5 Content Marketing Ideas for February 2026

Between Valentine’s Day, Presidents’ Day, and the start of the spring buying cycle, ecommerce marketers have plenty of opportunities to publish relevant and timely content in February 2026.

Content marketing is the process of creating, publishing, and promoting articles, videos, and podcasts to attract, engage, and retain customers. For ecommerce businesses, content does more than inform. It differentiates, builds trust, and supports discovery when shoppers are researching rather than buying.

Content is also foundational for lifecycle and social-media marketing, and search-engine and genAI optimization.

What follows are five content marketing ideas your ecommerce business can use in February 2026.

Valentine How-to

Valentine-themed content could include something as simple as planning a dinner at home.

Valentine’s Day remains one of the most reliable seasonal content opportunities, especially when merchants focus on guidance as well as promotions.

Content that provides useful and actionable information can attract shoppers unfamiliar with a brand or its products.

The content should align closely with the products sold. A wine shop can explain pairings. A jewelry retailer can address how to choose materials or styles. A home goods boutique might describe how to set a table or create a Valentine’s Day dinner.

Consider the sample titles:

• “How to Choose the Perfect Wine for Valentine’s Dinner,”
• “Build a Thoughtful Valentine’s Gift Box,”
• “How to Create a Romantic Valentine’s at Home,”
• “Helpful Tips to Match Valentine’s Jewelry to Her Style.”

Here are a few articles from publishers:

Presidents’ Day

Presidents’ Day content can focus on U.S. patriotism and domestic manufacturing.

Celebrated on February 16 in 2026, Presidents’ Day is a storytelling opportunity, more than a sales event. Ecommerce marketers can publish articles or videos that explain the holiday’s origins, its meaning, or the historical figures it honors, e.g., George Washington.

Patriotic holidays can celebrate domestic companies, such as brands with made-in-America products.

Here’s an example. Origin is an apparel brand in Farmington, Maine. President Dwight Eisenhower visited the city in June 1955, passing close to what is now Origin’s manufacturing facility. The company could recount Eisenhower’s visit and retell its own story in the process.

In 2026, Presidents’ Day has extra relevance. The United States is entering its semiquincentennial year, marking 250 years since independence. Celebrations will peak in July, yet February is not too early to publish 250th-themed content.

A Complete Guide

A “complete” guide is akin to a store owner explaining her wares to an in-person shopper.

Content marketers are familiar with “complete guides” or “ultimate guides.” These are typically long, “pillar” articles that demonstrate topical authority.

The goal is usefulness, not brevity. A merchant that sells loose-leaf tea could publish a comprehensive guide to tea types, brewing methods, and storage. A cycling retailer could create a guide to bike maintenance or gear selection.

Over time, these guides become evergreen assets that support internal linking, featured snippets, and AI-generated summaries. They can be gold for optimizing for search engines, generative AI platforms, and answer engines, especially when updated annually.

Examples of guides include “Complete Guide to Loose-Leaf Tea” and “Ultimate Guide to Choosing Cookware.”

The idea is clear enough: Pick a product or category and be the authority.

Curated Newsletters

This idea aims to help businesses that struggle to produce content. Instead of composing or generating (and then editing) loads of articles, a company can mix product info with content from other publishers.

Put another way, curated newsletters allow ecommerce businesses to publish consistently without creating content from scratch. The idea is to select quality articles, videos, or social posts from trusted sources and add brief editorial context.

The newsletter for Better Kitchen Gear, an affiliate marketing site, links to external recipes.

Consider an example from Better Kitchen Gear, an affiliate marketing site. Its email newsletter blends curated recipes with links to affiliate content. A recent issue on sourdough bread included summaries and links to recipes from the King Arthur Baking Company and cookbook author Alexandra Stafford.

Another link was to an original article titled “The Tools Behind Great Sourdough,” which included six products on Amazon.

Merchants could do much the same. For example, a golf accessories seller could publish a weekly newsletter featuring curated golf news and links to products.

