How to Capitalize on Holidays as a Content Creator

Can you believe it will be 2020 in only a few weeks? It’s crazy to think about how fast this year has flown by.

We are coming close to the end of Q4, also known as the magic months in the influencer world.

This is the time when everyone is trying to capitalize on holiday traffic, higher RPMs and increased ad revenue.

Advertisers spend a lot of money leading up to the holidays, but tend to spend less on actual holidays, so a Dec. 24 RPM hike is normal, as is a drop on Dec. 25.

Remember ad revenue changes by the season.

For a lot of publishers Q4 is the most lucrative so it can be helpful to put your focus on posts that do well.

Since Mediavine loves to help make your life easier, we want to make sure you know how to work smarter not harder.

Then you can take a little time to relax before a new year begins (I know relax isn’t a word you often hear from bloggers).

In order to make that happen we have some simple tips for how to capitalize on holidays as a content creator.

Ways To Update Old Content

Luckily the Mediavine dashboard lets you easily see your top performing pages.

Google Search Console is another great tool and especially helpful when it comes to identifying posts that could benefit from an update. Utilizing this could help boost your rankings and increase traffic.

You might be surprised to find posts you had forgotten about, that with a little refreshing, could really help you capitalize on the holidays.

Start by going through some of your old posts, especially if you have any holiday or New Years themed content, to see if they can be updated and optimized in any of these ways:

• Join the Mediavine Content Upgrade Challenge which can help you audit and optimize your site. There is even a challenge Facebook group to not only provide more information but also help hold you accountable.
• Add video to some posts because having video adds value. Even if you don’t have any actual video you can create a slideshow with photos on a site like Animoto to use in your post. In case you need a little guidance we have a Teal Talk you can watch on this very topic.
• Check your in-content ad settings and quickly self-audit your site. You might not even realize you are limiting your income potential simply by the way you have your Mediavine dashboard set up.
• Backlinks, because they are still the holy grail of SEO. Build content that is worth linking to and you will be amazed by the results.

Creating New Content

To make it worth your time and really be able to capitalize on the holidays, when creating new content make sure you are being strategic when it comes to keywords.

Choose keywords that are right for your site (not for someone else’s or just because it’s trending) in order to get more traffic from Google.

We have a great list of SEO resources to really guide you with optimizing your site.

Use this ultimate SEO checklist each time you write a post so you can make the most out of every single pageview.

Print it out and keep it handy so you can review it before you hit publish on a new blog post.

Sharing Content – Social Media Tips

Make work (and life) easier for yourself, especially around the holidays, by sharing and promoting content in a more streamlined way.

Think about when to share your content and schedule it for the best times.

• Check your Facebook Page Insights to see when your readers are online and schedule your content accordingly. For example, readers might enjoy seeing a holiday cookie recipe or a craft on Friday ahead of a weekend of baking and crafting.
• Utilize the current trending hashtags on Twitter (like #holidayseason or #giftguide) when sharing your holiday themed content to attract a wider audience.
• For Pinterest create new pins for old content that you have updated and start repinning it to relevant boards. Tailwind is your best friend for quickly getting all of those pins scheduled out.
• Keep your Instagram feed pretty or create a theme that makes your account unique and stand out. Create captions that your followers can engage with (ask where do they like to travel to for the holidays or what special gift would they like) and share updates plus behind the scenes on stories.

Use Airtable, which we love because it’s so customizable, and create a calendar. Then you can plan out your content so you aren’t wasting time throughout the busy month deciding what posts to share.

A great social media strategy to promote your content not just around the holidays but all year long, is to schedule everything out. Then that frees you up to work on other things like SEO and updating older posts.

CoSchedule and Tailwind are marketing tools that we use here at Mediavine to schedule both our own and our MVPs content on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Want another great way to capitalize on the holidays?

Create a newsletter that includes links to your holiday themed posts and send it to your email list.

Once you have done all of this, don’t hesitate to start prepping for Q1. Hope you have a great rest of your Q4 ahead!

If you have any questions about optimizing your content, feel free to reach out to our amazing support team at publishers@mediavine.com!