Tips to Improve Your Content Marketing During the Holidays
Tis the season to take time off.... Isn’t that how it goes? Many of you are more than likely taking some 
much-needed time off over the holidays, but that doesn’t mean your content marketing efforts need too. Many businesses shut down over the holidays to allow staff to enjoy friends and family and come back in the New Year recharged and refreshed. Although you may not have people with boots on the ground, there are tips to ensure your marketing efforts aren't forgotten.
If you don’t have an existing content strategy in place, you can read several of our posts focused on content marketing.
Top Tips for Continuing Strategies over the Holidays
Automate. Automate, Automate
Make use of all the amazing technology today and automate as much of your content marketing as you can. Utilize the scheduling features in your current marketing tech stack or implement a scheduling tool – such as Hootsuite – to ensure your content continues your schedule without manual oversight.
Make a Plan! (and check it twice!)
We all know holidays are upon us – especially when those holiday Starbucks cups are out in full force. Just like any other regular campaign, plan not only for your content but for your team. Some of our top tips for successful holiday content planning include:
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Decide on potentially reducing your overall frequency of messages
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Communicate to your community/customers your holiday break and look at more push messaging
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Assign clear roles and responsibilities over the holidays
Implement a Safety Plan
Much like Rudolph came to the rescue for Santa, make sure you implement a rescue or safety plan for your content marketing efforts over the holidays. Revise or update your approved workflows and assign members to be on-call in case of an emergency.
Tips for Content Marketing in 2019
New Year. New Strategy. As you take your content marketing into 2019, some strategies stay the same, but others will change. Below are some tips for your content marketing strategy heading into the New Year.
Know and get the basics right
What’s in a content marketing strategy you may say or really what is the basis of one? Your strategy should define your key business and customer needs, as well as how your content efforts address them. Albeit no two content marketing strategies are the exact same, they all should have a few essential components:
Purpose and Goals – the two W’s and a V:
Audience – the persona and journey of your buyer:
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Defining the characteristics of your audiences
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How they will benefit most from your content
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Their current buying state
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An estimate of how their needs may change or grow
Editorial Mission – the difference from your competitors through content
A good way to start the New Year is to review your existing content marketing strategy. Take the time to come together and reflect on the year and determine what went well with your content marketing in 2018 and what could be improved in 2019.
An in-depth look at your strategy can help you understand if your content marketing plan is still relevant for the next year. If you haven’t started on drafting your content marketing strategy yet, then it would be a great time to start drafting your plan to have your team tackle it in the New Year.
According to a recent CMI report, only 39% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy.
Boost your distribution tactics
Distribution is a key factor in the overall success of your content marketing strategy. Creating good content is not enough if you don’t have the right ways to get it to your audience. How content is distributed in 2019 is always changing, and marketers will need to spend more time finding the right tactics to reach their audiences.
A good way to review your distribution tactics and ensure you are using the best channels is by answering a few simple questions:
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Which of your current channels are performing the best?
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Which channels are directing your visitors to the site?
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Which devices are your visitors consuming the most content on?
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When are the best times that your visitors are consuming your content?
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Which messages have been used that promoted your content best?
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What was the average frequency that was the best for promoted content?
Focus your efforts on your best-performing channels
If you have answered some of the above questions and did a review of your 2018 efforts, you should have defined your business performing channels. Your 2019 content marketing strategy should focus on your best channels and use them more strategically and reduce or completely remove your non-performing channels. This tactic will optimize your teams time to craft a strategy and your content to reach your audience.
Refine your audience
Content marketing is not exactly about reaching as many people as you can. Content marketing in 2019 is not a spaghetti strategy – in which you throw as many messages to as many people and hope that one sticks. Your content marketing needs to be more strategic and specific, and that includes your audience. Once you have reviewed your 2018 audiences and deemed those that are the best performing, don’t be afraid to include a tactic to focus on a specific or potentially niche audience if that can lead to improving your engagement or conversion rate. In fact, for some, niche marketing can be successful. It can prove that you know your audience and you improve the chances of having a great ROI on your content marketing efforts.
Don’t create content just to create content
Just like many who started on social media to be on ALL social media, it doesn’t mean you need to create content just to have something to put out. Your content needs to be strategic, and that also includes what you are creating and how much you are creating. In marketing today or just overall browsing the internet, we have reached a point that there’s just too much content out there and not enough time to consume it. When it comes to crafting content, ask yourself a couple questions:
Experiment with your budget
In 2019, allow yourself some time and include in your strategy to experiment with your budget and try some new ideas. Research and test some new emerging channels and promotional tactics. Just like every experiment, some will be successful others may fail, but they are all lessons learned, and you can find out from a marketing and technical standpoint what may work for your business.
Make sure you put your audience first
The best way to ensure that your content marketing strategy stays successful is to continually listen to your audience, their wants, and needs. If your audience or your objectives change over the year than you need to ensure you reflect these changes in your content marketing strategy. Include in your strategy a good amount of time to analyze and better understand your audience, their behavior and what they need from you.
Are you ready to get started?
Go ahead and make your New Years resolution to review and update your content marketing strategy for 2019. To get started, go back and review your content marketing tactics that you used in 2018. Pull together your team or engage with a consulting firm – such as CMSC Media - to tackle your planning and find improvements for 2019. Find your best-performing channels and adjust your strategy towards spending more time on them and don’t stop listening to your audience and always be flexible enough to address any changing habits.
Lynette Sawyer
Lynette Sawyer is a Web Project Manager for Falcon-Software, a digital web agency founded in 1994. For the last 13-years Lynette has been in various digital capacities and her expertise goes beyond Project Management. Lynette brings experience and knowledge in graphic design, marketing communications, project management, product management and engagement.