Content marketing can be as serious as addressing an epidemic such as diabetes or as playful as games and puzzles. But in all of its forms, content marketing is one of the best ways to engage customers and create a bond that could lead to repeat sales.
When your company gives someone something of value, that person can feel obligated. This feeling of obligation is called reciprocity, and it is the key to content marketing.
…content marketing is one of the best ways to engage customers and create a bond…
But content marketing can sound easier than it is. One of the biggest challenges is knowing what to write about or make a video about. What follows are five content marketing ideas you could try in November 2019.
1. National Diabetes Month
Nearly one in 10 Americans have some form of diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is more than 30 million folks. So it is likely that no matter what sort of products your business sells, at least some of your potential customers will be interested in diabetes-related content.
Your marketing team could integrate National Diabetes Month into your content marketing in several ways.
- Acknowledge National Diabetes Month. Publish a post or devote a podcast to diabetes awareness.
- Profile someone with diabetes. Interview a person with diabetes, perhaps someone in your company or industry.
- Share diabetes-related news. My fifth suggestion, below, encourages your business to act like a journalist. You could apply that to diabetes coverage, too. If you sell running shoes, for example, cover a study that shows how exercise can help prevent type-2 diabetes.
Diabetes is an epidemic. Writing about products that combat diabetes could fight this problem. Photo: Jenny Hill.
2. Puzzles and Games
The week of November 24 is more than Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It is also National Game and Puzzle Week, an opportunity to create some engaging content.
You could combine content and contest marketing to capture leads for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns.
Here is an example. Imagine that you have an online store selling luxury travel products. You could release a series of Mensa-style puzzles at the beginning of November. Each puzzle would be a blog post shared on social media and via email. Customers who solve the puzzles could enter their solutions for a chance to win free products or a cruise (if you have the marketing budget).
Puzzles and games are an entertaining way to engage shoppers.
Everyone who enters the contest would get an additional discount on Black Friday and Cyber Monday sent via email along with your other seasonal promotions.
3. Address Reducing Waste
November 16 to 24, 2019, is the European Week for Waste Reduction.
EWWR is aimed at educating consumers about avoiding some items to reduce waste, reusing items when possible, and recycling when it makes sense.
EWWR encourages us to reduce waste. While this is a European project, companies anywhere could talk about the benefits of reducing waste and why it is important.
For your November 2019 content marketing, you could share some of these themes with your audience of potential customers. The key here is to explain how your business has participated.
For example, if in November your company has committed to improving its cardboard recycling practices, you could write a blog post or produce a video about the topic. Explain what your business did to reduce waste. In that context, you could also share tips or recommendations for your customers to try.
Or, if your product comes in a glass bottle, you could offer five ways to reuse it.
4. Pinterest Recipes
November’s landmark holiday, Thanksgiving, is about bringing family and friends together. It is about being thankful for everything we have and enjoy.
But it is also about food.
Lots of folks, including some of your potential customers, think about food in November. Those customers could be looking for recipe ideas on Pinterest or other social media sites. So why not reach them there?
Your strategy has three steps.
- Develop excellent recipes.
- Publish each recipe as a blog post, with recipe structured-data markup.
- Post the recipe to Pinterest.
Tasty recipes. To develop recipes, consider working with a local chef. Develop a few recipes that reflect the season and your audience of customers.
Recipes are a sure fit for a store selling kitchen supplies, groceries, or even grills. But recipes may work for other sorts of ecommerce businesses, too.
For example, a store selling outdoor items such as hiking gear could publish a series of recipes for winter backpackers. And a workwear store might publish a list of 10 sandwich recipes all made from leftover turkey and trimmings. Each article could also mention how those sandwiches make tasty lunches on the job site.
Recipe markup. Next, your recipe post should have Schema.org or h-recipe markup. These formats tell Pinterest your blog content is a recipe so it can correctly display the ingredients, cooking time, and instructions.
To help with markup, Pinterest has a brief post with recipe markup examples, a how-to-make-recipe-posts article for developers, and a rich pin validator to make certain it can read your recipe posts correctly.
Post to Pinterest. Once your business has published its recipes, post them to a recipe board on Pinterest. Like any social media platform, you will need to build some connections. But if your recipes are good, that won’t be too hard.
Pinterest displays the recipe next to the image you share. The pin will link directly to your recipe blog post.
5. Industry News
For some businesses, content marketing can become a form of journalism. These companies are a source of news, information, or commentary for their audience of potential customers.
Perhaps the mother of all examples is Arrow Electronics, a B2B electronic component firm. Using its AspenCore subsidiary, the company acquired several established publications in the electronic component industry.
“Arrow Electronics has purchased Hearst publishing’s United Technical Publications, which includes 16 engineering web sites, e-newsletters, inventory access tools, and databases,” wrote Bob Jones of Publitek. “The deal gives Arrow a powerful electronics B2B content marketing platform to reach a claimed 1 million engineering professionals worldwide. Trade magazine Electronic Products is part of the deal.”
Here the suggestion is not for your online clothing store to go out and buy Cosmopolitan or GQ. Rather, the point is that you can feel empowered to post articles, videos, or podcast episodes about industry news.
Here is another example. A direct-to-consumer electric bicycle company recently covered the U.S. Department of Interior’s memorandum expanding e-bike access to public lands managed by the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Reclamation.
Cover industry news just like a journalist. This example is from an electric bike company.
This ecommerce company wrote articles about the announcement, interviewed a trade association representative for a podcast, and released an opinion piece.
You can do something similar in your industry.