January is a month of new opportunities. In 2025, content marketers can kick the year off right, focusing on resets, AI-driven repurposes, cheese, hobbies, and even opposites.
Content marketing is the act of curating or creating articles, videos, or podcasts to attract, engage, and retain customers.
What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can try in January 2025.
January Reset
January is a good time for content marketers to encourage and support potential customers.
The new year is synonymous with fresh starts. Roughly 30% of American adults set resolutions to be healthier, more productive, or better organized.
Ecommerce marketers can publish articles, podcasts, and videos to support those resolutions. The content could be both uplifting and promotional to a store’s products.
Here are a few examples.
A DTC fitness brand might publish a blog post titled “10 Simple Ways to Stick to Your Fitness Resolutions in 2025.” The post could feature the brand’s products, such as yoga mats and resistance bands.
A home organization retailer could create a short-form video series showcasing “decluttering challenges” that include helpful tools and products.
A woman’s apparel boutique might write “How to Refresh Your Wardrobe for the New Year,” an article linking to blouses, skirts, or shoes.
AI-driven Repurposes
Generative AI can reproduce and transform content into new formats.
OpenAI released ChatGPT on November 20, 2022, and in surprisingly little time, generative artificial intelligence has become an almost unreplaceable tool for some content marketers.
Many businesses avoid using AI to produce entire articles but often deploy it to reuse or repurpose content.
With the spirit of resets and resolutions in January, content marketers might resolve to remake some content with AI. Here are three examples.
Convert videos into text.Multiple AI tools can convert a video into blog posts, email newsletters, or social media posts.
Spotlight written content for social media. Marketers use automation workflows with tools such as Zapier, ChatGPT, and Buffer to generate and schedule dozens of X, Threads, and Facebook posts from a single article.
Transform chat into FAQs. Another technique is employing AI to anonymize and remake customer chats into FAQs.
National Cheese-lovers Day
Content marketers have an opportunity to celebrate cheese lovers in January 2025.
January 20, 2025, is National Cheese-lovers Day and an opportunity for content marketers to celebrate shoppers who thoroughly enjoy that item.
This pseudo-holiday is often confused with its close kin, National Cheese Day, which is in June, but there are differences. National Cheese Day commemorates the longstanding (perhaps 7,000 years) cheese-making tradition and celebrates a beloved food. Meanwhile, January’s National Cheese-lovers Day focuses on folks who eat cheese.
While this particular celebration will make the most marketing sense for retailers and ecommerce shops in the food or kitchen supply segments, clever marketers from nearly any segment should be able to produce some tasty content about cheese consumption.
Here are a few potential article ideas.
Kitchen supply shop: “10 Perfect Recipes for the Cheese Gourmond.”
Pop-culture store: “Which Celebrities Love Cheese? These 20 Sure Do.”
Luggage merchant: “15 Destination Vacations for Traveling Cheese Lovers.”
‘What If’ Articles
“What if” articles could be a fun way for content marketers to celebrate Opposite Day.
While entertainment is certainly a valid form of content marketing, most folks working in the retail and ecommerce businesses rarely aim to amuse.
January 25, 2025, however, might be a rare opportunity to do just that. National Opposite Day is a whimsical event based on the children’s make-believe game.
To celebrate the occasion, folks might wear clothes backward, walk in reverse, or behave unexpectedly.
Interestingly, a literary form that feels like Opposite Day is the “what if” article, which explores hypothetical scenarios and asks “what if” questions about almost anything one could imagine.
For example, a pet supply store could publish an entire series on the premise “What if dogs owned humans?”
National Hobby Month
January is National Hobby Month.
January is National Hobby Month. It is a time for folks to embrace new interests, rediscover forgotten pastimes, or tackle a hobby they’ve always wanted to try.
Hobbies provide relaxation, personal growth, and even social connections. It’s an excellent opportunity for ecommerce businesses to inspire customers while showcasing products that make it easy to start or improve hobbies.
Hobby-focused content might include articles, videos, or even online courses. Each could be associated with a product bundle or “starter kit” connecting content and commerce.
Christmas is the culmination of December holidays for retail marketers, but little-known occasions can attract shoppers, too.
Content marketing is the art of creating, publishing, and promoting articles, podcasts, and videos to attract, engage, and retain customers.
Think about using the following ideas in email campaigns. December emails often lead with promotions, but a message with helpful, informative, or entertaining content might be just what shoppers need.
Repeal Day
Repeal Day celebrates the end of Prohibition.
December 5, 1933, marked the end of Prohibition in the United States — the period from 1920 to 1933 when the 18th Amendment banned the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.
Despite good intentions, Prohibition led to the rise of bootlegging, speakeasies, and a thriving black market for alcohol.
The 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th, restored Americans’ legal privilege to purchase and consume alcohol.
Since 1933, Repeal Day has become a celebratory holiday for bars, distilleries, and enthusiasts, who toast the return of the freedom to imbibe.
Content marketers could combine responsible alcohol consumption and the holiday season for how-to articles, Christmas party theme ideas, and even last-minute gift-giving ideas.
Here are a few example titles.
Men’s clothing shop: “What to Wear and Drink This Christmas”
Home decor store: “Need a Christmas Party Theme? Try Repeal Day”
General merchandise store: “How to Celebrate Repeal Day and Christmas in Style”
Christmas Card Day
Content marketers can build on the tradition of sending holiday cards.
Americans send roughly 1.5 billion Christmas cards annually, mainly via the U.S. mail. But not everyone who intends to send a card does. Shoppers get busy and forget.
Enter Christmas Card Day on December 9, which aims to help us remember to gather stamps, envelopes, and cards and start sending the holiday cheer.
Content marketers can use Christmas Card Day to nudge their audience of shoppers not just to send cards but to buy the right gift, too.
Here are a few potential titles.
“10 Reasons to Add a Gift to 2024 Christmas Cards”
“15 Gifts That Are Way Better Than a Christmas Card”
“The 2024 Christmas Card Readiness Guide”
White Elephant Day
The king of Siam (now Thailand) apparently gave white elephants as gifts.
