With the holiday season upon us, brands in every industry are putting together their holiday editorial calendar. It’s important to adjust your blog content, your email marketing, and even your social media presence to target the holidays your audience is celebrating.
We recently shared five tips to help you create “irresistibly tasty” content for your readers this holiday, but today we have some new inspiration for you. We are sharing six brands that consistently do a great job with their holiday content year after year.
6 Brands That Win at Fantastic Holiday Content
These brands may create festive content for their blogs and social media or they might give their product a fun twist around the holidays to get you feeling jolly.
Whether you’re in need of some inspiration for your own brand’s holiday editorial calendar or you just want to get in the holiday spirit, look to these brands for some help!
Starbucks: The Yearly Tradition
It wouldn’t be possible to have a round-up of brands that do the holidays right without mentioning Starbucks, would it? Although Starbucks isn’t exactly known for festive blog posts around the holidays, they are known for those classic red cups. And you know what? It works for them!
Each and every year, the coffee chain releases a brand new red cup design (or even multiple red cup designs, like they did this year). Their customers get excited to see what they have come up with, looking forward not just to the seasonal lattes, but the seasonal red cups as well.
Not only do people get to enjoy their delicious drink in a decorative cup, but Starbucks also encourages customers to share photos of the popular red cups on social media. For the past few years, Starbucks has run an Instagram contest where they ask people to share photos of their red cups. Customers are encouraged to snap a photo of their red cup with the hashtag #RedCupContest for a chance to win prizes.
This motivates customers to head to Starbucks and share photos, which likely prompts others to do the same when they see the images in their Instagram feed. It’s effective marketing for Starbucks and gets people in the holiday spirit!
The Takeaway: Create something your audience can look forward to every single year. Then, get people involved! Create a challenge of your own and encourage your audience to participate. You can even take it up a notch by giving back through giveaways people are sure to love. If you choose to do a photo challenge like Starbucks, it provides amazing user-generated content you can share on your own profile, too.
Target: Masters of Storytelling
The Christmas season is a pretty big deal for Target. Because many parents are shopping for presents to put underneath the tree and children are adding to their Christmas lists, Target is a popular destination for gift shopping. So, it should come as no surprise that the nationwide retailer puts a lot of effort into their Christmas ads each and every year.
In 2015, Target used their television commercials to tell a story of children and the store mascot, Bullseye the dog, as they set out to light up a giant Christmas tree. Throughout the commercials, you would see famous characters children are familiar with, such as the Minions. People would pay attention to the commercials so they could see what would happen in the end.
While it may seem the commercials were designed with only children in mind, Target slipped in details parents would want to know, too! They would add pitches about some of their holiday offers, such as free shipping for online purchases until Christmas.
Their goal is always to take the viewer on a journey, so it’s no surprise they plan to do the same thing for 2016. This year’s advertisements are said to be a Broadway-style marketing campaign that will feature some celebrity guests.
Target doesn’t just put a lot of effort into their advertisements every year. They also have the Kids’ Wish List App, which children a way to save all of the items on their Christmas wish list. And it gives parents a list of exactly what to buy! You’ll likely see pitches for this app in the commercials as well.
The Takeaway: Create a holiday marketing campaign that tells a story. Draw your audience in with a captivating story that leaves them wanting to know more.
J.Crew: Embracing Social Advertisements
Fashion retailer, J.Crew, is pretty savvy when it comes to their social media marketing, especially around the holidays. Last year, the company ran a few ads on both Instagram and Facebook. Now, it’s no secret that social media ads can be a great way to increase sales for your product and build brand awareness. So, what’s the big deal?
J.Crew knew what they were doing with the ads they created. They took advantage of the “Shop Now” button that can be placed on ads, which would encourage people to click over to the website and immediately start shopping straight from the ad.
The Takeaway: If you’re looking to boost sales this holiday season, don’t be afraid to experiment with social media advertisements. They can be a great way to reach your audience. Figure out which platform your audience is most active on and start building an ad. Promote your product and send people over to your website to encourage them to make a purchase.
