As September quietly finishes and the end of the year creeps closer, my thoughts go to an obvious content marketing strategy that every internet marketer is starting to think about: utilizing the upcoming new year as an event for inspiration in content. The beauty of a new year is that it offers us an opportunity for a series of content, and not just a single item.
Depending on the amount of content you can come up with, your series could look something like this:
- “365 Daily Tips For….”
- “52 Brilliant Ideas For…”
- “12 Awesome Strategies For…“
That way if you can only come up with 12 ideas to write about for your series, you can deliver one every month. If your head is exploding with hundreds of little tips for your series, you might be able to deliver 365 days of cool info for your audience. Personally, I like the idea of delivering 52 weekly snippets of wisdom. The number is not too overwhelming for me, plus it provides weekly content, which is more in line with my current content delivery schedule anyway.
Even better if there’s an anniversary of some sort next year. 5 years in business, 10 years in business, 1 year in business, a new product launch, a new decade. You could say something like, “In celebration of our 5th year in business, we’re offering a series of fabulous ideas each week to help you in your business”. Not that you need an excuse to offer up a series of content, it’s just something you can tap into if available and if it makes sense.
Think about the ways you can deliver the content, too. Could you do some audios? If you’re doing a How-To series, what about utilizing video to deliver your content? Of course, you’ll want to make sure you have text of your content so the search engines have something to spider. Don’t forget about images. They make quite a visual impact, even in the skimpiest of posts. That’s really one of the beauties of having a blog. You can mix text with images, audio and video in each post very, very easily. Blogs are the perfect delivery system for your content, no matter how you’re serving it up.
No need to create a novel for each item either. Keeping each one short and sweet will make the project much easier to manage, too. There’s nothing wrong with a small paragraph with a single brilliant tip, or a 2 minute video or audio.
When it comes to figuring out what your series will be about, some of you will have no problem at all, but some of you will be struggling. Something I recently read about the relevance of content should help. It stated, “If it’s relevant to your customer base, it’s relevant to you”. Brilliant! So simple really. An example would be – if you’re in the carpet and flooring business, think about your typical audience. What types of topics would they be interested in? If they’re looking to get new carpet, then wouldn’t it make sense that they are also interested in home improvement? Do-It-Yourself projects? Landscaping ideas? Using recycled materials in the home? Carpet cleaning tips? Repair techniques? Where to find local resources for home improvement projects? Design ideas with the various flooring materials? Reviews on cleaning products? Color matching? Kitchen and bath remodeling ideas? Discussions on the different tile materials available? If you sit and think about it, there are many paths you can take your content on and still be relevant to your business or industry.
While these are all great ideas for you and your own content strategy, if you happen to be a virtual assistant this is a great opportunity to contact your clients and discuss implementing it for them as well. This time of year is perfect for you to start setting up their content editorial calendar for the upcoming year. What better way to begin the conversation than “Let’s talk about putting together a series for next year”. Come to the table with a few ideas already and your clients will be overjoyed that you’ve taken the initial steps in moving this project forward for them. Depending on the number of clients that give the thumbs up for this project and the amount of content that needs to be completed, this is just the type of project that could keep your virtual assistant business quite busy for the next several months.
successful im says
My mind boggles at the thought of 365 articles a year, The one a month is more the plan for me,
Thank you Andrea for this great post