Celebrated on the second Wednesday in December, White Elephant Day falls on the 11th in 2024. It is an opportunity to give odd, extravagant, and — to quote Wikipedia — “useless” gifts.
The pseudo-holiday’s origins are unclear, but a theory goes something like this: When the king of Siam wanted to discipline or punish a courtier mildly, he would give that individual a rare albino elephant. These animals were a treasure and treated like art, making them expensive to maintain and useless for work or transportation.
From the content marketer’s perspective, one could publish:
A white elephant gift guide,
An article about setting up a white elephant exchange,
A post about the history of white elephant gifts.
National Free Shipping Day
National Free Shipping Day is an opportunity to set reasonable shipping expectations.
December 14, 2024, is National Free Shipping Day. The founders of FreeShipping.org and Coupon Sherpa created the event in 2008 to promote ecommerce. At the time, shoppers feared online purchases after about December 10 would not arrive by Christmas. Offering free shipping would extend ecommerce orders.
But consumers in 2024 believe they can order just about anything at seemingly any time to arrive in 24 hours or less.
That is largely true unless a purchase is for, say, print-on-demand services or drop-shipped goods via DSers or elsewhere. Those items won’t arrive by Christmas day if ordered much past the 14th.
Content marketers can use National Free Shipping Day to make last-ditch pitches to shoppers, publishing articles about deadlines or explaining why print-to-order is good for the environment but not last-minute shopping.
National Whiner’s Day
National Whiner’s Day recognizes that some of us are sad the day after Christmas.
Content marketers usually focus on utility and information, leaving entertainment to influencers and creators. Yet National Whiner’s Day on December 26 is an opportunity to entertain.
National Whiner’s Day recognizes that some folks are sad the day after Christmas. It aims to poke fun at the many things we whine about despite being very blessed.
The goal is humor. Here are some example titles.
“The Whiner’s Guide to Appreciating the Christmas Haul”
In November 2024, ecommerce marketers will have no shortage of topics for articles, videos, and podcasts. Examples include holiday shopping, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Daylight Savings Time, military families, and winter previews.
Done right, content marketing attracts, engages, and retains customers. But finding topics for that content can be challenging. Here are five content ideas your company can use in November 2024.
Holiday Shopping Guides
Marketers can encourage early shopping with guides.
In 2024, just 27 days separate Thanksgiving from Christmas. This relatively short shopping season has some retailers starting early with holiday sales.
Initial marketing campaigns could include guides encouraging holiday gift-givers. One approach is to address popular items while reminding shoppers of the short season.
Here are a few potential headlines.
“10 Popular Toys That Could be Gone by Black Friday”
“5 Personalized Gifts to Order before Thanksgiving”
“21 Christmas Gifts to Ship Internationally — and When”
“10 Ways Early Holiday Buying Saves Money”
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
The first balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade appeared in 1927.
November 2024 marks the 98th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. The parade is best known for its amazing floats.
Now an annual and popular American holiday tradition, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade started with just the retail store’s employees wearing colorful costumes and some animals on loan from the Central Park Zoo. Soon after, Macy’s added bands and floats.
The first balloon, in 1927, featured Felix the Cat. In 2024, viewers can expect giant balloons featuring the Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Extraordinary Noorah & The Elf on the Shelf, Marshall from PAW Patrol, Spider-Man, and SpongeBob SquarePants.
For content marketers, the parade could be an opportunity to inform and entertain readers.
Daylight Saving Time
Lots of folks in the Northern Hemisphere will soon change their routines at the end of daylight saving time.
Sunday, November 3, 2024, marks the end of daylight saving time in the United States and at least 10 other nations, when households will set their clocks back an hour.
Germany, Italy, and France were among the first nations to implement daylight saving time. They each started in 1916. America added it in 1942.
For content marketers, the time change is an excellent occasion to publish list articles explaining how falling back an hour could impact shoppers’ attitudes toward a given product or category.
Here are some product category-specific article headlines.
Home decor store: “10 Cozy Home Updates for the End of Daylight Saving Time”
Online fitness shop: “7 Ways to Maintain Your Fitness Routine after Daylight Saving Time”
Coffee merchant: “6 Brews to Power through the Darker Days”
Electronics store: “5 Smart Gadgets for the End of Daylight Saving Time”
Military Family Month
Recognizing the sacrifice of military families is a content opportunity in November.
Honorary holidays are excellent ways to recognize and engage important customer segments.
An example is Military Family Month in November. Marketers can produce content celebrating the resilience, strength, and support military families provide for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who defend the nation.
One of the best ways is family profiles. An online store selling pet supplies, for example, could ask customers to nominate a military family to be featured. The business could then interview the family and surprise them with a year’s supply of pet food.
Alternatively, marketers could recognize military families or promote a discount for that segment.
Winter Preview
Seasonal content like skiing can attract visitors from organic search and elsewhere.
November is an excellent time to publish a how-to article for the upcoming winter snow season.
For example, an online ski shop might publish:
Resort forecasts describing where to find the best skiing.
A preseason ski maintenance checklist.
Gear guides for backcountry skiing.
Holiday ski gear shopping guides.
Most ecommerce businesses can find preseason topics appropriate for their product line.
A women’s apparel store might publish a guide for sustainable winter fashion.
A nutritional supplement brand could produce a winter wellness series.
A pet supply store can create a holiday decorating guide featuring relevant photos and supplies.
Before I launched my agency, I worked for several others and noticed a troubling trend.
Many focused solely on creating new on-site content for their clients, often neglecting older posts and pages. This was especially common with blogs at a time when the trend was to prioritize quantity over quality.
The situation always reminded me of the “pump-and-dump” strategies in the stock market – short-term mindsets that result sometimes in wins and sometimes in massive losses.
I knew this approach was flawed and ended in what I call “content decay.” When I launched my agency in 2017, I focused on refreshing older content as much as creating new content.