Tone It Up: Cooking Up a Great Holiday
The mission of the Tone It Up girls is to help you get fit and healthy, no matter what time of the year it is. However, it’s not surprising that can be difficult this time of year. We often indulge in large meals and lots of sweets during Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Karena and Katrina of Tone It Up show that it doesn’t have to be that way!
Because the ladies also share healthy recipes on their website, they keep holiday dinners in mind when cooking up new recipes in the kitchen. They provide readers with recipes for healthy side dishes and pumpkin treats (which are perfect this time of year). The ladies even share their tips for hosting a fabulous dinner event in your own home!
The Takeaway: Keep the holidays in mind when planning your blog’s editorial calendar. Find ways you can work the desired holiday into your content. If you’re a food blogger, share seasonal recipes. If you’re a lifestyle blogger, share decor tips. If you’re a business blogger, you can even offer advice on how to manage your business during this busy season and tips for boosting sales. It’s as simple as that!
Kate Spade: Teaming Up With an Influencer
If you’re familiar with the Kate Spade brand, you know they are all about bright colors and having fun throughout the year. It’s basically the go-to brand for the classy party girl, which makes it perfect during the holiday season.
A quick scroll through their Instagram feed will reveal perfectly styled posts and images that will have you feeling festive and ready to dance, drink, and be merry in no time at all. Kate Spade has also enlisted the help of celebrities over the years to be the face of their brand, including for their holiday campaigns.
Back in 2014, Anna Kendrick starred in the brand’s first ever “Miss Adventure” episode. It shows the fun side of Kate Spade, as the two-minute video features Kendrick being locked out of her New York City apartment. Instead of freaking out, Kendrick makes the most of it, like any Kate Spade girl would! She chats on the phone, plays with an adorable puppy, tries on the clothes she just purchased, and even pops some champagne! All of this goes on while Anna is surrounded by the Christmas decorations on her front stoop.
This year, things are a little different for Kate Spade. While they are teaming up with an influencer, it’s not Anna Kendrick. Nor is it even a human! Miss Piggy is the star of this year’s Kate Spade campaign, which is quite an unconventional choice, but is sure to get people talking.
The Takeaway: Consider teaming up with an influencer for your holiday marketing campaigns. The key is to choose someone who resonates with your audience for maximum impact. If an influencer isn’t right for you, you could also consider a collaboration with another brand as a way to spread the holiday cheer!
Apple: Tugging at Your Heartstrings
Apple is pretty well known for doing a great job with their marketing campaigns. The company has had major success with their Mac versus PC television commercials from years back. (Who remembers those?) And more recently, they have created the ultimate user-generated campaign with their “Shot on an iPhone” advertisements. It’s pretty clear they have some smart people working behind-the-scenes on the brand’s marketing.
This year’s holiday commercial is no exception. At a time where the United States has become rather divided after a rocky election and the world remains on edge due to terrorism and other issues, Apple is promoting unity with their new ad entitled, “Frankie’s Holiday.” After all, that’s what the holiday season is all about. It isn’t about the gifts underneath the tree. It’s about bringing family and friends together while spreading love and holiday cheer.
The bigger message of this commercial is heard loud and clear, but Apple does still use it as a way to subtly promote their product without being in-your-face. It’s an ad that is sure to resonate with many people worldwide and tug at a few heartstrings.
The Takeaway: A great holiday marketing campaign has some emotion behind it. It’s the best way to draw in your audience and inspire them to take action, no matter what your message may be.
Wrapping Up Your Holiday Content
Now that we’ve given you tips for creating your holiday content and you have some brands to turn to for inspiration, it’s time to get started with your holiday editorial calendar (if you haven’t already).
Tweaking your content to fit with the holiday season, whether it’s blog posts, emails, social media posts, or even your product descriptions, can really boost brand awareness and increase sales this time of year!
You’re eating some turkey with a side of potatoes and gravy. The smell of thyme and rosemary overwhelm your senses. The fresh cornbread stuffing aroma dances across your nose. The tart and sweet blend of cranberry sauce in the distance…
Salivating?