American Heart Month

American Heart Month is an opportunity for stores selling health or fitness products.

President Lyndon Johnson established American Heart Month in 1964 with a proclamation encouraging Americans to focus on cardiovascular health.

It occurs in February because of Valentine’s Day, reinforcing the symbolic connection between the heart and daily life. Since then, the month-long observance has promoted education about heart health, prevention, and sustainable lifestyle habits.

Ecommerce marketers promoting products in fitness, food, wellness, apparel, and home categories can focus content on everyday behaviors, routines, and product use that support an active, balanced lifestyle.

Imagine a content marketer for a fitness gear retailer. She wants to honor American Heart Month while promoting the company’s products. She decides on an article titled “5 Ways to Turn a Spare Room into a Cardio Studio.”

Ecommerce Marketing amid AI ‘Slop’

“Slop” is the word of the year for 2025, according to the human editors of the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

“We define slop as ‘digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.’ All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again,” the editors wrote.

The folks at Merriam-Webster may have reacted to technology that likely challenges their livelihood. Yet while it’s a problem for ecommerce marketing, mediocre content is not new.

Generative AI did not introduce slop so much as streamline its speed and quantity. Recognizing this distinction is key to creating content that delivers a return on investment.

“Slop” is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2025.

Before AI

Long before genAI, content mills mastered the art of large-scale, low-cost production.

These word-factories relied on vast pools of underpaid writers, rigid templates, and keyword-driven briefs to publish thousands of articles quickly. Editorial oversight was minimal. Speed mattered more than accuracy, originality, or even usefulness.

For ecommerce brands, this often meant competing for search engine rankings against threadbare “best of” lists, affiliate bait, and generic product pages written by folks who had never seen the products they described. These pages existed to capture search traffic, not to help shoppers.

So long as search engines rewarded keywords and recency, low-cost content arbitrage was profitable, despite frequent algorithm updates aimed at combating it.

AI Amplification

Generative AI dramatically lowers the cost of content. What once required thousands of writers now consists of simple prompts, scripts, and publishing pipelines.

AI agents replaced underpaid writers.

The output even looks better. AI-generated content is readable, structured, and confident. It rarely reads like the keyword-stuffed search-engine bait of the early 2010s. That polish makes it hard for shoppers to distinguish genuine expertise from synthetic fluency.

Unfortunately, AI content can be wrong. Large language models hallucinate and make errors in logic. They are biased.

Compared to human-made versions, AI content is often clearer yet more fallible. The difference is not so much the quality of the prose as its relative trustworthiness and the thinking behind it.

Using AI

Nonetheless, marketers still aim to attract, engage, and retain readers. The need is not to avoid AI-generated content, but rather to use it well.

AI should not replace human thinking, but instead research, clarify, and facilitate it, such as:

• Research and first drafts. AI can research and generate a starting point, not a final asset. Humans — merchandisers, marketers, experts — shape the final output through experience, nuance, and learning.

• Clarity and purpose. Is the goal education, engagement, or conversion? AI performs best when guided by intent rather than vague prompts.

• Facilitate human context and insights. This includes common customer questions, product comparisons, usage notes, and merchandising expertise. No model can scrape direct human knowledge.

For example, an ecommerce team might use AI to draft a buying guide for cordless drills. A product manager could then refine it based on real-world catalog constraints, such as in-stock models, warranty differences, and customer feedback. The AI provides structure and speed. The human provides judgment.

The same approach applies to product descriptions, FAQs, and category pages. AI accelerates first drafts and variations, but humans ensure claims are accurate, benefits are correct, and language aligns with brand voice. This hybrid workflow produces content that scales without sacrificing trust.

It’s not slop. It’s AI output guided by humans. And it might be the best way to create marketing content.

Not All Slop

The web survived keyword stuffing, article spinning, and content farms. It will survive AI slop, too.

The lesson is clear for ecommerce marketers: AI changes the tools, not the fundamentals. Genuine content that helps shoppers decide will outperform the mass-produced alternative.

The winners will be the most useful marketers, not the loudest.

