Seasonality in 5 Words:
Calendar, Editorial Schedule, Competitors, Categories
Business Seasonality
How seasonal is your business? When are the peak times? I worked for a personalised gift company and as you can imagine it was Christmas that drove the business followed by anniversaries and birthdays.
It was easy (using Hitwise) to find the anniversary season (April – July) but birthdays were a different matter. They are spread throughout the year (with a surprising number of gifts for birthdays sold during the Christmas period).
Timely Messages and the Very Silly
If you know your seasonality you can plan your content early for the search engines and know what you should be adding when. Visitors love appropriate content because it is fresh and appropriate. What events could help your business? Do sporting seasons have an effect or school holidays? I saw an advert recently for buying computers; the advert desperately trying to tie in with a Royal Wedding #fail.
Seasonal Calendar
Create a simple spreadsheet with relevant events for your business per month and work ahead with your content. You’ll know them off by heart. Where are the gaps? What can you do in these gaps to encourage your visitors to convert to sales? Do you need special Web promotions in these ‘gaps?’ What else could you do? Use your time wisely, look at other activities like video or a competition?
Editorial Schedule
If you are blogging about the social aspects and SEO benefits then create another spreadsheet with an editorial schedule. For example for the gift business, we were writing 3 posts per week (then every day during the Christmas run-up)
Competitors
Keep an eye on your competitors. What are they doing for the gaps in the seasonality? Set up a Google account and sign up for alerts on their brand names plus words that are important to you. Better still work out your own plan. Don’t be a follower…
If you have a schedule and a calendar you’ll never be chasing the content and be prepared (the gift company were writing content for Christmas in Jan/Feb for SEO purposes).
All the best,
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