Now, let’s move to content. Did you know that product descriptions, blog posts and even website content can all be tailored to your target holiday using inspirations from that holiday?
Sights, sounds, smells, and tastes all recharge your existing content and make it holiday-ready. But here’s the million-dollar question…
How do you take something as delicious as Grandma’s turkey and create killer content for your brand that inspires readers to take action during the holidays?
To find out, let’s dive into the gravy boat:
5 Tips for Better Holiday Content and Holiday-Driven Conversions
The holidays are prime time for site owners. It’s an opportunity to take the content you have, revamp it, and make it appeal to those shopping for the season. Before you start hyperventilating at the idea of rewriting all the content, eek: keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be super hard if you have some direction.
Here are our five best tips (scroll past the infographic by our amazing designer for the full details):
1. Add a Taste of Seasons’ Greetings to Your Homepage
We’re not suggesting you go crazy here.
Think of it like decorating your online presence with a Christmas wreath. Adding in a little holiday spirit creates a sense of festivity and shows that you’re all about the season, says GetResponse.
Add some images that represent the holiday, like a pumpkin and some fall leaves. (For Christmas, add in snowflakes, a snowman, and possibly some Christmas lights.)
Look at Sephora. This online beauty retailer created a festive, cute way to display their highlighted products and all they added was a little red ribbon and holiday cheer.
Simple changes go a long way, folks.
2. Play on the Sayings of the Season
There’s plenty of inspiration when you think about famous sayings of the season.
Take HBO for example. In 2015, they created their 12 Days of HBO Now header for their homepage. It played on the 12 Days of Christmas, had a little festivity, and reminded you of the upcoming season.
Think about your favorite holiday songs or sayings. TinyPrints shares a list of their favorite Christmas sayings that you can use for inspiration.
Want some humor in your Thanksgiving posts? Then take some quote inspiration shared by Brandon Specktor at Reader’s Digest.
Bottom line, take a phrase, lyric or common saying of the holidays and twist it to benefit your holiday pitch.
3. Create Holiday Specific Content that is Helpful to Viewers
Now is the time to show off your strengths.
Flex your wordsmith muscles and get to work!
You can share your industry insider tips, tricks, and even guides to everything holiday.
Of course, it needs to be relevant to what you’re offering or selling on your website.
For example, you sell beauty products.
For a holiday twist, add in some tips and guide posts into your content marketing plan. Such as offering eyeshadow tips unique to Christmas. Talk about what lipsticks to wear that won’t come off while downing that turkey at Thanksgiving. Compare blush colors to wines that are likely to be served during holiday festivities.
You get where we are going here, right?
Readers love it when you show off your talents.
Even better, use these tips and guides as an opportunity to link into related and recommended products from your site. According to KISSMetrics, people are more likely to purchase your products when they are recommended in holiday-specific content.
Think of content that keeps people coming back. Like Pinterest did with their 30 Days of Pinspiration.
Not only was it branded superbly, but then it continued to get people to come back and check out the next Pinspiration for the holiday season.
4. Don’t Forget the Procrastinators
Let’s face it.
Consumers are notorious for last minute shopping.
While it means they are rushing to find a gift quick, it is an opportunity for you to show off products and ideas that work for those last-minute pickups.
Try to carve out space on your homepage or even in your blog about last-minute gift ideas. Consider offering up downloadable or digital gift cards to your company; something that can easily be purchased the night before it needs to be gifted.
Kiplinger recommends highlighting email-delivered gift cards, software downloads, subscriptions, and monetary gifts for last-minute.
5. Play on Relatable Moments
There are plenty of moments out there that relate to your content and the holiday you’re targeting.
For example, Jessica Gioglio at Convince and Convert highlights how Century 21 played on competitive eater Geoffrey Esper at Thanksgiving with their message:
“Century 21 agents sell homes like competitive eater Geoffrey Esper eats: fast.”
There are plenty of gifs you can add to your holiday content as well; then, share them on social media.
