Connect with potential customers in December 2018 with humor, a history of eggnog, and holiday happenings.
Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and distributing content such as articles or videos with the goal of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. Content marketing and search engine optimization integrate to help your business boost traffic and hopefully sales.
What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can use for December 2018.
1. Give Humor a Try
Entertainment is a good way to engage your audience. And adding a bit of humor to how you talk about your business and your products can go a long way toward successful content marketing and, more importantly, to encouraging sales. This might be especially true during December when so many folks are looking online for gift ideas and are otherwise inundated with product pitches.
SodaStream, an Israel-based company that sells water carbonation systems, used humor to entertain viewers while describing its product in a series of videos.
For example, in January 2018, the company released a sort of SodaStream introduction video featuring its chief executive, Daniel Birnbaum, sloughing off lawsuits from Coca-Cola and running into Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson , the Game of Thrones actor.
This video follows a pattern similar to Dollar Shave Club’s 2012 commercial, “Our Blades Are F***ing Great,” which helped to popularize the notion of humorous company introduction videos.
Earlier, SodaStream produced a commercial of sorts called “No Planet, No Christmas” wherein Björnsson dressed like Santa Claus and prevented folks from buying bottled water.
While you may not have the budget to use a big star like Björnsson, try making a humorous video.
2. Non-Christmas Events
To be sure, Christmas is the main attraction in December. It is the most widely celebrated and well-known holiday of the year, let alone the month. But it is not the only thing your online business can feature in its content marketing.
For example, here are five holidays, festivals, and events this year other than Christmas that you might choose to cover.
- December 7: National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
- December 10: The Nobel Prizes are awarded.
- December 15: Bill of Rights Day.
- December 21: Winter Solstice.
- December 29: SnowGlobe Music Festival in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
December 7 is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. The photo above is the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Left to right: USS West Virginia, USS Tennessee, and USS Arizona. Source: Franklin Roosevelt Library via the National Archives.
For your December content marketing, create a video or write an article based on one of these or other non-Christmas happenings.
3. New Year’s Resolution Listicles
New Year’s resolutions are about getting better. When folks pledge to make a change, they want to improve. In the United States, popular New Year’s resolutions include eating healthier foods, getting more exercise, and saving more money, according to a January 2018 Statista article.
Eating healthier, exercising more, and saving money are among the most popular New Year’s resolutions. Source: Statista.
For your company’s December 2018 content marketing, consider developing listicles — list articles — that help your audience of potential customers choose, plan, and succeed with their 2019 New Year’s Resolutions.
Your listicles can be specific to the industry your business serves. They can even include mentions of the products your company sells.
For example, if you have an online kitchen supply business, you might include an article about “10 Ways to Eat Healthier in 2019” or provide a “5 Step Plan to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution Diet.”
An online bookshop, as a second example, could publish a series of 2019 reading lists for folks who resolved to read more. Each list could include links to individual book reviews (more engagement) and even the product detail pages for the books on the list.
Finally, you may be able to use your New Year’s resolution listicle for link building. A cursory look through Ahrefs in November 2018 found broken links for pages related to resolutions.
4. History of Eggnog
Eggnog is a traditional Christmas beverage made with milk, cream, eggs, and sugar. It is typically mixed with brandy, rum, or whiskey — or all of those — and used to promote holiday cheer. Non-alcoholic versions available at just about any grocery store in North America during the holidays are popular with kids and teetotalers.
Find a way to tell the history of eggnog as it relates to the industry your business serves.
The drink’s popularity shouldn’t be surprising since its recipe is “almost identical to ice cream, except that in most cases it contains too much alcohol to freeze,” according to food expert and Food Network host Alton Brown.
Your content marketing goal is to inform and entertain potential readers. But whenever possible, include your business’s niche. For example, drinking eggs was once thought to be good for one’s health. So if you have an online fitness shop, your history could describe the “health elixir” aspect of eggnog’s origins.
5. Christmas Celebration Guide
Does your family open presents on Christmas Eve? Or is it Christmas Day? Do you hang stockings? If so what do you fill them with? Will Christmas dinner feature ham, turkey, or Chinese noodles?
The answers to these questions reveal something about how a person or a family celebrates the Christmas holiday. In December, your content marketing might help your potential customers discover new traditions or help them explore the holiday in new ways.
Christmas is the most popular and best known holiday in the month, so why not help your audience celebrate?
As an example, think of an online store selling “cruelty-free” products for vegans. This shop would cater to folks who seek “to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose,” according to The Vegan Society. Thus, the store could write “The Vegan Guide to Celebrating Christmas,” which might speak about everything from decorations and wrapping paper to beer choices and holiday tofu recipes.
Similarly, a company like Bespoke Post, which markets discovery box subscriptions to men, could publish “The Modern Man’s Guide to Hosting a Christmas Party.”
Create a guide that helps your audience have an enjoyable Christmas holiday and that makes sense for the industry segment your company serves.