How to Plan Your Content Around the Holidays Stress-Free!

The 5 Steps you need to create your holiday content in a weekend

It’s the holiday season and a time that is all about celebrating with friends and family, and nurturing our connections through gratitude, generosity and togetherness.  It is also a time when people feel a desire to take some time away from work and business demands.  

Yet the last quarter of the year is coming to a close. As we move closer to the holidays, there are always so many last minute things to do. There are goals and sales targets to be met before year-end, last minute sales and negotiations, last-minute meetings and of course holiday parties to attend.  

The holiday season is a critical time for many businesses and organizations, as they work to meet annual sales or fundraising goals. In the midst of all these personal and business priorities, it can be easy to forget or deprioritize marketing efforts at the end of the year, but this is when content marketing campaigns are most important. Developing a strong content plan can help boost sales and customer loyalty. 

Yet marketing is usually the first initiative to be deprioritized when business owners are extremely busy, because they believe it takes up too much time, for possibly little return.    

Why do holiday campaigns matter?

Marketing matters during the holidays because your potential customers are either gift shopping or preparing for the year ahead and planning their product and service purchases. It is the perfect time to keep in communication with your customers, so that your business stays top-of-mind. It can also give your business an advantage over your competitors.  

So, it is important to put as much thought and quality into your holiday content, as you would at the beginning of every calendar year.  Leverage your holiday content to tell deeper stories and further build connections with your audience.  

Plan Your Content in One Day 

So how do you create quality content for the holiday season, when year-end priorities and holidays take over your calendar?  You can create a quality plan that will take no longer than 1 to 2 days of your time.  

1. Start with a 30-day calendar for the month of December.  For each week, choose one high-level theme. These weekly themes become your key messaging pillars for the month, and a guide for the daily topics you will create next.  
2. Second, create a topic for each day of the week, based on the key theme you chose for the week.  Think about topics which are conversation starters with your audience and cause the audience to comment and engage with your posts and content.  
3. After your daily topics are complete, your next step is to create a format list for each day, under that topic. Each daily topic will include the categories of
   • Photo – you will now find photos or take photos relevant to your daily topic
   • Video – you are ready plan your video content based on the daily topic
   • Conversation Starter – Use this category to write your copy and film your selfie videos, talking to your audience. Think about your topic and how to start a conversation on the topic with your followers
   • Story/Reel – your video content can also be repurposed to become parts of your stories and reels, along with relevant graphics, photos and copy.
4. Finally, you will start writing and shooting your content for each of these categories. Each topic you chose should have copy included which creates a conversation with your audience. Use this copy to identify what photo you will use for this topic, what video you will create for this topic and also what stories/reels you will create from your daily topic.  Identifying each one of these formats helps you plan content for any social platform (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and more…).

Create Your Content in a Weekend

Once you’ve developed your 30-day calendar topics and written copy, it is time to batch your photos and videos. This process should take no more than one to two days. With the calendar guiding your content topics, it will provide you with an easier method to produce a continuous stream of photos and videos, which can be filed, automated and repurposed in all formats you may need for stories, reels and more.

Be sure to have a few clothing options, to change upper garments after a few videos are recorded, so your visual appearance has variety.  

Automate

Now that your copy is written, your photos are chosen and your videos recorded, lessen the burden of uploading daily by automating your entire December portfolio of content.  There are many automation options available.  

At TB Media Group, one of our favorite automation tools to use is Sprout Social.  It is how we plan our monthly content and measure our social engagement. Others such as HootSuite, Social Pilot and ContentStudio are great options for small businesses.  

Producing content during the holidays can be completed in a few disciplined, yet straightforward steps. I hope these tips keep you well equipped to tackle your content marketing and stay in touch with your audience throughout the holiday season. Should you need our help, content planning and storytelling is what we do.  Reach out to us at TB Media Group or send us a message.

Wishing all of you a healthy and happy holiday season!