5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2026

Each new year is a time to reset, restart, and renew, even for content marketing.

In January 2026, ecommerce marketers can publish content celebrating the U.S.’s 250th year, share Wikipedia’s anniversary, take a deep dive into what makes products great, or even appreciate simple pleasures such as puzzles and Bloody Marys!

What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can use in January 2026.

250 Years

America’s 250th birthday will likely be a widespread event.

In 2026, the United States will celebrate its 250th year as a nation. The event will go by a few names (keywords) such as “anniversary,” “sestercentennial,” “quarter-millennial,” or “semiquincentennial.”

If America’s bicentennial in 1976 is an indication of what to expect in 2026, there will be promotions, parties, and opportunities. Many referred to the 1976 occasion as the “buycentennial” because of the increase in marketing and spending.

Promotional content can focus on patriotic products or emphasize history and how-tos.

For example, an apparel retailer could publish a 250-year fashion series that included videos, articles, and even interactive elements.

Two hundred fifty years of fashion might reveal more continuity than change.

For a how-to content, something as simple as “How to Celebrate the Sestercentennial” could work.

Bloody Mary Day

The Bloody Mary is a classic cocktail, often heavily garnished.

The classic Bloody Mary cocktail is a mixture of vodka, tomato juice, and spices, including salt, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco.

While it has no curative properties, the Bloody Mary is a popular hangover remedy. As such, Americans celebrate Bloody Mary Day each January 1.

The idea is simple enough. Folks drink a lot on New Year’s Eve and wake up suffering from the aftereffects. The drink’s tomato juice is hydrating. The salt helps to restore electrolytes. The spices wake one up a bit. And, ultimately, the vodka prolongs recovery.

Bloody Mary’s offer plenty of content opportunities. For example, a travel retailer selling high-end luggage and travel accessories could focus on the cocktail’s history. Fernand Petiot invented the drink in 1921 while bartending at the famous Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. The establishment on 5 Rue Daunou is still open and remains a favorite for tourists.

Other article ideas include various Bloody Mary recipes, New Year’s recovery checklists, and entertainment ideas.

Wikipedia at 25

Wikipedia home page.

On January 15, 2001, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia, the human-edited encyclopedia that focuses on “verifiability, not truth.”

The result was an information source shunned by academics — scholarly papers do not cite it — but which approaches the accuracy of classic encyclopedias for many topics.

The platform has also faced a recent challenge from Elon Musk’s upstart Grokipedia, which attempts to challenge Wikipedia’s alleged inaccuracies and political biases.

Both the anniversary and recent publicity make Wikipedia a good topic for content marketers. A common (and entertaining) approach is calling out Wikipedia errors, such as those related to the products your business sells.

For example, music-and-pop-culture-related businesses could write about Wikipedia’s false claim that a member of the band Bilk left after being implicated in a Jamaican corned beef theft. Or the same shop might cover another Wikipedia claim that the U.S. military used Yoko Ono’s music during interrogations.

Those errors from April 2024 and August 2025, respectively, have been corrected, but the humor remains.

National Puzzle Day

Puzzle solving turns chaos into a satisfying sense of order.

Established in 2002, National Puzzle Day occurs each January 29. The occasion reminds us of the joy and benefits that puzzles provide.

The topic is relevant for many types of ecommerce businesses. Here are examples.

• Woodworking supply shop: “10 Easy Jigsaw Puzzle Templates for Scrollsaw Beginners.”
• Toy store: “The Secret World of Puzzle Makers.”

Marketers could also publish puzzles, such as themed crosswords, visual challenges, or various product-related games. And producing puzzle content could be a good way to try out AI-powered vibe coding.

Bill of Materials

Product quality can hide in details that most consumers never see.

Consumers purchase some products on impulse and others through inference — cues of quality, durability, and craftsmanship, even when they can’t articulate why.

A “bill of materials” article or video describes a product’s construction or the sourcing of its materials. Such content might interview a supplier or take apart a product to show its inner workings.

