In November 2018, your business can attract, engage, and retain customers with content around surviving the peak of the holiday shopping season; little-known celebrations; and Facebook groups.
Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and distributing, say, articles, podcasts, and videos to build traffic and boost conversions. In this article, you will find five content marketing ideas for November.
1. Black Friday, Cyber Monday Survival Guide
Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and the week beginning with Cyber Monday represent the height of the Christmas shopping season.
Holiday shoppers will make about a third of all Christmas purchases during this period. In 2017, American shoppers bought about $5 billion from retailers on Black Friday and about $6.6 billion on Cyber Monday, according to the 2017 Adobe Digital Insights holiday report.
So why not help? In October, publish a survival guide for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
You’ll have a few options. For example, you might take a positive but serious tone aimed at helping shoppers prepare for the holiday rush with advice about how to manage expenditures and get the best deals. This approach would be similar to what Discover has done.
Use the Discover website as inspiration for your own Black Friday, Cyber Monday survival guide.
You might also take a lighthearted angle, entertaining your audience of potential customers as you point out some of the absurdities of camping out in front of a Walmart, whilst suggesting a few of the products your store sells for an easier, better alternative.
2. World Kindness Day: November 13
November 13 is World Kindness Day. More than a holiday, it may be an opportunity for each of us to be just a bit more friendly, generous, or considerate. It could also be a good topic for your business’s content marketing.
Try writing an article or producing a video that describes in simple terms what World Kindness Day is and offers several suggestions for honoring the occasions. Your resulting list of potential acts of kindness may even include the products you sell.
For inspiration, here are a few videos related to World Kindness Day or kindness more generally. The first video is from a student-led media company, 22 West Video. It offers suggestions, such as giving away balloons.
This second video shows what the kids at South Grove Elementary School in Syosset, New York did to celebrate World Kindness Day in 2016.
Finally, here is a video from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation that points out some of the benefits of being kind.
3. America Recycles Day: November 15
Recycling and reuse generally, and metals recycling in particular, has a positive impact on the American economy. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, recycling reclaims about $9 billion worth of materials each year. In the process, the industry also creates $36 billion in annual wages.
For your company’s November content marketing, write articles or produce videos that describe how the products your business sells incorporate recycled materials or how your business recycles paper, toner cartridges, and similar items.
Many products are either made from recycled materials or designed to be easily recycled. Featuring these products and how they are constructed in a blog post is a good way to honor America Recycles Day. Image: Jessica Palomo.
4. Fibonacci Day: November 23
There could hardly be a more perfect occasion than November 23, 2018. Not only is it Black Friday. It is also Fibonacci Day.
This is by far the most obscure suggestion on this list. So it may not be a fit for every business. But if your company sells technology, art, or even high fashion, you should be able to find an informative or entertaining way to connect the products to Fibonacci Day, the Fibonacci sequence, or the golden ratio.
The Fibonacci sequence (or Fibonacci numbers) starts with either the number one or zero and with the exception of the first two numbers each number in the sequence is the sum of the two previous numbers.
Here is an example beginning with zero.
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377…
Notice that five in this sequence is the sum of two and three. The number 89 is the sum of 35 and 55.
The Fibonacci sequence and the related golden ratio is often shown as a spiral.
The Fibonacci sequence is closely related to the golden ratio found extensively in nature, science, and art.
Writing for Gizmodo, George Dvorsky pointed out several examples.
“The number of petals in a flower consistently follows the Fibonacci sequence. Famous examples include the lily, which has three petals, buttercups, which have five, the chicory’s 21, the daisy’s 34, and so on,” Dvorsky wrote.
“The Fibonacci sequence can also be seen in the way tree branches form or split. The main trunk will grow until it produces a branch, which creates two growth points. Then, one of the new stems branches into two, while the other one lies dormant. This pattern of branching is repeated for each of the new stems.”
The Fibonacci sequence can be found in seashells, the shape of hurricanes, the proportions of a person’s face, the length of your fingers, the body of an animal or insect, DNA molecules, and even the Milky Way galaxy.
For your November content marketing, consider writing articles about how the Fibonacci sequence or the golden ratio impacts the products your business sells. You may be surprised to learn that everything from vacuum cleaners and automobiles to mobile phones and work boots employ the golden ratio in their design.
5. Start a Facebook Group
“While participating in Facebook groups managed by others can help you promote your brand and business, you have to play by others’ rules. Managing a dedicated Facebook group of your own lets you control the entire group experience and use your group for a specific purpose,” wrote social media strategist Tammy Cannon in a 2017 Social Media Examiner article.
For November, start a Facebook group around your products or the market segment your company serves. Tammy Cannon pointed out the Instant Pot Community, which is a Facebook group built around the Instant Pot. The group is a place to find recipes, share experiences, and get the most of an Instant Pot. At the time of writing, it had about 1.5 million members.
The Instant Pot Community has more than 1.5 million members sharing and consuming content that helps Instant Pot sell more.
Similarly, an online retailer that sells fly fishing gear could create a Facebook group around fishing, flying tying, or conservation. An electric bike maker such as Evelo could start a group around staying fit after 50.
Once created, your Facebook group will be a good place to publish content and link back to your blog.
Bonus: Thanksgiving Day, November 22
This is the fourth consecutive year that Practical Ecommerce has published a list of content marketing suggestions for November. In each of the four previous editions, there has been some mention of content around Thanksgiving Day.
This year, I’m including Thanksgiving content ideas as a bonus, taken from my 2014 article. These potential titles were meant to demonstrate how flexible Thanksgiving can be as a content topic.
- “How Thanksgiving Is Making the World a Better Place”
- “20 Reasons Your Grandma Was Right about Thanksgiving”
- “16 Thanksgiving Myths Debunked”
- “5 Surprising Ways That Thanksgiving Is the Greenest Holiday”
- “What Gardeners Can Learn from Watching Football on Thanksgiving”
- “Your Thanksgiving Day Football Planner”
- “12 Unexpected Uses for Leftover Turkey”