The results immediately impressed – and continued to impress.
For example, earlier this year, one of our commercial pest control clients had an underperforming blog post that was created by a previous agency. The content was decent but lacked many on-page SEO elements, especially header tags and internal links (two were actually dead!).
We updated internal links and all other on-page SEO elements and rewrote around 30% of the content. That single blog post jumped to the top position for target keywords in the target location within six weeks.
After amplifying it on social media, which naturally attracted other shares, quality links, and a Google Business Profile, we were able to attribute nearly $100,000 in new revenue to that one piece of content.
This experience convinced me that content decay is a serious problem for many businesses and needs to be addressed ASAP. This issue also inspired me to restructure our service offerings, making content refresh a core service for our clients.
What Is Content Decay?
Content decay happens when a webpage experiences a gradual decline in traffic over time. This can be due to several factors.
Search engine algorithms are constantly updating, and what worked a year ago may not work today.
New competitors are constantly popping up, creating newer content that may be more aligned with current audience preferences. Additionally, your content may simply become stale.
This problem has worsened with the rise of AI-generated content. Many brands use AI to churn out as much content as possible without a content strategy to keep it fresh and relevant.
With the right content decay strategies, you can combat content decay and ensure your content remains relevant long after you hit “publish.”
Recognizing The Signs Of Content Decay
First, you need to be able to identify content decay before you can fix it.
Pay attention to your engagement metrics and watch for these signs of decaying content:
Decrease in organic traffic to that page/post.
Lower overall search engine rankings.
Outdated information.
High bounce rate.
Low average time on page.
Fewer social shares.
Negative user feedback.
Content Decay Strategies That Will Revitalize Your Content
So how do you combat content decay and improve user experience?
Here are a few content decay strategies to revitalize your content and keep it performing well.
Conduct Regular Content Audits
Periodic content audits help you identify underperforming pages or those needing an update.
This will improve your content marketing strategy and boost your online presence. When conducting a content audit, I recommend focusing on key metrics like:
Organic traffic.
Bounce rate.
Conversion rate.
Time on page.
Update And Refresh Your Existing Content
Remember, you don’t just have to create new content. Sometimes, refreshing older content is a better use of your time and resources. And when combined with new content on a consistent basis, you’ve maximized your potential results.
If you have content that is performing well but could use some tuning, simply update it slightly and republish it with a new date. Content updating doesn’t have to be a daunting task.
Focus on making a few key changes that will make a big difference.
Content updating can be as simple as adding a few sentences or as complex as rewriting entire sections or refreshing internal links that point to better-performing pages (and making sure those better-performing pages also point back!).
No matter the approach, be sure to let Google and other search engines know that you’ve updated your content.
This will help them crawl and index your content more quickly. Here are a few specific content update ideas that reinforce why you or your agency must stay educated on all the latest – I argue weekly because of how fast industries change nowadays.
Update outdated statistics.
Add new information based on the latest research and developments in your field.
Cut the fluff and use shorter sentences and paragraphs to improve the content’s readability and open up “psychological space” that readers can digest more easily.
Add more visuals to your content, like images, videos, and infographics. Regarding videos, we constantly try to get company leaders to produce a short video discussing the focus of a blog or service page. The goal is to upload that to YouTube and link back to the article, then embed the video in the actual article itself. This helps in numerous ways, keeping people engaged and helping them become brand loyalists quickly.
Ensure your content is optimized for current SEO best practices. This includes using relevant keywords throughout your content and ensuring your website is mobile-friendly.
Check for and fix broken links. Broken links can frustrate users and hurt your search engine rankings.
Make sure your content is still relevant to your target audience. Your target audience may change over time, and your content needs to reflect that.
Repurpose Outdated Content
Instead of letting older pieces of content gather dust in your archives, give them new life by repurposing them into other formats. This is a great content strategy for getting more mileage from your existing content.
For example, you could turn a blog post into a video, infographic, or even a podcast episode.
When you repurpose content, you make the most of your existing content while also reaching a wider audience. Repurposing content is an effective way to breathe new life into your content and reach a wider audience.
Content Format
Repurposing Ideas
Blog post
Create an infographic, video, or social media post based on the information. Turn it into a downloadable checklist, template, or worksheet.
Infographic
Break it down into smaller, individual visuals for social media. Expand on each point in a series of blog posts or email newsletters.
Video
Transcribe the video into a blog post or create short, shareable clips for social media. Extract the audio and create a podcast episode.
Podcast Episode
Transcribe the episode and turn it into a blog post or create short, shareable audiograms for social media. Pull out key quotes and create social media graphics.
Sunset Content That’s Past Its Prime
It’s a good rule of thumb to keep high-performing content for as long as possible. However, not all content is worth saving. Content sunsetting is the practice of removing outdated or irrelevant content from your website.
Not all content needs to be updated. If you have a piece of content that’s factually incorrect or no longer relevant to your target audience, it’s usually best to remove it entirely.
However, you can also choose to redirect that URL to a more relevant page on your site rather than deleting it completely.
Make Use Of User Feedback
User feedback can be incredibly valuable when it comes to identifying content decay.
You can gain valuable insights by using tools like Google Analytics and your Search Console, but don’t stop there. Use comments and social media to your advantage, too.
See what people are saying (or not saying) about your content. What resonates with them? What falls flat? This feedback is like gold when figuring out what content to update and refresh.
Consider sending out surveys to your audience, asking what topics they’d like to see covered or what content they find most helpful.
Create A Content Review Schedule
The best way to stay on top of your content refresh efforts is to create a content review schedule and stick to it. Life gets busy, and a schedule will ensure that your content remains relevant and engaging and doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
For example, you could review all of your website content every quarter and flag any that needs updating. This ensures that you never let a piece of content go stale.
My agency monitors individual pages/posts weekly. Depending on the size of the website, from those producing 25 new pieces of content monthly to three pieces monthly, we overhaul older pieces on different timelines.