For example, when you and your family try (and fail) to take a group photo for Christmas – or you and your office get together for a recreation of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Co. classic.
Think of pop culture TV shows that the majority of your audience have seen. This will require you to have some knowledge about your target audience — such as their age, gender, career, etc.
However, when you know your target audience well, you can find funny, relatable moments that correlate with TV shows and movies to make your content more appealing (and entertaining to boot).
Holiday Content: Wrap It Up with a Bow
We’ve given you are insight and secrets into how to create holiday-specific content that really speaks to your reader.
Of course, now you must bring it all together.
By now you should feel less overwhelmed and more ready to tackle the holiday task.
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, you can start revamping your Christmas content and even prepare for those Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers that you need to cultivate for 2017 success.
If you’re not quite ready to tackle the content side of things, we here at Express Writers are more than happy to help you create holiday-ready content! Whether you want your product descriptions rewritten, blogs inspired by the holidays, or some cute taglines that capture your shoppers, we’re here and ready.
Visit our Content Shop to order your holiday-ready content, written just in time for the season! Use coupon code holidayshop5, good for 5% off any order. Valid till end of December.
We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas, …And a Happy New Year!
Merry Christmas From Express Writers!
It’s already the end of 2015. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are upon us!
I hope that you’re not spending too much time in front of the work screen, but if you are, you should read this one blog. (Insert brazen-faced winky emoticon.) I hope it’ll inspire you and that you’ll leave with some content marketing tips you can start using right now – and bring into your New Year.
First: Why Christmas Doesn’t Have To (Ever) Be Your “Slow” Season
I’m even more excited to bring you this holiday post and hereby “blog,” or “work,” on the holidays, because, well, December is becoming our hottest month of the entire year!
I couldn’t believe it myself, but we broke records and had over 1,000 pages of content ordered in 48 hours, our first week of December. This is the most we’ve had ordered in 48 hours since I created the company, in 2011.
Our financial graph for the entire year looks like this:
(The lowest point, in January, looks lower than it was because we actually started our online Content Shop then and had all our clients begin placing orders online.)
We still have one more half-week in December, and our team is in the office throughout this month still – so we expect the year to end with our busiest month yet!
That’s my reason directly to you why December doesn’t need to be your slowest month. We actually saw it become our best month for 2015 – which means anyone can, too, provided they never let go of the hustle and effort it takes to get a best foot forward and put in some real work and passion.
Copywriting Tips for the Holidays (and Beyond)
Even as the holidays are quickly whizzing past us, there’s still plenty of time to hone your skills for your holiday campaigns and start converting readers into buyers. But before you do, let’s take a look at the top copywriting tips to get your writing into shape.
8 Top Copywriting Hacks
1. 90% Of Your Time Should Be Spent Crafting Killer Headlines
There’s a lot to be said on the topic of headlines. Strong conversion copywriters spend at least 90 percent of their time crafting one, or two… or three for every piece.
It’s important not to stuff your headlines with keywords. And while you’re at it, throw out everything you were taught by those old-school SEO dictators on how to craft those headers. Make them attention-grabbing, borrow from winning formulas, do what you got to, to reel readers in.
Here’s an important tip to remember: great headlines are very often incarnations of the value proposition of the very thing you’re trying to sell.
Here’s another tip: ask yourself this about the prospect you’re writing for: “what was going on in their life that brought them to you today?”
2. Write Amazing Headlines Using “Without”, “Even If” and “Data”
There’s so much to be said about headlines and that’s because they really are THAT important. Here are a few things you could include to help make your headers stand out:
Use an “even if” clause to overcome hesitation
Add a little data about the outcome
Replace “even with” with “without” – what don’t your readers have to do to get the result?
3. Stay Away From Positioning Statements – Use Value Propositions
At its very core, a value proposition needs to express what’s desirable and unique about your offer. Never confuse it with a positioning statement. You should state something about that your product does. You can include an end benefit. But don’t make your value proposition a laundry list of benefits.
