday Titles.
2. The holidays present a wealth of graphic opportunities. You don’t need to be a graphic artist to make your content holiday appropriate and festive. Use color schemes or extend your holiday wrapping to your information. Remember photographs and graphics attract attention and get readers into your piece. WRITING TIP: Use the holidays as an opportunity to spiff up your website or blog. Add festive colors and holiday graphics such as Christmas decorations to show you’re in tine with the season. Remember no one likes a Grinch!
3. The holidays are a great time to get support from your community. Why not use this time to reach out and connect with your influencers or readers? There’s nothing that states you have to do all of the heavy lifting of content creation yourself. WRITING TIP: Gather insights and show that you respect the opinions of your influencers, colleagues, and customers. Use their input to create new columns and other forms of content for your media outlet. This reduces your work and allows you to showcase others. Go one step further and give them a link back to their blog, business or social media profile.
4. The holidays offer down time for readers. People aren’t working at their usual frenetic pace. As a result, your target audience is looking for engaging content. While you can supply longer articles, don’t forget to make your content compelling. WRITING TIP: Offer meaty articles with a lighter focus than your usual offering. It’s a good opportunity to publish guest bloggers who cover related topics. Take a page from magazine publishers like The New Yorker and The Economist whose holiday issues contain longer thought pieces because people have more time to read.
5. The holidays mean escape. Since holidays translate to lots of family and friends, your target readers are looking for some time alone or personal space. Your writing can transport them (at least intellectually) and provide a respite from the people overload that happens around the holidays. While it’s great to see people we care about, we still need our personal space. Writing can provide this space you need as a writer and  give you perspective. WRITING TIP: Schedule time to write every day during the holiday season. Even if the writing isn’t very good, it’ll provide a place to rant about Aunt Gloria or Uncle Al without ticking off family and friends.

Holiday writing provides advantages that you don’t get during other times of the year.  Why not leverage them to facilitate the content creation process?

Do you have any holiday writing tips that you’d like to share? What keeps your content creating engine going?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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