For example, for our large website campaign clients with 200+ pages/posts, we overhaul them monthly, say 5 or so. For a smaller website, the pages/posts will be overhauled quarterly.
Regularly Review Your Content, And Make It A Priority
Content decay is a real problem for websites of all sizes.
By implementing these content decay strategies, you can breathe new life into your old content. You’ll make it more relevant to your audience.
Not only that, but you will also improve your search engine rankings and boost traffic to your site. Regularly review your content, and make it a priority to keep things fresh, updated, and engaging.
The other core function of search engines is to retain users.
Search engines retain users by ensuring their confidence and trust in the displayed results. Over time, they build expectations that using their platform is a safe, streamlined experience that quickly leads users to what they want.
SEO success depends on being found by your target audience for what they are looking for and consistently providing a satisfying user experience based on the context of the queries they type into search engines.
Search Is Built On Content
The core function of search engines is to help users find information. Search engines first discover webpages, they parse and render and they then add them to an index. When a user inputs a query, search engines retrieve relevant webpages in the index and then “rank” them.
Search engines need to know what pages are about and what they contain in order to serve them to the right users. In concept, they do this quite simply: They examine the content. The real process behind this is complicated, executed by automated algorithms and evaluated with human feedback.
This relationship between searchers, search engines, and websites, has come to define the internet experience for most users. Unless you know the exact URL of the website you intend to visit, you need must find it via a third party. That could be social media, a search engine, or even discovering the website offline and then typing it in. This is called a “referral,” and Google sends 64% of all website referrals in the U.S. Microsoft and Bing send the next largest amount of referrals, followed by YouTube.
Getting discovered by people who don’t already know you depends on search engines, and search engines depend on content.
At this point, whether this relationship is causal or correlative doesn’t matter. You must prioritize user experience and satisfaction because it’s a key indicator of SEO success.
Written language is still the primary way users interact with search engines and how algorithms understand websites. Google algorithms can interpret audio and videos, but written text is core to SEO functionality.
Enticing clicks and engaging users through content that satisfies their queries is the baseline of SEO. If your pages can’t do that, you won’t have success.
High-quality content and user experiences aren’t just important for SEO; they’re prerequisites.
This is true for all advertising and branding. Entire industries and careers are built on the skills to refine the right messaging and put it in front of the right people.
Evidence For The SEO Value Of Content
Google highlights the importance of content in its “SEO fundamentals” documentation. It advises that Google’s algorithms look for “helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people,” and provides details about how to self-assess high-quality content.
In fact, Google’s analysis of the content may determine whether a page enters the index at all to become eligible to rank. If you work hard to provide a good experience and serve the needs of your users, search engines have more reason to surface your content and may do so more often.
A 2024 study in partnership between WLDM, ClickStream, and SurferSEO suggests that the quality of your coverage on a topic is highly correlated with rankings.
Content And User Behavior
Recent developments in the SEO industry, such as the Google leak, continue to highlight the value of both content and user experience.
Google values user satisfaction to determine the effectiveness and quality of webpages and does seem to use behavioral analysis in ranking websites. It also focuses on the user intent of queries and whether a specific intent is served by a particular resource.
The satisfaction of your users is, if not directly responsible for SEO performance, highly correlated with it.
Many factors affect user experience and satisfaction. Website loading speed and other performance metrics are part of it. Intrusive elements of the page on the experience are another.
Content, however, is one of the primary determiners of a “good” or “bad” experience.
Does the user find what they’re looking for? How long does it take?
Is the content accurate and complete?
Is the content trustworthy and authoritative?
The answers to these questions reflect whether the user has a good or bad experience with your content, and this determines their behavior. Bad experiences tend to result in the user leaving without engaging with your website, while good experiences tend to result in the user spending more time on the page or taking action.
This makes content critical not only to your SEO efforts on search engines but also to your website’s performance metrics. Serving the right content to the right users in the right way impacts whether they become leads, convert, or come back later.
Leaning into quality and experience is a win all around. Good experiences lead to desirable behaviors. These behaviors are strong indications of the quality of your website and content. They lead to positive outcomes for your business and are correlated with successful SEO.
What Kinds Of Content Do You Need?
Successful content looks different for each goal you have and the different specific queries you’re targeting.
Text is still the basis of online content when it comes to search. Videos are massively popular. YouTube is the second-most popular search engine in the world. However, in terms of referrals, it only sends 3.5% of referral traffic to the web in the U.S. In addition, videos have titles, and these days, most have automated transcripts. These text elements are critical for discovery.
That isn’t to say videos and images aren’t popular. Video, especially “shorts” style videos, is an increasingly popular medium. Cisco reported that video made up 82% of all internet traffic in 2022. So you absolutely shoulder consider images and video as part of your content strategy to best serve your audiences and customers.
Both can enhance text-based webpages and stand on their own on social platforms.
But for SEO, it’s critical to remember that Google search sends the most referral traffic to other websites. Text content is still the core of a good SEO strategy. Multi-modal AI algorithms are getting very good at translating information between various forms of media, but text content remains critical for several reasons:
Plain text has high accessibility. Screen readers can access it, and it can be resized easily.
Text is the easiest way for both people and algorithms to analyze semantic connections between ideas and entities.
Text doesn’t depend on device performance like videos and images might.
Text hyperlinks are very powerful SEO tools because they convey direct meaning along with the link.
It’s easier to skim through text than video.
Text content is still dominant for SEO. But you should not ignore other content. Images, for example, make for strong link building assets because they’re attractive and easily sharable. Accompanying text with images and video accommodates a variety of user preferences and can help capture attention when plain text might not.
Like everything else, it’s down to what best serves users in any given situation.
SEO Content: Serving Users Since Search Was A Thing
Search engines match content to the needs of users.
Content is one-third of this relationship: user – search engine – information.
You need content to perform SEO, and any digital marketing activity successfully.
The difficulty comes from serving that perfect content for the perfect situation.