4. Get To Know Different Types of Awareness
There are a couple of different kinds of awareness your readers will have during the sales process. Depending on the stage of awareness they’re at, they’re going to need different messaging and content:
Pain Aware – in this stage people respond to seeing solutions to their pain, or even their own pain.
Solution Aware – this is where people respond to high-level benefits, so avoid thinking of the problem and think of the solution.
Problem Aware – during this phase, people realize they actually have a problem but don’t know how to solve it.
Product/Brand Aware – here people want to know what best and biggest benefit your product has to offer before they’re introduced to the benefits. People love the phrase, “but wait! There’s more!”
Completely Unaware – during this phrase, people are completely clueless about their problems.
5. Embracing Similarities Between Taglines and Value Propositions
Sometimes the very best taglines are actually your value propositions (as discussed above), just whittled down smaller while being specific.
6. Keeping Swipe Files for Inspiration
Never heard of a swipe file? It’s a collection of content that you can use for ideas – all that memorable stuff that’s resonated with you. Save everything you love so when the well runs dry, you have a file full of inspiration.
7. To Write Content That Shocks and Generates Shares, Go Ahead and Pick a Fight!
Take a completely accepted way of doing things and go and turn it on its head. Don’t be insulting, though, just provocative.
8. Top X Lists Can Still Work
These lists can work well, provided they add something meaningful to the conversation. Try to be better. Aim to be different.
5 Tips for Effective Holiday Content You Can Do Now
Here are 5 bonus tips for crafting effective holiday content as you leave my blog today (and go eat chocolates, or open gifts, and enjoy your holiday – in short, get away from the computer :D).
1. What Are Your Customer’s Holiday Needs?
One of the best things about the holiday rush is you get to offer your customers great value when you create content that will help them cross something off their to-do list, saves them time or makes the holidays more fun. Consider what your readers are trying to accomplish this holiday season and help them achieve their objectives.
This Christmas, we decided to give back and create the ultimate giveaway of five free days of gifts – for five total gifts. We created landing pages for each of the products after we finished creating the actual product (which ranged from a 10-day email course to eBooks and PDF resources), then wrote a blog and landing page for the entire campaign. We then socialized this like crazy–pinning to our Twitter, posting it on Instagram, highlighting on our Facebook business page, and more. We’ll probably even make a few Twitter ads for it, and we’ve already scheduled an email campaign for it.
2. Target Specific Audiences to Improve Performance
While the bigger brands and media organizations tend to create content that appeals to a wider audience, one of the best ways to drive performance for a holiday campaign is to determine the audience who is most likely to purchase your products and then create content catering to their interests and needs.
Let’s say you are a sports apparel brand, a very general holiday gift guide with products ranging from home décor to high-tech gadgets is far too wide-ranging to capture a particular audience’s attention. Rather create specific posts like “10 Perfect Gifts for The Sports Woman In Your Life.”
3. Make Sure the Subject Matter Fits Your Brand
Here’s another thing to keep in mind: your content needs to address a subject that you and your brand actually have the authority to speak about. Even if someone who purchases a state-of-the-art television set is likely to indulge in a fancy cocktail this holiday season, I highly doubt that customer is going to take much note of a post titled “5 Great Champagnes To Try This New Year’s Eve” that’s been put together by a tech company!
Discussing topics that fall naturally under your brand’s preview means you can give consumers a reason to trust your content and want to read it all the way through to the end.
For a cool example of what does work, take a look at Verizon’s post. In their post they perfectly targeted gift-givers who were in the market for those under-the-radar tech accessories, and the subject matter is perfectly aligned with what the tech company have to offer.
4. A Sense of Urgency Is Key. Your Customers Are Expecting It
One of the main challenges of marketing during holiday time is that you only have a short period of time. If people don’t make their purchase before the end of the year, they’re not likely to return to your brand in January, are they? What’s more, if you fail to be aggressive about converting readers into paying customers, there’s a big chance they will make that purchase from a competitor.
