For most businesses, the holidays are big and profitable. According to Insider Intelligence, total retail spending in the United States for the 2021 holiday season was $1.221 trillion.
In addition to the holidays, seasonality affects certain industries, where certain times of the year are more popular than others. Fitness, health and e-commerce are just a few industries that experience seasons.
If you're in an industry where seasonality is a big factor, your brand needs to be a part of it. Otherwise, you may miss out on important profit opportunities.
In this article, you'll learn why seasonal content is important and get tips to help you plan your seasonal content strategy for the year.
What is seasonal content?
Seasonal content focuses on topics, trends and events that occur at the same time of year. This type of content should represent the lifestyle of your brand and the industry in which you operate.
For example, let's say you are a health insurance provider. In this case, it is important to provide useful content during the Annual Enrollment Period (AEP), which is the time of year when someone already enrolled in the program can change plans, or when someone at age 65 changes plans can choose
Another example is e-commerce. Marketers can develop content for many holidays, such as Amazon Prime Day, Labor Day, Black Friday, etc.
If your industry is seasonal, it can help you plan your content calendar in advance and give you time to develop and implement. This helps index your seasonal content in search engines and distribute it in newsletters. You can also create promotions this time of year.
Evergreen and seasonal content
It is important to understand the difference between permanent and seasonal content.
Evergreen content is a long-term game and is generally always useful regardless of the time of year. A recurring theme may be "What you need to know about peanut allergy." It doesn't matter what season you advertise it because people with peanut allergies suffer all year round.
A topic with more seasonal content might be "What you need to know about the flu in 2022," where you can talk about this year's flu season, symptoms, and any other important information about a particular flu strain.
Seasonal content is an immediate need that can go viral or generate quick engagement on social media, while sustainable content helps in the long run. Both can be upgraded, and we'll talk about that later.
Why is seasonal content important?
When seasonal content is done right, it can attract new people to your brand, increase engagement and drive further into your workflow or sales cycle.
Seasonal content shows that your brand is also relevant and remains relevant. A lack of seasonal content, especially if your industry would benefit from it, can mean your brand is outdated or irrelevant.
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Advantages
Incorporating seasonal content into your overall marketing strategy has many benefits, including:
- Have your brand promote something special, like a sale or other product release.
- Educate your audience about important topics. Consider how the health care industry encourages you to adopt new healthy habits in the new year.
- Retain your existing customers, especially if they know you have special offers at certain times of the year (like Amazon Prime Day). You can also bring new people into your sales cycle.
- Increasing referrals, especially if referral marketing is part of your strategy.
- Positive and emotional feedback from your audience (like the one below!).
The problems
Seasonal content also poses some challenges:
- This requires you and your team to be organized: plan ahead and make sure your content is developed and executed in time for your audience to find it.
- There is competition around promotion. You need to make sure that your content stands out enough for people to see and click on it.
- Posting on social media is not enough. All aspects of your marketing, including email, blogs, videos and anything else you invest in, should also drive this seasonal content.
- Set appropriate goals in advance. If you're trying to increase your bottom line this holiday season, dig into your data to find and promote your best-selling products, or perhaps add a seasonal event to celebrate.
- Be creative. However, remember that regular vacations are not the only thing to focus on. There are many other minor holidays you can promote, such as Star Trek Day or National Dog Week.
How to find seasonal content that fits your brand
Here are some tips for determining which seasonal content topics to cover.
- Check out relevant trends or popular hashtags on social media to find content that you can tie in with your seasonal promotions.
- Check Google Trends to see if there is content that has inspired you, or search for historical content.
- Gather information about target demographics. Your content may not be suitable for "our target market", so be specific.
- Use keyword analysis tools like Semrush to find and analyze keyword variations.
- View historical data to see how your products, posts or website traffic performed in previous years. You can find recyclable options.
- Look at reviews or get feedback from customers about what they want to see, and design your own copy.
Update existing seasonal content
You can also leverage existing seasonal content items. Although not permanent, seasonal content from an old indexed page can easily be updated and reused to promote your brand.
Here are some tips:
- When you take a break from finding content, look back and review your old content on seasonal topics and start developing ways it can help you in the future.
- As mentioned above, keep track of this seasonal content. Start building your products and learn how seasonal content can drive engagement and sales.
- Avoid adding dates to URLs associated with seasonal content. Avoiding years or dates in URLs will allow you to retrieve content without problems.
- Post updated seasonal content as new. You don't need to create a new page. Update an existing blog post or page.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff writers are listed here.
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