Content and social media are distinct marketing disciplines with a shared problem. Both must produce engaging material despite limited time and money.
Social media is essential for consistent and quick engagement and brand building. Content marketing is vital for search engine optimization and long-term relationships, leading to repeat sales.
Both are necessary and resource-intensive.
Combining the two into a single workflow can reduce the demands of each.
Deadline Chaos
An ecommerce business might need to post upward of six times daily to establish a following on X and Threads and perhaps four videos on TikTok and Instagram.
Assuming they maintain this schedule every day, the company’s marketers face roughly 140 weekly social media deadlines.
Meanwhile, the team must attract shoppers elsewhere, boost search engine rankings, and develop lasting customer relationships through blog posts, articles, podcasts, videos, and landing pages.
That’s a lot of content.
The most difficult parts are developing content ideas, producing them, and measuring the results.
A Flywheel
A business flywheel is a circular process wherein each step leads to the next.
The concept has been around for decades. Jeff Bezos famously used a flywheel to describe Amazon’s business model. Author Jim Collins wrote a book about the topic, prompting many businesses to adopt it for routine processes.
Applying a flywheel to social media and content marketing, we can focus on three steps:
Content ideas,
Content creation,
Measurement.
To illustrate, let’s develop a flywheel for articles and social media posts. I’ll focus on two of our three steps: content ideas and measurement.
Let’s assume we work for a content-then-commerce business that sells licensed, science-fiction-themed products. The company attracts potential customers to its website via content that contains related products for purchase.
Here are the steps.
1. Publish a post on X
Take a topic idea and compose an X post. Give the post a measurable call to action, such as “Subscribe to email list,” “Request a sample,” or “Leave a comment.” Record the post in a spreadsheet.
Repeat this step six times per day.
Log X posts in a spreadsheet and record their performance. Here the most successful posts were about transporter failures. Click image to enlarge.
2. Measure performance
Seven days after it’s published, measure each post’s results to identify popular topics for humans and X’s algorithm. Add the metric to the spreadsheet.
3. Expand successful X posts into articles
Repurpose top-performing X posts or topics into on-site, long-form articles. Optimize each with organic search keywords.
For example, a successful X post about death in a Star Trek transporter might lead to an article titled “Death and Other Problems with Star Trek’s Transporters.”
Record the articles in the spreadsheet and set a goal for each, such as site traffic or email subscriptions.
The topics of successful X posts are expanded into articles.
4. Measure article performance
Thirty days after publication, track the article’s performance against its goal. The aim is to identify the best performers.
5. Splinter and branch successful articles
For each successful article, identify at least five “splinter” and five “branch” topics. A splinter topic may derive from a sub-heading, while a branch could be a parallel concept.
A splinter topic for the article “Death and Other Problems with Star Trek’s Transporters” could be something like “Star Trek’s Transporters Create an Existential Identity Crisis.” Use each splinter or branch idea for an X post.
This closes the flywheel. We started with an idea, created an X post, and repurposed it into blog articles, which spawned new X posts.
Our example lacks content creation, although the pattern would be similar. We could add the content creation step at “Publish posts on X” and “Expand successful X posts into blog articles.”
The flywheel starts with an idea for an X post and expands it into articles, which spawns new ideas for X posts.
Content marketers need new ideas every month for articles, videos, and podcasts that will keep their websites and social media profiles busy and engaged.
Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and promoting content to attract, engage, and retain customers.
Content marketing drives many business objectives, from search engine optimization to social media marketing to brand building. But ideas fuel this kind of marketing, and they can be challenging to come up with.
What follows are five content marketing ideas for September 2024.
National Tailgating Day
National Tailgating Day is celebrated on the first Saturday in September, which in 2024 falls on the 7th.
Luke Lorick, the founder of the Tailgating Challenge, started National Tailgating Day in 2016 and has since focused the event around a love for sports, cooking, and camaraderie.
Tailgating is an American tradition and, therefore, a content marketing opportunity.
While there is conflicting data on the economics of football tailgating, some have estimated that 80% of Americans have participated at one time or another in a tailgating event and that collectively, revelers spend about $35 billion annually on tailgating gear, food, and beverages.
Content marketers have several angles for tailgating topics, many of which can be closely associated with the products a business sells.
For example, Venture Heat, which sells coats, jackets, and vests with built-in heaters, published “The Ultimate Guide: Tips for Tailgating Like a Pro,” a short tailgating checklist that included “stay warm” and linked to three of the brand’s heated puffy vests.
Potential articles or podcasts might include:
“21 Must-Have Tailgating Accessories,”
“Our Favorite Tailgating Barbeque Recipes of All Time,”
“The New Mom’s Guide to Tailgating,”
“A Short History of Tailgating and Eating.”
National Video Games Day
National Video Games Day, celebrated on September 12, 2024, has been observed since 1991. The day honors video games’ history and cultural impact, allowing gamers and enthusiasts to unite and celebrate their passion.
National Video Games Day could be an opportunity for content marketers to express a strong opinion.
Video games are among the most popular forms of entertainment worldwide.
Pop-culture brands could focus on video games in a positive way with game-related buying guides or game culture and how it influences everything from apparel to food.
Or some brands might challenge video game culture.
Tim Stoddart, the owner of Copyblogger, encouraged marketers to “create an enemy” in an X post, saying specifically, “Create an enemy. It can be a type of person, another brand, a tactic, or an opinion. But have a ‘them’ group that you exclude and subtly attack. Most marketers don’t do this. The ones that do earn more.”
Warning. Stoddart’s advice could be dangerous, but wouldn’t that be in keeping with the spirit of the day?
Tim Stoddart, a prominent marketer and owner of Copyblogger, has a dangerous tip.
National CleanUp Day
National CleanUp Day is celebrated on the third Saturday of September. Its purpose is to raise environmental awareness, combat littering, and encourage civil responsibility.
About 2 million people volunteer yearly to pick up litter at local parks, beaches, trails, and other public spaces.