While more blatant sales pitches could turn people off any other time of the year, customers tend to be more receptive to them at holiday time as they’re actively shopping and in fact, they are expecting companies to promote featured product items. So it’s easier to create a sense of urgency with your customers by presenting them with exclusive sales offers that expire within a certain amount of days or hours, enticing them to buy from you before even bothering to see what your competitors are selling.
Even if you don’t wish to use calls to action in your content, you can still create a robust retargeting plan that will resonate with your most engaged audience with a tailored sales pitch later on in the holiday season.
5. Launch Your Content Early and Start Testing It
It’s really never too late to start laying out your holiday content campaigns. Of course you want to get a head start so that you can optimize exactly how you’re going to promote your work in order to reach out to your audience. So let’s say you have five pieces of Cyber Monday content, be sure to give yourself enough time to see which articles perform best in order to allocate more budget towards those winners in the days leading up to your sale.
You can run a range of similar experiments, both on social media and in content recommendations, with your thumbnail images and headlines to see which combinations will drive engagement and therefore conversions.
One of the best things about holiday campaigns is that you know they’re going to come around, so you can give yourself loads of time to create amazing campaigns that will get you the results you want.
Does the idea of creating any kind of content campaign terrify you? Don’t worry, at Express Writers we know how to create and deliver on expert content that says all the right things for your audience, just in time for the holidays!
This is an original short by Julia McCoy, CEO of Express Writers.
Everyone around me, everywhere I look, is having some sort of “Blowout Black Friday Clearance Deal NOW!” I flipped through (and instantly deleted) maybe 50 emails with some version of this title just today.
Now I’m not one to stop anyone from going to sales or having them. If that’s in your best interests, by all means—enjoy Black Friday.
Why We Didn’t Have A Blowout Black Friday Sale
How come we were one of the very few businesses who didn’t send out one of these emails or put out a quick promo code on social media?
For the new people perusing this. Express Writers is a copywriting agency. Our job is to write and create high quality content, web pages, ongoing blogs, sales pages, resumes, you-name-it—for businesses of all sizes and types.
My point is we don’t sell a product. We sell services. Human services.
And creative services, at that. No machine can replace a pen wielded by a real human with an active brain that has been endowed with the extra cells of writing creativity. We don’t sell a product we can mass-produce at once, sit in the closet, and ship out at a moment’s notice. Or what can be discounted for a quick sale at the end of the year.
Human services shouldn’t be discounted just because the commercial, product-oriented world has declared the Friday after Thanksgiving THE day for “blowout sales”.
4 Reasons Writing Doesn’t Ever Deserve a Coupon Code
1. It’s humanly created. Did I say yet that writing is a service written specifically to order, EVERY time it’s ordered? That is, if you want high quality. There’s services like Constant Content where writers bucket articles with random keywords, and you can come and buy those. I don’t recommend this, because in 2015/2016, to stand out in a huge sea of content marketing, you need to be unique; have your own voice; research and put a lot of work in; and have your own expertise angle to become a thought leader (a factor of winning content online).
2. It always takes time. Writers are working on the clock. If they give you a discount, chances are they have to rush through that piece and not spend as much time so they can make a decent hourly rate. And that’s why we don’t ever allow bartering. We know how much time is required by not just the writer, but our management; content specialists; and editorial staff on every single content piece (we never skip the quality process on anything). So, we charge to make the process worth our time, each time.
3. It’s too valuable. Would you ask your heart surgeon for a discount? Would you ask your chiropractor? Replace that with any service you value. Writing isn’t necessarily heart surgery, but it’s a talent to be valued. This ties into our human creation process mentioned. It also has huge ROI if you pick the right creative writer. Just don’t think of asking a good copywriter for a discount on their talents. The value is too high.
4. Writing is an art. A fading art, a God-given talent that not everyone can boast of. I meet a lot of people who say they can write or edit, but once they’re given our SEO and content tests, cannot. To truly create high quality content for the web is actually getting harder to do, because it’s hard to find a good copywriter who is dedicated and given to their trade.
So, don’t do a quick sale if you’re among those offering a human deliverable. Something that requires brain cells to come up with and deliver to specific order details, not in mass amounts that will sit on shelves for unlimited dates.