The audience of potential customers may not remember each material name, but they will remember the impact, thinking, “These people know what they are making, and they are not afraid to show it.”

5 Content Marketing Ideas for December 2025

December can be a month of non-stop ecommerce activity with flash sales, rapid ad optimization, and fulfillment mayhem. It is also an opportunity for content marketing.

Helpful, informative, and entertaining content can still cut through the noise. Articles, videos, and podcasts that inform and inspire shoppers will attract attention long after the last order ships.

After all, content marketing is the act of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers not for one month, but long term. What follows are five content marketing ideas your ecommerce shop can use in December 2025.

AI Gift Planning

Agentic commerce and AI-driven search, such as from Perplexity, are changing how folks shop.

The way shoppers discover products and gifts is changing.

Millions of consumers will ask Google Gemini, ChatGPT, or Perplexity for gift ideas during the 2025 Christmas shopping season. Some will finish their purchases inside those chats or on AI web browsers.

This shift rewards marketers who structure their shop’s content clearly and correctly. Thus, December 2025, is a good time to publish buying guides, FAQs, and product comparisons — all properly structured — to ensure generative systems understand what a store sells.

This could mean creating articles based on the principles of generative engine optimization or updating existing buying guides to perform better with large language models.

A merchant could also produce educational content, such as “How to Use ChatGPT for Gift Ideas” or “How AI Shopping Impacts Small Businesses.” Those guides can run in a store’s newsletter, perhaps positioning the business as the place to start every consumer’s Christmas shopping.

Year in Review

Retailer Mr Porter typically publishes at least one year-in-review retrospective.

Reflection works in December. It gives readers closure on the year and a sense of continuity into the next.

Ecommerce content marketers can write list-style articles such as “Top 10 Products That Defined 2025” or “Our Customers’ Favorite Finds of the Year.”

Retrospective articles can pair with forward-looking posts, such as “How to Get More from Your Gear in 2026” or similar.

Large retailers already use this format effectively. Mr Porter’s annual “Best Dressed Men of the Year” article honors the retailer’s customers’ style sensibility while reinforcing its editorial authority.

Williams-Sonoma often publishes year-end or season-end recipe roundups that connect kitchen trends to products. REI’s annual adventure retrospectives combine storytelling and imagery that carry well into January.

Done well, a year-in-review article shows customers that your store observes, learns, and evolves alongside them.

Small Business Saturday

Small businesses come in many forms. Many an ecommerce shop, even ones with their own fulfillment operations, fall into this category.

American Express and the U.S. Small Business Administration established Small Business Saturday in 2010 as a response to Black Friday and Cyber Monday for independent retailers. In the ensuing 15  years, it has become a fixture in the holiday calendar and a day when shoppers consciously seek out small retailers.

For ecommerce and brick-and-click merchants, the occasion — on November 29, 2025 — is both an event and a storytelling opportunity.

In the weeks leading up to Small Business Saturday, marketers can publish content showing what makes their stores distinct.

Articles, videos, or newsletters might introduce the folks behind the products or describe the experience customers get, which should be something that big retailers can’t match.

Quirky Observances

Ugly sweaters and offbeat observances provide opportunities.

Oddities, curiosity, and humor can make for entertaining content.

Quirky observances give content marketers reasons to publish something fun, personable, and memorable. December 2025 is full of these sorts of calendar hooks.

• National Sock Day: December 4
• National Cookie Day: December 4
• Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day: December 8
• National Lager Day: December 10
• National Tie Day: December 18
• Ugly Sweater Day: December 19
• Crossword Puzzle Day: December 21
• Make Cut-Out Snowflakes Day: December 27

A footwear retailer might run “Why Socks Make the Best Stocking Stuffers” for National Sock Day. A cookware shop could publish “5 Holiday Cookies to Bake on National Cookie Day.” A menswear retailer might highlight vintage patterns for National Tie Day, while a craft store posts a simple tutorial for Make Cut-Out Snowflakes Day.

These topics attract casual readers seeking light, shareable content, and give ecommerce content marketers a way to connect their products with calendar dates.

