Blog Strategy and Seasonal Content: What You Need to Know

Seasonal posts can be overlooked when developing your blog strategy. The value of evergreen content is undeniable (evergreen content is not date-specific, stays relevant and provides value for years to come), but that doesn’t mean you can’t (or shouldn’t) also make room in your plan seasonal blog posts.

Don’t have an all or nothing attitude when it comes to evergreen versus seasonal blog posts. Instead, focus on a hybrid approach when developing your blog strategy. After all, seasonal blog posts provide real-time value to your readers, making the content more impactful and likely more valuable.

This drives greater user engagement, which Google rewards by ranking your content higher in search engines. Plus, engaging content also leads to a better-performing website. “When you engage your blog readers, they, in turn, engage with your site, which then lowers your bounce rate and gives your site a higher ranking score,” explains Neil Patel.  

If you need further convincing, here’s a breakdown of what seasonal content is, five reasons it needs to be included in your blog strategy, and a few tips for getting started.

Much as the name suggests, seasonal content is a blog post or article written on a topic related to an upcoming season or event. The content doesn’t have to relate to literal seasons like fall (although, it can!), but it’s focused around industry-specific times or even cultural events. For example:

Seasonal content is any time-relevant topic that can be naturally related to your business. Here are five reasons why seasonal posts will add value to your blog strategy.

Search traffic increases and related topics trend days or even months before a major seasonal change, holiday or event. If you create content focused on trending topics you can leverage that to increase traffic to your blog. Plus, when sharing on social sites, like Twitter, you’re likely to earn more engagement because the related hashtags are likely trending as well.

To find out when topics start to trend, (for example: when do people start searching for Halloween customers?), check out Google Trends. This tool is easy to use and free. Just type in search terms and adjust the time frame to the season/holiday. Then you can see how often people Googled it and how that search term trends throughout the year.

By publishing relevant seasonal blog posts, you can capitalize on this natural increase in traffic and promote posts using the popular hashtags. Riding the interest peaks, you’ll create highly shareable content, not to mention, a blog with seasonal content shows your brand is current.

Modern consumers are research-obsessed. Google explains: “Consumers use search to optimize their lives. It lets them feel more confident and less anxious.” Seasonal blog posts provide topical information that your target audience craves.

For example, if your brand caters to millennials, an article like “How to Not Burn Your Turkey This Thanksgiving: A Guide for Millennials” will provide value to a nervous twenty-something that’s hosting their first turkey dinner.

Peppering your blog strategy with valuable season-specific blogs will allow you to creatively connect with your audience in this way. If you’re not connecting, you’re missing the boat. “Quality content resonates with its audience. If it doesn’t do that, it may be smart or beautiful or funny, but it ain’t quality.” Doug Kessler, founder of Velocity Partners, tells Content Marketing Institute.

Do you ever have trouble coming up with blog topics? We’ve all been there, and there’s no shame in that game. Seasonal content gives you consistent and relevant topics to fill out your content calendar. Especially if you’re a beginner blogger, it’s never easy to stare at a blank page. Pencil in holiday- or event-specific topics to get you started on your content calendar, then work from there.

If you need help creating a content calendar, check out our free Content Calendar Bundle download, and if you need more help with topics, try these 30 blog post titles.

As you become a master business blogger, you’ll start to accumulate months, then years of content. Seasonal blog posts are extremely easy to update, revise and promote again the following season, allowing you to get more from your efforts. Recent reports have shown that while only 38 percent of bloggers update older content as a part of their strategy, those that do are twice as likely to report stronger results.

Use your previous year’s data and analytics to understand which posts performed best, and start by revising those. If you have all-star blog posts, consider turning them into a series or repurposing them into an infographic.

If you create unique and high-quality blog posts prior to the holiday or event, then you may generate organic backlinks as other bloggers look to source relevant brands in similar content. Use the following strategies to make sure your seasonal content is backlink-worthy:

While writing season blog posts may be a similar process to writing any other blog post, here are a few best practices and tips and tricks to help you nail every piece.

With strategic planning and creative concepts, you can leverage seasons to connect with and provide value to your audience. Seasonal blog posts (in conjunction with evergreen posts) will help to show search engines that your site is focused on relevant, quality, and engaging content, which in turn will help you rank higher. Build seasonal content into your blog strategy to make the most of these opportunities.