National CleanUp Day is an opportunity to volunteer and show civic pride. It can also inspire content.
For retail content marketers, National CleanUp Day is an opportunity to promote corporate responsibility, publish helpful cleaning tips, or promote products.
For example, in 2023, Electric Bike Co. published a short article announcing National CleanUp Day and encouraging folks to ride an electric bike to their clean-up event.
Similarly, the appliance brand Kenmore published a National CleanUp Day checklist focused on the event’s social aspects and commitment to sustainability.
National Dog Week
September 22 to 28, 2024, is National Dog Week in the United States. Author and dog enthusiast William Lewis Judy started the observance in 1928 to recognize the contributions dogs make to happiness and society.
More than 65 million American households keep one or more dogs.
Retailers and brands in the pet industry have the most obvious connection to National Dog Week. For example, Chewy has published hundreds of articles that could work for this occasion. Here are a few examples.
Pet supply shops are not the only ones that can use the week for content. Two out of three American households have at least one dog, making National Dog Week an opportunity for nearly every content marketer.
To remain faithful to the spirit of the week, develop content that focuses on the contributions dogs make to the industry your products serve.
Publish a Research Report
CVS Health is one example of a brand that uses surveys and research for content marketing.
In September 2024, content marketers can borrow an idea from CVS Health, a brand related to the CVS Pharmacy chain.
The company publishes annual research reports, including The RX Report, The Health Trends Report, and the National Health Project.
For the most part, these reports are based on survey data and published as PDFs.
The research becomes a digital download.
For merchants, a survey-based research project could be an effective way to drive website traffic and brand attention.
Imagine a women’s jeweler known for its classic rings, necklaces, and brooches. This brand’s marketers develop a survey asking ladies about the best Christmas presents they have received. The survey also collects demographic information and product category rankings and identifies the gifts women dislike.
At least five content-related marketing opportunities are associated with the jeweler’s Christmas gift survey.
When promoting the survey, ask respondents to sign up for email notifications.
Publish the survey results, again asking folks to sign up for email notifications when they download it.
Send a press release with the survey findings and a link to the survey for journalists to share. The hope is that it will be mentioned in Christmas buying guides.
Use individual data points for social media posts that link to the research report or the buying guide.
Content mapping is a marketing technique that matches messages to meaningful stages in a shopper’s online buying journey.
The technique requires understanding shoppers’ motivations throughout the purchase process. Marketers can use this knowledge to create relevant, value-packed content to attract, engage, and retain shoppers.
Getting Started
An ecommerce content map starts with completing three tasks.
Know the customers. At each phase of a buying journey, what is a customer’s motivation?
Know the products. What value do the products deliver to shoppers? What differentiates the items sold or the store itself?
Catalog content. What content has the business already produced? How does that content align with shoppers’ buying journeys and the products’ value?
A Buying Journey
While each task is important and nuanced, let’s focus this article on knowing the customers — their journeys from consideration to post-purchase.
A few models help us understand how a consumer becomes familiar with a brand or product and eventually makes a purchase. One that works well for content mapping is McKinsey & Company’s Customer Decision Journey framework, which has four buying phases.
Initial consideration. A person has a need and begins looking for a product.
Active evaluation. The person gathers information and compares options.
Closure. Satisfied with the evaluation, the person makes a purchase.
Post-purchase. The customer experiences the product and forms an opinion on future buys.
A merchant’s marketing team should interview customers and prospects to understand what motivated them at each phase. The goal is identifying what content would help move the shopper toward an eventual purchase.
A content map requires understanding the particulars of a buyer’s journey, such as why someone who moved to Arizona from Mississippi might need skin cream.
Consider a practical example. Margo moved from humid and moist Mississippi to arid Arizona because of a new job.
She soon noticed that her elbows, heels, and knuckles had dried out, cracked, and started to itch. The water-based lotion she had used for decades did nothing to help. She needed something better. Margo has entered the initial consideration phase.
Margo searches Google as she actively evaluates her dry skin options. She learns that creams have relatively more oil than lotions and thus work better in arid climates.
During the active evaluation phase, Margo found a video demonstrating how lotion dried out a chamois cloth. The video was brilliant content marketing from a direct-to-consumer cream brand. Margo enters the closure phase and is ready to purchase from the shop that produced the helpful video.
When the new tub of cream arrives, Margo experiences its regenerative capabilities. She is in the post-purchase phase. The cream met her expectations. She will likely purchase from that shop again and be open to additional recommendations.
Content Mapping
Armed with an example, a content marketer can compare and associate the value of the company’s products, its existing content, and what motivated the shopper at each phase.
The marketer will identify and fill content gaps and develop a comprehensive story that engages a shopper like Margo throughout her buying journey. This is content mapping.
The specifics of how a marketing team executes the content map will differ from one merchant to another. Nonetheless, there is a common structure.
Let’s continue the example of a business selling skin creams and use Margo’s story to represent customers with similar motivations.
Initial consideration
Margo’s motivation. Find a solution for her dry and itchy skin.
Merchant’s marketing objective. Make Margo aware of the brand and educate her about possible solutions.
Types of content. Blog posts about moving to Arizona and dry skin care. YouTube videos about the same, engaging social media content, and easy-to-understand infographics about why certain products are effective in dry climates.
Active evaluation
Margo’s motivation. Understand which products are most effective for her needs.
Merchant’s marketing objective. Provide comprehensive information that addresses her questions and helps compare options.
Types of content. Detailed guides comparing creams and lotions and persuasive video demonstrations, such as the chamois cloth example, will help Margo understand her dry skin and the products that can help. This phase is also a good time to employ customer testimonials to build trust.
Closure
Margo’s motivation. Ready to purchase a product that promises better results than her lotion.
Merchant’s marketing objective. Make the purchase process easy and reassuring, emphasizing the product’s quality.
Types of content. Product pages featuring detailed descriptions and reviews, clear FAQs addressing common concerns, and more social proof to encourage purchase.
