I recently shared with you the four awesome types of content that every blog needs. Of the four perhaps the most under-utilised and misunderstood are Seasonal Blog Posts. Over the last few days I’ve been digging into seasonal content in more detail, and today I want to give you a full rundown of the best topics to write about during the autumn each year. 

Why am I posting a blog about Autumn content in Spring? Because a truly successful content marketing schedule needs planning well in advance to ensure it fully supports all your business objectives and – ideally – so you can batch you content and get it all scheduled well ahead of time, ensuring perfect consistency. So whether you’re planning autumnal content in advance, or writing some last-minute posts in the middle of October, this post is for you.

Great Themes For Seasonal Content For Autumn

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: Hot New Trends For Next Year

With the leaves turning and falling, and the year winding down autumn is a natural time to talk about change. You might think New Year is the season to talk about trends for the following year, but actually to make the most out of this type of seasonal blog post you want to pen it during the autumn.

Some bloggers write them as early as the beginning of summer, to get the absolute maximum mileage out of them as possible!

While I understand the impulse of releasing them as early as possible I’m not a fan. I’ve never understood how you can write about the ‘top trends for next year’ when you still have half of the current year left to go. 

This is particularly true in digital marketing where change happens fast. But autumn is late enough in the year to have a clear picture of what is likely to dominate the following year, and a ‘Top Trends To Watch Out For’ post (like this one that I wrote last year!) will always prove to be massively popular, no matter what industry or niche you’re in.

Key Hashtags For Autumn Trend Posts: #Trends #NewYearTrends #TrendSetter #Trending

Thanksgiving

Even if you’re not in the U.S. Thanksgiving makes a great seasonal autumn post. If you’re an digital marketer with an international audience you will almost certainly have readers who are celebrating the holiday, making it very relevant for them. But beyond that a holiday dedicated to giving thanks for the good things in life is never a bad thing.

You might use the opportunity to give something back to your clients by running a Thanksgiving themed competition – you know the type, ‘This year I’m thankful for all of you awesome lot so I’m giving you the chance to win this…’ It’s a fabulous way to boost engagement and capitalise on the holiday, even if it’s not a holiday you personally celebrate.

Thanksgiving is always towards the end of November so plan your content to go out up to a week or so ahead of time to get the most mileage out of it, especially if you’re running a competition.

Key Hashtags For Thanksgiving: #HappyThanksGiving #TurkeyDay #ThanksGiving #HealthyThanksGiving

Diwali

The Hindu festival of lights is a five-day celebration that takes place each autumn in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern. I’ve included it here as I live in the north, so it’s always in Autumn for me!

I love this festival, it’s a time for candles and lanterns and a truly magical feel, along with a very carnivalesque air and a lot of bright colours. As will all religious festivals, you don’t have to belong to the religion to write about it, and you can easily write seasonal content that touches on the theme of light triumphing over darkness.

Key Hashtags For Diwali Posts: #Diwali #Deepavali #Lights #HappyDiwali #DiwaliWishes

Halloween Blog Posts

If you’ve been following the blog for any length of time you know Halloween is my favourite holiday. Every year I celebrate with a seasonal blog post like this one from last year about the business lessons to be gleaned from Halloween monsters and superstitions. The year before I really went to town and did a bespoke photo shoot for my Halloween special on the secrets to blogging success that are actually witchcraft.

The trick with a Halloween post is to not only write about the fact it’s Halloween but also relate it to your core topic(s) as much as possible. You will ideally also work in a few easy links to your products/services. For example, in last year’s post I played up the fact I’m a ghostwriter.

Because…HALLOWEEN!

If you’re well-organised you can arrange a special offer, which works particularly well for brands that tie in with spooky stuff. This year I’m planning a special Halloween discount on my ghostwriting services.

Yes, I’m planning it NOW (for those of you reading this later, it’s May at the time of writing/publishing this post).

The thing with seasonal blog posts is, don’t rush them! Plan well in advance, prepare everything ahead of time. That way you can focus on promotion during the season itself, and not content creation or fine-tuning a hasty offer!

The photo shoot for my witchcraft post took me a full afternoon and a lot of prep to gather all the stuff I wanted to include, in order to represent each of the ‘secrets’ I was covering. You can’t chuck something like that together on a whim. Those photos were taken at the beginning of October, as soon as there were pumpkins available in Tesco!

Key Hashtags For Halloween Posts: #Halloween #Halloween[Insert Year] #TrickOrTreat #HappyHalloween #October

National Novel Writing Month

The whole of November is dedicated to a global celebration of writing in the form of NaNoWriMo. Blogging and other forms of content creation fit very nicely with this topic, as there are hoards of frantic authors desperately searching for answers to the most bizarre questions imaginable.

If you work in a niche, one fantastic way to take advantage of NaNo is to write a book yourself! Last year I wrote Divine Blogging rather than a novel (which is what I usually do). It’s a great incentive to get a business book written, but you can also double down and do the 30 Day Blogging Challenge throughout the month. Document your progress each day (November just happens to be 30 days long!), and you’ll simultaneously give your traffic a massive boost and effectively tease the launch of the new book you’re working on.

The downside to this plan is that it’s time-consuming. I’m hoping to do it this year, but I didn’t have time for a daily blog post (even a short one) along with writing 50K of a new book and keeping up with client work. If you’re going to do this, plan very far ahead and clear as much of your regular work from your schedule as possible for November.

And if actually taking part in National Novel Writing Month doesn’t appeal, you can still write a great seasonal post capitalising on all the people who are taking part – do you have a product or service that will help authors in the throes of all the insanity? I’ve seen some amazing promotions from entrepreneurs over the years, whose businesses have nothing to do with writing or books or content creation, but who are aware of the fact some of their ideal clients may well be taking part in the challenge. Here are just a few:

• VAs offering a special package for one month only to deal with all the admin and minutia that you don’t have time for when trying to cram 50K words into 30 days on top of a full-time job.
• A special reward promotion at my favourite coffee shop for writing in – they have a lot of writers come in because they offer free WiFi and have power outlets everywhere. They’d printed up special NaNo business cards with space for stamps and got a little typewriter stamp. Every time you hit your word count for the day in the coffee shop they stamped it, and when you collected 10 you got a free coffee or cake.
• Energy drinks running social sharing competitions throughout September/October to win a month’s supply of the drink for November.
• A handmade notebook and journal company who ran weekly competition to win one of their notebooks by sharing a selfie of your best writing moment from the week.

Think outside the box a bit and see if you can come up with something similar.

Key Hashtags For National Novel Writing Month Posts: #NaNoWriMo #NaNo #NationalNovelWritingMonth #AmWriting #WritersLife

If you missed them, check out my Spring and Summer posts for more seasonal content ideas. And if you’re looking for even more help planning a killer content marketing schedule download the first chapter of my book, Divine Blogging, now – it’s totally free!