One of the predominant schools of thought in content marketing is that every blog on your website should be evergreen — in other words, be relevant to the reader year-round.
While evergreen blogs are an essential part of an effective content marketing strategy, you should also consider a seasonal marketing approach, utilizing blogs that target a specific audience with a specific message at a specific time.
Proceed with caution, however. Your seasonal blogs should still fit within the overall strategic plan to reach your audience and compel them to take action. A seasonal piece of content that does not fit your brand, tone, and message could do more harm than good.
With that in mind, consider three smart ways to use seasonal marketing to support your blog content and increase audience engagement.
What Are the Best Ways to Use Seasonal Blogs?
To sum up the smart use of seasonal blog content, think about timeliness, events, and distribution.
Timeliness Indicates Your Company is Active
How often do you visit a company website, read a blog, and wonder if the company has actually posted new content in the last six months? If that question creeps into your mind, it might lead to another question of whether the company itself is actually active.
You do not want your company website to fall into the category of appearing to be inactive. A timely, seasonal blog sends a message to your audience that you are active and committed to engaging with your audience. It says that we are open for business and we are excited to talk to you.
This unspoken message might seem like a small thing, but when your prospects or customers are researching your company, they want to verify that you are alert to what’s happening in the current moment. You are instilling confidence in your audience that your company will also be alert to their needs and requests when conducting business.
Find the Right Times of the Year to Post Seasonal Content
The actual content of a seasonal blog should be relevant to your audience and reach them with a timely message to solve a problem or address a need. Writing a seasonal blog just to change up the content on your website is not strategic.
An important step to strategize seasonal content is considering your target audience.
- What types of seasonal events does your audience care about, such as major sporting events?
- Is there an observance that ties in with one of your customer personas, such as National Nurses Week?
- Do you historically connect with your customers over holidays, such as the Fourth of July?
When you consider your audience, then you can strategize a compelling piece of content that will create the most value to your reader and increase the likelihood of connecting with them in a unique way.
You should keep track of specific events, holidays, and observances throughout the year that you can build content around. Then, you need to decide how to prioritize content and discover the best methods of distribution.
Consider Social Media, Email, and Paid Ads for Distribution
Your seasonal blog content needs to be properly supported to bring the message to life. This requires knowing how to make the best choices about distribution:
- Should I create one social media post linking to the blog or build an entire campaign around the blog on social media?
- Should I incorporate the seasonal theme into my monthly eNewsletter?
- Should I create customized paid ads that run during the activity, event, or holiday season?
When making these choices, you need to consider the availability of resources to produce the seasonal content, your budget, and your audience to generate a positive return on your investment (ROI).
For a B2B company targeting a specific buyer, you need to have a firm understanding of your audience to know whether your ideal prospect will engage with the message in an email, through a drip campaign, a series of posts on LinkedIn, or through targeted paid ads.
For a B2C company reaching a specific audience, you need to identify where your audience is engaging with your brand or searching for your product/service to create the right mix of content and distribution to reach as many customers as possible. You might consider your email open rates, your social media following, and competition for certain keywords related to your product or service.
Marketing Refresh Can Lead Your Smart Seasonal Marketing Plan
Overall, consider these smart steps to use seasonal marketing effectively:
- Determine the seasonal event, theme, or activity that will connect with your audience.
- Strategize a seasonal blog that fits within your content marketing strategy.
- Publish the blog with a strong Call to Action that compels your audience to take action.
- Write relevant supporting content for your distribution channels that links to the blog.
We understand that business owners and marketing managers have a lot on their plate, which makes it’s challenging to keep up with the latest events or take the time to strategize seasonal content.
Our agency supports your business by staying on top of the latest seasonal topics and relevant events. We then follow a strategic approach to determine the best type of seasonal content to reach your audience and lead the way choosing the best distribution strategy to reach your targeted prospects or customers.
Consider working with Marketing Refresh to support your overall content marketing strategy, weaving in seasonal blogs with valuable evergreen content. As a copywriter for our agency, I look forward to working with you to produce the right mix of content that generates new business opportunities for your company. Contact us today to get started.
