You’ll either love us or hate us for informing you that it is a mere 10 weeks until Christmas – just less actually.
The sight of festive fare on the shelves before you’ve even started to make plans for Halloween and Bonfire Night may fill you with wrath, and you might be tempted to tell people where to put their Christmas wish lists – but the imminent arrival of seasonal merriment is likely to sweep you up somewhere along the way.
We’re not saying you should get your gifts bought and wrapped by Sunday evening or pick out your Christmas tree yet – we’re simply suggesting it MAY be a good idea to start thinking about your festive content marketing now.
Put yourself in your reader’s stockings shoes
All the content you create is done for the sake of your readers, so it is absolutely key to have them in mind every step of the way.
Figures from Asda show that around a third of 5,000 mothers they surveyed started saving for Christmas in August, while eBay revealed that 150,000 searches for the word ‘Christmas’ were performed on its site between May and June 2013.
If your readers are already starting to think about Christmas, surely you should be too?
Advent Editorial calendar
As any content marketer knows, an editorial calendar is a godsend when it comes to ensuring everything is ticking over nicely.
Organising your content is crucial around busy times like the holiday season, so now is the time to create an editorial calendar spanning November, December and the beginning of January.
Think about the kind of things that will provide value to your audience – what can your brand offer in terms of articles, infographics and competitions that will be useful on the run up to Christmas?
Have a happy chatty Christmas
Offices may shut down over Christmas but that doesn’t mean you should draw a line under your social media marketing until the New Year.
With more free time on their hands, people will most likely be spending more time on social networks – in fact, Brits spend 86 minutes of their Christmas day and 77 minutes of New Year’s Eve glued to social media platforms. 4% admitted to spending all of Christmas day logged in so they received festive notifications throughout the day!
Still want to drop your social media campaign over the holidays?
Boxing Boring ‘in-between’ days
While everyone else is lolling on the sofa waiting for their stomachs to deflate before New Year’s Eve, you can take advantage of this ‘limbo’ period by giving people something to do in the few days between the two major events of the season.
With presents opened and the thought of living off all possible forms of turkey dishes for the foreseeable future, your readers will no doubt be looking for something to do. Take advantage of this by posting fun updates that are easy to digest – think short blog posts and infographics – and that actually do something to cure the post-Christmas ‘meh’.
Jenny Maclean
