How to Create Content for the Holidays (Plus 5 Awesome Examples)

The holiday season is a busy time for consumers, so as a content marketer, it’s even more important to optimize your strategies to engage potential customers. Holiday content is crucial for any company that cares about their image and bottom line, and it provides various benefits: Readers are more likely to read holiday-related content before and during holidays. It’s more likely to be shared across social media. It helps to build brand awareness and drive sales. With so much choice and convenience offered by online retailers, some consumers research companies and products online and then purchase in-store locally. Others don’t even leave their home to shop online. One of the best ways to reach all these potential customers is through online content. So it’s up to you as a content marketer to give consumers what they want during the holidays. Consider these stats: 92 percent of holiday shoppers went online in 2016 to research and purchase gifts. 67 percent of consumers said they would be likely to share a digital holiday coupon on Facebook. 73 percent of Twitter shoppers follow businesses to find special deals. Create Your Own Holiday Content Here are some content ideas and inspirational examples to keep in mind as you start putting together your holiday content. Showcase Your Employees During the holiday season, showing the team behind your company is a great way to connect with your audience. If you have any holiday-related work events, why not share photos on social media? Majestic Wines, the UK-based wine retailer, created a â€Å"What We Want for Christmas† blog series. Each employee described a country in which they wanted to spend Christmas and suggested a wine from that region. Can you do something similar that relates to your products? Use Instagram Hold a Social Media Contest Give your contest a holiday-related theme. Ask your followers to share what they like about your product at this time of year for a chance to win a free prize. Or ask people to compete for a prize by sharing photos of themselves alongside your product using a holiday hashtag. Samsung held a holiday sweepstakes for their 2016 holiday campaigsn. Twitter users were asked to tag a friend with special hashtags, explaining why that person deserved the gift of virtual reality. The user and their friend could then win a free Galaxy S7 Edge and a Gear VR. Create a Holiday Gift Guide Add a page to your website that showcases your best products as perfect gifts for the holiday season. Then share the page with your social media followers and email subscribers. Adobe created a holiday gift guide called â€Å"15 Creative Gifts for Photographers† featuring a list of gifts for any photo lover. With large images and snappy reviews, the guide was not only useful and timely, it all related to their primary product, Adobe Photoshop. Post a Quiz Safewise, the home security advice and comparison site, always features high-quality holiday content on their blog and Twitter. Their holiday home safety quizzes are not only educational, they’re fun. What’s more, this type of content can be reused every year. Send Holiday Emails The holidays are the perfect time to reach out to your email subscribers. Use your email list to promote exclusive holiday offers such as discount codes. You can also just send out simple holiday greetings to your subscribers to help keep your business top of mind. Create a Roundup of Your Most Popular Content By highlighting your most popular blog posts from the previous year, you’ll remind readers of your expertise in your industry and also drive more traffic to older posts. Look to the Future End-of-year content is also an ideal time to look toward the future. Give your audience an exclusive insight into your company’s plans for the coming year and beyond. Why not create an ungated piece of content that features expert insights and top tips for the future? This will not only inspire your audience with new ideas, it will also strengthen the credibility of your brand with something of value. At the end of 2016, Business Insider created â€Å"11 Tech Trends That Will Define 2017,† a thought-provoking blog post to inspire their target audience. What Will Your Holiday Content Look Like? These examples show you that with a little creativity, you can generate brand interest during the holidays for little to no investment using your website, blog, or social media account. However, don’t leave it to the last minute. Whichever holiday season you’re targeting, start planning early to avoid a last-minute rush to create content. Hopefully, this will help you stay ahead of the competition and give your content better search engine rankings for key terms throughout the rest of the year. Is your content all set for the holidays?