Here’s to the rebels of Black Friday.
Those who don’t conform and discount themselves to match the commercialization of America.
If you’re humanly creating what you’re selling for a living, don’t cheapen yourself for 24 hours just to match a short-lived fad.
I leave you with this quote by Eric Thomas:
To get high quality, non-cheap quality writing services 365 days of the year, visit our Content Shop.
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Express Writers!
This Thanksgiving season, we hope you’re enjoying some well-earned time off!
That being said, in our industry, we don’t really see it as time off from content creation. That’s because Thanksgiving is a great time to create some seriously fun content. The festiveness of the season and the air of celebration in the air mean that Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to create and distribute content your readers will love.
Just how do you go about this?
5 Thanksgiving Content Tips Readers Will Love
Don’t be a turkey, make holiday content work for you this Thanksgiving Day! Here are five of our top holiday content tips for creating memorable Thanksgiving-themed content.
1. Snap and Share Photos of Your Holiday Celebration
40% of people respond better to visual content than they do text, so don’t hesitate to take some photos this holiday season. Don’t be shy to share your personal festivities!
A photo posted by Condé Nast Traveler (@cntraveler) on
Snap pictures of your movements throughout the Thanksgiving holiday, whether you volunteer, spend time with family and friends, eat a turkey or a ham, or spend it away from the snow in someplace tropical.
Consider dedicating a blog entirely to photos and then encourage your readers to submit their own photos in the comments. Visual content is a big deal right now and creating some of your own can help people connect to your content and feel the Thanksgiving cheer!
2. Share Traditions
You look forward to it every Thanksgiving: Grandma’s creamy, gooey, delicious pumpkin pie – the recipe for which she got from her grandmother. Why not share the love this Thanksgiving and share the recipe with your fans?
Doing this provides value on a few different levels: first of all, you’re giving your readers something actionable that they can apply to their lives and, secondly, you’re giving them pie and who doesn’t love pie?
If you don’t have a coveted family recipe to share with your readers, consider telling them about the traditions you do have over the holidays and then encourage them to share their traditions as well. This engages readers in your content and helps them feel seen, respected, and cared for by your brand.
3. Give Back
Do you have something that can benefit someone else? Why not use the Thanksgiving holiday as an opportunity to give it away? Whether you run a class that can help fans learn something new or you sell a product that can enhance people’s lives, Thanksgiving is the ideal time to run a promotion that allows your customers to enter for a chance to win.
Holiday promotions give people something to get excited about and, in advance of the Christmas holiday, promotions may even help your customers get that special someone a gift they’ve always wanted.
No matter how you choose to structure your promotion, Thanksgiving is shouldered by two of the biggest shopping days of the year (Black Friday and Cyber Monday) so this is a great time to give some gifts and share the joy!
4. Share What You’re Thankful About
What is Thanksgiving all about, after all? One of the best ways to create great content this Thanksgiving is simply to be thankful! Be thankful for your readers and your business partners and all of the people who have helped you get where you are today and then tell them so.
Consider sending your readers a heartfelt “thank-you” email or offering small incentives as a showing of your gratitude. No matter what you choose to do, Thanksgiving is a fantastic time to let the people near you know exactly how much you appreciate them.
5. Try New Things
If you’ve never done a podcast before but Crazy Aunt Lisa is coming to Thanksgiving dinner and she’s got some serious stories, right now might be a great time to dip your foot into a new content form.
Whether you’ve been meaning to move from short-form to long-form or textual to visual, the Thanksgiving holiday is a great time to take advantage of the abundance of your surroundings to step into uncharted content waters.
In addition to keeping you on your creative toes, this can also help you keep your site fresh and keep readers interested.
Take These Content Tips and Go Forth!
There you have it – our top 5 content tips for creating great marketing this Thanksgiving season. While we hope that your Thanksgiving holiday inspires you to crank out some exciting new content, we also hope that your Thanksgiving holiday is filled with all the things that are really important: friends, family, and happiness for one and for all!
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from the Express Writers team.
