The holidays are a time when brands come together to spread cheer and goodwill. Content strategies, like the one you’re reading now, are perfect for creating branded experiences around the season. The trick is coming up with content that your audience will love and sharing it at just the right time. After all, many of your audience members will be extremely busy with work, school, family, and other obligations during this time of year. If you’ve got some great ideas but aren’t sure how to get them out there, this guide is for you! We’ll share everything from tips on identifying your target audience to advice on creating an editorial calendar to help you publish content when people will be most interested in what you have to say.
5 Quick Tips For Your Holiday Campaign Strategy
Tip 1: Who is your holiday audience?
Before you can create holiday content that resonates with your audience, you need to know who you’re writing for. The most important thing is to think about who you want to be sharing your content with. From there, you can break your audience down into a few key groups based on who they are and how they like to engage with content. This will help you discover where your audience spends most of their time online, what types of content they like, and what types of things they’re likely to share with their friends and coworkers. - Parents - Parents are busy! They’re juggling work, children, and all the other things that come with life. Make sure you understand how parents like to engage with content by checking out parenting groups on Facebook and other platforms where you’re most likely to find them. - Professionals - Whether they’re students or working full-time, professionals are likely to be extremely busy during the holiday season. Make sure to speak their language by creating and sharing content that’s relevant to the job they do and how they like to learn new things. - Students - Students are often looking for ways to improve their skills and impress their professors. You can create helpful content that they’re likely to share with their peers.
Tip 2: What kind of content will you share?
Once you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to start brainstorming the types of content you’ll share during the holiday season. You’ll likely want to publish a mix of seasonal content, social campaigns, and curated gift guides. Before you dive in, ask yourself what your goals are for this time of year. What do you want your audience to take away from your content? How do you want it to affect their purchasing behavior? Once you’ve established goals for your content, you can start brainstorming ideas. Here are some examples to get you started: - Seasonal content - Seasonal content is a perfect way to get your audience in the holiday spirit while offering helpful advice and tips on how to make the most of this busy time of year. - Social campaigns - If you want to encourage purchases and traffic to your site, you’ll want to create social campaigns that focus on your audience’s needs. - Curated gift guides - If you want to direct traffic to your online store, you can create gift guides that suggest products your audience might want to buy for loved ones. Or, if you’re not selling products, you can create guides that suggest charitable donations instead.
Tip 3: Create a solid editorial calendar
Once you’ve got your content ideas planned out, it’s time to create a solid editorial calendar. An editorial calendar is a roadmap for publishing content that helps you plan everything from social media posts to email marketing campaigns and everything in between. There are many ways to create a calendar, but we recommend using a tool like CoSchedule that integrates with most major social media platforms to make your life easier. Here are some tips for creating a strong holiday editorial calendar: - Be consistent - Your readers are likely to follow a particular cadence of content. Find out what your natural cadence is and use your calendar to help you stay consistent with your publishing. - Be flexible - A calendar is only a guideline. Be ready to make changes when things don’t go according to plan or when inspiration strikes! - Be thoughtful - Make sure that everything you plan fits into your overarching brand strategy. You don’t want to publish content that contradicts your goals or that your audience won’t appreciate. - Be transparent - Let your audience know when you publish new content by sharing your calendar with them. This way, they can follow along with you and suggest new topics they’d like to see published. - Be creative - Use your calendar as an opportunity to be creative. Rather than publishing the same types of content every day, mix it up with different types of posts that speak to your audience.
Tip 4: Timing is key
The timing of your content is just as important as the content itself. Readers are more likely to engage with content published during certain times of the year. For example, people are significantly more likely to share content published during the holiday season than they are to share content published at other times of the year. So, when do you publish holiday content? We recommend publishing seasonal content during the last two weeks of November. That way, you’ll have time to gather readers’ feedback and make any necessary tweaks before the holiday rush begins. However, this rule of thumb isn’t set in stone. You should also consider your audience’s engagement with your content throughout the rest of the year as well. For example, if social media research shows that your younger readers are most likely to engage with content published in the summer, you may want to publish summer-themed content in the summer and holiday-themed content in the fall. That way, you’ll be sure to reach your audience at the right time.
Tip 5: Don’t forget the gifts!
Now that you know when to publish, what to publish, and how to publish it, don’t forget to get gifts in your readers’ hands. Create a wish list on your website that lets readers know which items you plan to give. This is a great way to build anticipation around your gifts and encourage social sharing. You can also put together a gift guide and publish it at the same time you publish your other holiday content. Gift guides are a great way to direct readers to your online store and increase sales. And don’t forget to give back. You can encourage readers to donate to a charity in their name or to take part in a charity challenge. These types of activities are a great way to give back and help your audience feel good about the gifts they’re receiving.
Conclusion
The holidays are a wonderful time of year, but they’re also incredibly busy and chaotic. To help your audience navigate the holiday season, you can create holiday-themed content that helps keep readers informed, shares helpful advice, and promotes thoughtful gift-giving. Before you can create holiday content that resonates with your audience, you need to know who you’re writing for. The most important thing is to think about who you want to be sharing your content with. Once you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to start brainstorming the types of content you’ll share during the holiday season.
