Holiday season is when most people relax and let their hair down. For content marketers,it is quite the opposite. They have the arduous task of convincing consumers to spend big on their own product/ service and not on their competitors’. They also have to compete against all the big brands with their emotional videos and witty social media campaigns. Content marketers tend to have a lot on their hands trying to achieve all this. Here are 7 ways you can beat the holiday crunch as a content marketer:
- Understand and Satisfy your Customers’ Needs
A successful content marketing campaign always requires research. Understand your audience and create content that they can relate to. Your content must also solve their problems – help them save time/money, cross things off their to-do list, reduce stress or in general, makes their holidays more enjoyable. You could share recipes, decoration ideas or create lists. If you’re a business blogger this is going to be harder to do as you can’t post general topics. This is when you have to get creative and find ways to combine your niche with the holiday season. For example, you can suggest tools they could use to get their tasks done easily, or services that could help them in any way. List posts are recommended as they’re more popular and also easier to create.
- Keep It Short
During the holiday season everyone prefers to spend time with loved ones or take a vacation, no one has time to sit and read essays. Keep your content compelling yet short. Get to the point and don’t waste time sugar coating content. The key to this is to start early and prepare your content beforehand. This also helps as you have to be aggressive with your marketing during this season. You can then use content scheduling tools like DrumUp to schedule content ahead of time.
- Be Prepared
Look at what holidays are coming up and create content that is suited for that audience. Start early and test what works for your audience. If you have a list of Christmas posts then start posting parts of it early and gauge the audience’s reaction. Go through previous years’ post and see what was a hit and what was a miss. Run experiments by posting pictures or headlines to discover what combinations work best.
- Reflect and Give Back
Everyone reflects back on the year gone by during the holiday season – capitalize on this. Make lists about the trends that were big, reflect on viral content, tools that were amazing or anything else pertaining to your niche. Make content that can bring your community together and make them reminisce and consequently, share. You could also give updates about what is coming up next year for your company/niche/industry.
- Make Content for Causes
Something about the holiday season, makes everyone more giving – this should also apply to your business. Make content related to causes that you and your company care about – it could be world hunger, breast cancer awareness or even climate change. Write about everything that your business has done for the community and let your audience know what you’re passionate about. Remember to include call to actions so that your audience can also join in on your community projects. This will help them relate to you as more than just a name/brand and make them trust you.
- Create a Sense of Urgency
Your customers probably have offers coming at them from everywhere so you have to create an appropriate sense of urgency in order for them to buy your product/service. Give them a reason to pick you over your competitors. Audiences are more susceptible to overt marketing during the holiday season, use this to your advantage. Make content that shows off your product/service in a positive light and have attractive offers. These offers need to have an expiry date so consumers feel the urgency and take action. Create content that is appealing, addictive and convincing.
- Target Specific Audiences
Identify your target audience and dedicate your content toward them. Although big brands usually target a broader audience, for small businesses targeting a specific demographic is a must. For example, if you’re a content marketer for a web app, you can use titles like “10 apps that are perfect for holiday content marketing” or something along those lines. Make sure to combine your niche with the holidays such that it appears as a solution to your audience’s problems.
Use these tips wisely and your holidays will become a whole lot more joyful. Another good way to market your content and still relax during the holiday season is to use apps like DrumUp, that let you schedule posts ahead of time. You could also hire external content writing and marketing services, in case you really need to take a breather.
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