Texas Statehood

Try ecommerce marketing with a Texas accent.

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the 28th state in the Union. The anniversary has historical importance beyond state lines, although the content might work best for shoppers in the Lone Star State.

Merchants might emphasize products sourced, designed, or manufactured in Texas. A fashion retailer could showcase boots or leather goods made in El Paso. A specialty food shop might highlight Texas barbecue sauces, spices, or pecans.

Even national retailers can connect with the date by featuring Texas-based suppliers, innovators, and artisans.

Article topics could include:

• 5 Inventions from Texas That Changed Everyday Life
• 15 Little-Known Products Made in Texas
• 25 Items Every Texan Must Own

You’re Writing a Book. Now What?

Having decided to add “author” to your résumé, your first task is setting the book up for success. Knowing the subject, audience, and goal is only the starting point. Consider how you’ll prioritize time, quality, speed, and budget. Assess your strengths and skills, and where you might need help.

Then envision the next steps.

This article is the second of my two-part series on publishing a book to benefit your company. Part one, “Can Writing a Book Grow Your Business?,” appeared last month.

Publishing Paths

The three main publishing paths are do-it-yourself, traditional, and hybrid. Each has pros and cons.

• Self-publishing. If speed is important and budget is tight, DIY publishing in digital formats is the clear choice. Moreover, selling direct means you’ll know the buyers, which is unlikely through a publisher, distributor, or third-party website.

• Traditional. If the goal is significant print sales, you’ll need an agent and a traditional publisher, though smaller publishers and university presses may accept un-agented book proposals.

• Hybrid. Generally, with a hybrid publisher, the author pays some or all of the publishing expenses upfront (e.g., editorial, design, marketing) and, in turn, receives a larger share of book sales than with a standard royalty.

It’s unlikely your efforts alone — as a side hustle while running a business — will result in the best possible outcome, regardless of your expertise or writing skills. Casual writers such as your nephew the English major can help in the early stages. But like doctors, plumbers, mechanics, web designers, and digital marketers, editorial pros have much to offer.

Yes, AI tools are terrific aids for research, refining ideas, and organizing notes, but they lack the context, nuance, and judgment of experienced and connected humans.

Roles

Luckily, there are plenty of expert humans! Here are typical book development roles:

• Researchers and fact-checkers can find information such as case studies, historical trends, and economic data, as well as verify references and quotations.

• Writing coaches and groups can encourage and motivate, and provide useful, ongoing feedback.

• Ghostwriters take on most of the composition, working closely to capture your voice, hone ideas, and organize the presentation. Partnering with a public co-author is another way to share the heavy lifting (and profits, if any).

• Developmental editors and coaches help shape a book’s structure and flow, refine repetitive or unclear sections, and build on your strengths as a writer.

• Copy editors and proofreaders check for errors and suggest corrections. A good copy editor will detect repetition or confusion and recommend alternatives, as well as fix grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Proofreaders focus on remaining errors as the final step before printing.

You as the author have final say with all editorial professionals over the manuscript. You are ultimately responsible for the book’s content. You may not require a team of cover designers, illustrators, indexers, agents, publishers, publicists, and audiobook narrators, but one or more will almost certainly improve the finished product.

Freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Reedsy include editorial experts, as do professional membership organizations. The Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, the Association of Ghostwriters, ACES, the Editorial Freelancers Association, and Editors Canada have directories searchable by service, skills, location, experience, subject, and more. The sites also provide how-to on assessing needs and qualifications. The EFA (I’m a member) offers tips on hiring an editor, as well as descriptions and costs of the various editorial services.

Other helpful resources include publishing veteran Jane Friedman, the Alliance of Independent Authors, and the Authors Guild. Writer Beware alerts authors to potential scams.

5 Content Marketing Ideas for November 2025

For retailers, Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday are the key dates in November, but not necessarily the best options for content marketing.

Merchants may find their best chance to attract, engage, and retain shoppers via content will come from shopping guides and instructional articles, videos, and podcasts.