Post-purchase
Margo’s motivation. Experience the cream’s promised results and consider future purchases.
Merchant’s marketing objective. Ensure Margo is satisfied, encourage repeat business, and foster brand loyalty.
Types of content. Follow-up emails providing usage tips and additional product recommendations, invitations to join a loyalty program, how-to guides to maximize product benefits, and surveys to collect feedback for continuous improvement.
Suggesting a blog post or video about dry skin in Arizona for the initial consideration phase is very different from writing or producing it. But creating is beyond the purpose of a map aligning content with the buyer’s journey. Creating is where content marketing comes in.
Content marketers seeking article or video ideas in August 2024 can commemorate the National Basketball Association and Alfred Hitchcock or recognize parents, celebrants, and challenge seekers.
Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and promoting content to attract, engage, and retain customers. It works because articles, videos, or podcasts are a low-risk way for shoppers to engage with a business and, in turn, create a sense of reciprocity that leads them to purchase.
The only trouble is that marketers require a steady stream of topics. Fortunately, what follows are five content marketing ideas your company can use in August 2024.
NBA Turns 75
The NBA is celebrating its 75th anniversary in August 2024.
The National Basketball Association turns 75 on August 3, 2024, creating an opportunity for content marketers to connect one of America’s most popular sports to their brands and products.
Invented in 1891 at Springfield College in Massachusetts, basketball quickly gained popularity, so much so that by 1946 two rival leagues had emerged: the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America.
After a few teams — including the forerunner to the Lakers — left the NBL for the BAA in 1948, merger talks began. The result was the NBA, launched in August 1949 by combining the 17 teams from the two leagues.
Content marketers at ecommerce shops, physical-store chains, and direct-to-consumer brands could write about the history of the NBA, basketball as a sport, or “hoops” culture.
For example, the DTC brand TruHeight makes nutritional gummies and capsules, protein shakes, sleep aids, and other products aimed at healthy growth and development in teens and children. The brand could extend its mission by publishing a series of articles about basketball’s fitness benefits.
Happy Birthday, Alfred Hitchcock
Master director Alfred Hitchcock was born in August 1899.
Born on August 13, 1899, in London, England, Alfred Hitchcock would become one of the film industry’s most celebrated directors. The “Master of Suspense” was best known for the “Rear Window” (1954), “Vertigo” (1958), and “Psycho” (1960).
Celebrating Hitchcock’s birthday via content marketing could help stores with products related to the film or entertainment industry. But other online merchants might benefit, too.
An apparel brand could focus on fashion in Hitchcock’s movies. A home decor shop could address their set designs, and a pet supply company could release a modern critique of “The Birds” (1963).
Parent-focused Back-to-school
How about a back-to-school sale for parents?
The back-to-school shopping season is among the retail industry’s high holidays. Parents buy everything from pencils and pants to computers and cars for their kindergarten to college-aged students.
Unfortunately for merchants, most of those purchases will come at discounted prices. According to the National Retail Federation, roughly 68% of back-to-school shoppers in 2024 will purchase on-sale items.
An alternative approach could be to target “back-to-school” content at parents. Here are some example article titles.
Sporting goods store: “Fitness Routines for Parents with School-aged Kids”
Shop selling organizers: “25 Decluttering Tips while the Kids Are in School”
Kitchen gadget shop: “Meal Prep Hacks for Busy Parents”
Labor Day Planning Guides
Williams-Sonoma uses recipes to promote Labor Day.
Content marketing is especially effective when it is useful or helpful. A business builds connections with shoppers when it helps them learn a skill or overcome a problem.
Labor Day falls on Monday — September 2 in 2024. Many consumers will enjoy the long weekend by camping, taking a road trip, or hosting a party.
Marketers can offer helpful content that improves, simplifies, or organizes those experiences — while connecting with products available for purchase.
For example, Williams-Sonoma published a recipe set called “A Labor Day Cookout to Remember.” The recipes describe a three-course meal with bruschetta, grilled chicken, and blueberry-lavender cheesecake for dessert.
Most of the individual recipes recommend William-Sonoma products, such as a food thermometer for grilling and a set of stackable bowls.
Issue a Challenge
Take a play from the fitness industry’s book and issue a challenge in August.
In 2019, entrepreneur and podcaster Andy Frisella challenged his audience to participate in a “transformative mental toughness program” called the “Hard 75 Challenge.”
Over 75 days, participants obey a set of rules without exceptions or compromises. This includes a daily regimen of two 45-minute workouts, a strict diet, drinking a gallon of water, and reading at least 10 pages of a motivational book.
In August 2024, content marketers can borrow Frisella’s idea and challenge customers on topics related to businesses’ products or services. Here are some example challenges.
Sustainable living for retailers selling recycled products or eco-friendly items.
Backyard makeover for shops focused on plants, gardening supplies, power tools, and outdoor furniture.
Healthy cooking for stores offering kitchen equipment or food box subscriptions.
The challenges could be contests, too, with participants generating social media posts for additional exposure.
This is an excerpt from the B2B Lead Generation ebook, which draws on SEJ’s internal expertise in delivering leads across multiple media types.
What, exactly, do you need to create a sustainable and scalable lead generation strategy with content?
It starts with an exceptional piece of content that the leads want – your “lead magnet” – but it doesn’t end there. Modern content marketing requires resources.
Without a content marketing plan and the ability to execute it, you’ll quickly exhaust your audience pool, and the leads will dry up. The good news is you don’t have to do all of this internally, but you need to assess the best use of your resources.
Let’s start with a map of all the pieces required.
Assets & Bandwidth
The four major components of successful lead generation with content are:
Understanding your available market audience and captive audience size.
Consistently creating high-quality, hyper-relevant inbound content and the research behind it to reach existing and new audiences.
Consistently maintaining a high volume of lead-generating content required for the audience and individual people within that audience.
Consistently testing and improving your content.
Market & Audience Research
Research goes into every step of content creation. First, to create a “lead magnet,” you need to be super dialed in on your audience’s specific challenges and immediate needs that you can solve.
