The holidays are coming: it’s time to kick your content marketing into high gear. Remember to focus on your own content, as well as content for clients.
Get creative.
Get creative with content marketing: try something new
If you do what you always do, you’ll get what you always get. Do things differently. For example, you’ll find some excellent ideas in Your Blogging Side Hustle: 3 Ideas To Make Money For The Holidays, including:
Publishing as a blogging side hustle: create your own affiliate deals…
I’ve NO idea why more bloggers don’t do this. After all, affiliate marketing is nothing more than commission sales, so get proactive and organize your own deals.
Yes, mostly you’ll get turndowns when you approach prospects, but you only need two or three good deals (think high-ticket items) to make it more than worthwhile.
Let’s look at additional ideas.
1. Use Advent to generate ideas for clients
I’ve been kicking around the idea of an Advent content calendar. Foolishly, I thought it something new. Guess what, it’s not: Peek and Poke has some great ideas.
What’s Advent? Basically, it’s the four weeks between the fourth Sunday before Christmas (somewhere between 27 November and 3 December), ending on Christmas Eve.
Google reports that in 2022, Advent begins on Sunday, 27 November and ends on Saturday, 24 December.
Do with it what you will. Think along the lines of “gifts” your clients could give their customers, then write content around that.
Remember emotion.
2. Tell emotional stories: grab your readers
Writing fiction? You’ll know that heartbreaking is one of the most overused words authors’ representatives use to describe books. However, the term gripping is well on the way to overtaking it.
There’s a reason for this: emotion.
These words are merely labels. Please don’t use labels: use stories instead. Preferably user stories, especially if you’re developing content for clients. You’ll need to dig for them, but case studies are wonderful content.
Here’s the process:
- Think of the emotion, and label it. (Please DO NOT use the labels in your created content.) If the over-used term “heartbreaking” isn’t appropriate, use emotion-triggering words in your industry. “Time-saver” works for many industries: brainstorm triggering words around that.
- Talk to product users. Ask for their stories. How did Product X save time for them? What did they do with the extra time?
- When you find user stories which generate emotion, use the stories.
3. Inbox bonanza: encourage your clients to use email marketing
Very few ecommerce companies use EDMs (electronic digital marketing—email.) Why so few? Time is always a factor, as is expertise.
As always, Amazon does EDMs brilliantly. When you’re promoting EDMs to your clients, use Amazon’s marketing as an example.
4. The season of goodwill: give and receive, and use archetypes
Savvy businesses use reciprocal marketing.
Will it work for you, or your clients?
It’s a way to get known, so it depends on what your expectations are for returns on investment (ROI), but in this season, forget straight ROI.
As Acts 20:35 points out: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Scrooge is a Christmas archetype. Don’t be Scrooge.
Content marketing for the holiday season: start today
The holiday marketing season starts in October, when Christmas goodies appear on store shelves.
Make the most of the season for your clients, and your own business too.
Develop a thriving business with custom content
Boost your business with content marketing expertise and custom content, from someone who wrote the book (literally) on internet marketing.
Copywriter and marketing pro Angela Booth maintains a busy copywriting and ghostwriting practice. Fascinated by online marketing, she wrote one of the first business books for internet marketing, published by Allen & Unwin. She’s been an enthusiastic blogger since the late 1990s.