Here are five content ideas to try this November.

Shopping with AI Assistants

Expect shoppers to use artificial intelligence this holiday season.

Holiday content marketing is changing because search is changing.

In November 2025, some holiday shoppers will ask Gemini, ChatGPT, or Perplexity for gift ideas and recommendations.

For ecommerce companies, the shift creates both risk and opportunity. Risk, because traditional search engine optimization alone may not surface your products. Opportunity, because AI-powered shopping assistants reward clear, useful, and structured content.

Content marketers have perhaps two approaches. First, produce content for generative engine optimization, similarly to SEO.

A November campaign might include buying guides with Schema.org markup, FAQ sections, and side-by-side product comparisons. Expert video explainers or interviews could help train algorithms to associate your brand with authority and knowledge. The idea is to position your business as the “helpful source” for shoppers.

The second opportunity is to promote “how to shop with AI” guides through email newsletters.

Movember and Men’s Health

November is an opportune time to publish content related to men’s health and grooming.

“Movember” is a global movement that raises awareness about men’s health. It’s an opportunity for ecommerce marketers to engage with men in an authentic and understanding way.

Retailers selling grooming products, fitness gear, or apparel can capitalize on Movember by creating content focused on men’s wellness. Here are some example article ideas.

• “Guide to Growing and Caring for Your Movember Mustache”
• “5 At-Home Workouts to Support Men’s Health”
• “Wearing Blue in November Supports Men’s Health Awareness”

Adding a personal element — such as employee stories or customer profiles — also adds credibility. Frame Movember articles, videos, or podcasts not as sales pitches but as part of your store’s commitment to the men it serves.

Veterans Day

Content marketers can take a patriotic approach to product promotion in November.

Each November 11, Americans remember veterans of the nation’s military. Veterans Day is both solemn and celebratory. It honors service and sacrifice, while also highlighting the values of resilience and community.

For marketers, it’s an opportunity to tell genuine stories that resonate with shoppers, even while connecting those stories to products.

For example, an ecommerce business might share the experiences of veteran employees, highlight veteran-owned suppliers, or publish educational content that connects service values such as teamwork and resilience to the store’s products.

Fibonacci Day

The Fibonacci sequence appears in nature, science, engineering, and art.

Fibonacci Day, observed on November 23, honors the so-called golden ratio, which is prevalent in nature, science, engineering, and art.

The Fibonacci mathematical sequence is a series of numbers in which each is the sum of the two preceding it. The sequence starts with 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, and continues by summing pairs of numbers, such as 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on.

This pattern exists everywhere. In fact, once you see it, it is hard to unsee.

Retailers can use Fibonacci Day to surprise and engage audiences with unexpected connections.

A home décor shop might showcase how the sequence applies to architecture, furniture, or photography. A fashion merchant could highlight symmetry in patterns and fabrics, linking natural geometry to clothing. A specialty food store might feature recipes inspired by spirals in nature — from seashell-shaped pasta to cinnamon rolls.

A children’s exhibit at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art features the Fibonacci sequence, providing additional inspiration.

Small Business Saturday

Pull back the curtain in November and show shoppers why they should patronize small businesses.

In what might be a stroke of luck, Small Business Saturday is on November 29, 2025 — the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend when many folks are shopping.

The event is an opportunity for independent retailers to showcase what makes them unique. Content leading up to the day can highlight why shopping small matters.

The message can be direct or subtle. A behind-the-scenes video might show family members preparing for the holiday rush. The idea is to connect the human side of the business with shoppers whilst encouraging them to purchase.

Here are three example article ideas:

• “10 Unique Gifts Available Only at Small Merchants.”
• “How Shopping Small Supports Local Communities.”
• “Preparing Our Store for Small Business Saturday.”

Generative engines are increasingly surfacing content that emphasizes authority and originality. Your store’s story, expertise, and individuality could appeal to both algorithms and humans.

Done well, content for Small Business Saturday builds loyalty that extends into the new year, beyond a single weekend.