You need to understand what a model of success looks like for them and provide a resource that gets them at least part of the way toward that success.
It’s a bit of a mind-bender. You must think backward and then forward at the same time. Before you can understand your audience, you need to understand what their audience is asking of them and get fully immersed in that consumer’s journey to your customer – and how that creates a need that applies to you.
When you provide a solution for your target audience, why is your target audience there? What is their audience asking of them?
Why does their audience need their solution, and why does that create a need for your solution?
You must think about all of those layers to provide the best content for them to solve their problem for their audience.
You have to create a whole experience of total immersion to create a remarkable lead generation strategy.
And you have to do this often. One lead magnet, solving one specific problem, gives you a lifespan of leads. But content becomes out of date, and the needs of your customers – and their customers – change.
The knowledge you need to create lead magnets isn’t a matter of a one-time research project. It’s the culmination of constant analysis and regular direct touchpoints with audience members.
You also need to know where you are now and where you can reasonably get to in terms of your audience size. Do you have an audience currently? How large is it? Do you have a plan to grow your audience?
While you absolutely can generate leads with direct tactics like ads, to do it with content marketing, you need an audience first.
The first step is knowing your current marketable audience. Then, develop a plan to expand it with your own content marketing efforts and partnerships that expose new audiences to your brand.
And, of course, you need to develop a distribution plan for your lead magnet content to put it in front of your current marketable audience and new audiences who might be interested.
Audience research moves you toward planning content. As a business trying to generate leads, you need supporting content for each step of the process.
First, there’s the organic strategy that comes with building an audience. Here’s where the deep understanding of audiences really starts to matter.
Content that adds value for free creates trust and goodwill. It’s the kind of long-term thinking that allows you to generate leads from your own audiences and also creates leads passively from people growing to recognize and trust your voice.
Then, there’s all the supporting content that lead magnets need to thrive: landing pages, email copy, supporting articles, social media posts, ads, etc. All of these content pieces must also be carefully targeted toward the direct problems your audiences face, as well as the specific words and phrases that drive interest and action.
More than that, you need to understand what channels and platforms audience members with specific problems use. Your supporting content must be optimized for that channel and fulfill the expectations that users of that channel generally have in addition to the problems you address.
Creating Lead Magnets
Now, we come to the lead magnets themselves, which need to be exceptionally helpful.
An underwhelming experience with lead magnet content can turn a lead off. If you fail to uphold your end of the deal – providing a path to a specific definition of success in exchange for personal information – then you’ll struggle to convert leads.
Success could look like:
“With this resource, I can perform a difficult task more efficiently or easily.”
“With this resource, I learned something new, and I can use this knowledge directly to solve a problem.”
“I can use this resource as a reference that will save me time or energy.”
“I can use the data in this resource to build or change my approach to a problem.”
“This resource changed my perspective and assumptions about a topic I already know something about, and I can take this innovation back to my team to discuss a new approach.”
To build a content resource that meets one or more of these goals, you need deep and expert knowledge of not just the subject matter and your products, but also, how to be useful.
You need to know how to teach someone something or persuade someone into considering new perspectives. You need to know what information matters and why.
You need to be a leader in:
Knowledge of the subject matter.
The craft of content, teaching, and curating impactful information.
Empathy for your audience and the ability to approach problems from their point of view.
Then, there are the technical skills that go into data analysis, the design skills that go into laying out a document, visual assets, and much more.
One person might possess all of these skills. They might likely exist disparately among different people on your team, in which case you need to align them.
Very likely, you’ll need to find external partners to supplement one or more of these skills.
Testing & Optimization
Often, when content isn’t performing as well as a business wants, its answer is to put more money behind it in terms of distribution, for example, more ads.
That’s because it’s somewhat rare for a business to have the resources to keep content updated as frequently as it should be.
But if there’s a problem with the content, that’s what needs to be assessed. More distribution might get more eyes on content, but if the content is outdated or not quite the right answer, this will be a failing strategy.
Continually testing, updating, and producing new content can be a massive resource sink. Not only does every piece of the content puzzle need refinement – from organic intent analysis to CTA testing – but you also need consistent new and updated content to scale a lead generation strategy.
Updating and producing new organic content helps grow your marketable audience. And new lead magnets that solve specific problems create new opportunities to turn readers and subscribers into leads.
The “updating” part of this is critical. Many businesses focus on making new assets but not maintaining old ones. You should apply the insights that new research gives you about your audience to existing content.
But, again, we return to the problem of assets and bandwidth.
Many businesses simply don’t have the resources to deploy the knowledge and time required to do it right.
Building content teams involves a mix of internal stakeholders and external partnerships. Even here at SEJ, where inbound traffic is our bread and butter, we use strategic distribution partnerships to expand our marketable audience. You can’t do it all on your own.
The great thing about a specialist distribution partner is they can help you build the knowledge and research you need to create stronger content efforts internally.
Publishers and influencers thrive on acutely understanding and serving the needs of their audiences. They’re a direct line not just to your audiences themselves, but also to:
Up-to-date analysis on trends your audience cares about.
Insights on the exact language your audience does and doesn’t respond to.
The tone and content types that resonate with your audience.
Deep understanding of your audience’s problems and anxieties and how they want to be helped.
But there are all kinds of external partners you can work with to fill gaps in your team, from content production to testing and research.
Don’t ignore the insight and knowledge you gain from working with external specialists, whether they’re helping you with distribution or creating the actual content assets.
Take everything you learn back to your team so that when you’re able to expand your resources, you have knowledge to build on.
The toughest thing about content marketing and lead generation is that all of these aspects flow into one another at different points. A sale could happen before someone even becomes a lead.
A lead could spend months in your “lead nurturing” (more later) flow before finally converting. And people can drop out of this process and never think about you again at any point.
Keep testing, perform new audience research, and relentlessly improve your value. That’s when you’ll start delivering exceptional leads to your sales teams through content marketing.
