Five Tips to Get Your Content Strategy Ready For Summer 

The hotter days are fast approaching, and everybody is getting ready to enjoy their summer vacations, meaning it’s the perfect time to take advantage of the many summer marketing opportunities this season brings. 

Is your brand’s content strategy in shape for summer? Whatever your business focus is, as we head into the hotter months, you need to get your content marketing strategy into shape for summer to ensure it is on-trend and relevant to your brand.

Here are five summer content marketing tips to ensure your strategy is turning up the heat…

How to Optimise Existing Summer Content 

Start by auditing summer-related content that you have on your site already. From blog posts, pillar content and FAQs to customer communications (online and offline), internal content information and social media content, there is an abundance of places you can find summer-related content to repurpose. 

Ask yourself: How does this content fit with my company’s needs, brand, formats and language?

When auditing your existing content, you will also want to follow these four top tips:

1. Check last year’s editorial and social media calendars for insights into what works and what doesn’t. Assess your headlines, media format and the presentation of your content. 
2. Add metadata to existing content as this streamlines your content audit process –  you’ll easily be able to select summer-relevant content. 
3. Decide which content needs optimising this summer.
4. Highlight any summer content gaps you may have. 

With agency staff, clients and consumers all enjoying some time off, it’s important to ensure your SEO and content strategies are planned to perfection so standards don’t slip. Plus, it’s important to ensure your content is fully optimised to soar to the top of the SERPs. 

We looked at Hawaiian Tropic UK’s homepage content to see if Google really thinks they are talking about summer suncare and put it to the test, using our very own Natural Language Processing engine, Goose. 

Hawaiian Tropic UK Homepage Content 

URL – https://hawaiian-tropic.co.uk/ 

‘Inspired by the Hawaiian lifestyle and values, we create suncare products that embody the spirit of the islands so you can feel good about using them. Together, we seek the beauty and joy in all things: our skin, ourselves, our communities, our planet.’

Optimised content for Hawaiian Tropic UK’s Homepage:

‘Explore sunscreen products that embody the spirit of the islands so you can feel good about using them. At Hawaiian Tropic UK, we seek the beauty and joy in all things: our skin, ourselves, our communities, and our planet. Get year-round protection from our collection of sunscreens, from mists, lotions and sprays to foams and oils, you can protect your skin from the rays whilst enjoying yourself in the tropic sun.’

How to Create a Summer Content Marketing Editorial Calendar

When creating a summer content marketing calendar, you will want to include significant holidays and events related to your business, brand and offering throughout the summer. Get input externally and internally within your company and ensure your calendar notes why and how you plan to target these critical dates throughout the summer. 

Here are some key dates to consider integrating into your summer content marketing calendar: 

Marketing Calendar Dates for May 

13th May – World Cocktail Day
14th May – Garden Day 
16th May – International Day of Light
17th May – World Baking Day 
20th May – World Bee Day 
22nd – 27th May – Chelsea Flower Show
29th May – Spring Bank Holiday and National Biscuit Day 

Marketing Calendar Dates for June 

3rd June – FA Cup Final
5th June – The Big Lunch 
10th June – World Gin Day
15th June – Clean Air Day 
18th June – International Picnic Day 
24th June – Armed Forces Day 

Marketing Calendar Dates for July

2nd July – Thank You Day 
7th July – World Chocolate Day
25th July – Cheese and Wine Day 

Marketing Calendar Dates for August

7th August – Summer Bank Holiday (Scotland)
8th August – International Cat Day 
13th August – Prosecco Day 
17th August – National Cupcake Day 
28th August – Summer Bank Holiday (ENG, NIR, WAL)
31st August – National Burger Day 

It’s All About Summer Graphics 

Summer is a season that celebrates bright, vibrant colours, being outdoors, and exploring nature; your summer content should be all about the look and feel, as you want it to attract the crowds. Summer is an excellent time for visual content, especially to make your content marketing more social sharing friendly. Give your brand colours a summer brightness and add pops of tropical elements to your graphics. 

Remember, even your evergreen content can benefit from a temporary summer makeover! 

Here are three top tips when it comes to summer visual content:

• Determine a few key visual elements and integrate them into your content. By creating a few summer templates to elevate your existing content, you can easily repurpose content quickly. 
• Make your summer graphics easy to read. Streamlining them will help to draw your audience in. 
• Keep track of the content you spruce up for summer so you can easily repurpose it for years to come – or mix it up and give it a seasonal makeover in winter. 

Shout About Your Summer Content 

With summer content, you will want to amplify it as much as possible, across social media, search, influencers and across your business. You will want to communicate with your teams to ensure maximum content reach and use. This will reduce duplicate content efforts and increase content marketing effectiveness. 

Make sure to schedule regular content distribution across media platforms as well as internally, ensuring your content reaches your target audiences. 

How to Come Up With New Creative Summer Ideas

Thinking up fun, unique summer content ideas can be hard work, but giving your summer marketing a boost with seasonal ideas that can be used for blog posts and social media campaigns will help boost your brand. 

Here are a couple of ideas:

• Take a trip down memory lane. It’s always fun to remember what was going on last year. Why not create a fun historical timeline showing what summer looked like last year and how you see it shaping up this year? 

• Highlight local summer happenings and openings. Maybe summer is a slower season for you, and there aren’t many relevant ways you can incorporate summer themes. If this is the case you can promote the local summer events and business openings to provide value and stay top of mind.
• Honour parents. With Father’s Day in the height of the summer months, you can create fun content that recognises dads, grandpas and more.  While it might seem too sentimental for some businesses, genuine content has a way of connecting with audiences and humanising your brand—much more so than promotions. 
• Promote user-generated content. Leverage UGC to shine the spotlight on your customers or clients this summer. It is highly authentic content that you can easily repurpose into different formats to share your brand’s message. 

It’s time to turn up the heat with your summer content by taking advantage of the holiday season with a few clever marketing strategies. If you are looking for more ways to elevate your summer marketing strategies, take a look at our blog, Agency Land Through The Summer Season. 

Planning ahead is key, and operating in this way means that when you inevitably get a lot of ‘out of offices’ throughout summer, it’s not stressful. Planning strategies for the peak is a lot nicer in the sunshine!
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