In August 2021, ecommerce and omnichannel retailers have many topics to choose from for content marketing, including back-to-school shopping guides, informative ebooks, MTV’s 40th birthday, presidential jokes, and items with an international flavor.
Content market is the process of creating content, publishing it, and promoting it to attract, engage, and retain an audience of customers. Content marketing can help with search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads.
Sometimes, however, it can be challenging to know what topics to address. What follows are five content marketing ideas you can use for your business in August 2021.
In June 2021, the National Retail Federation surveyed back-to-school and off-to-college shoppers about the forthcoming academic year. More than two-thirds (64%) believed that school would be primarily in-person this fall. What’s more, about 26% of surveyed shoppers had already started to look online as they plan purchases.
An NRF survey found that most back-to-school shoppers expect in-person classes this fall.
These results may indicate a robust back-to-school retail season.
While your online shop will almost certainly want to deploy ads and email, don’t leave out content. For August 2021, create back-to-school shopping guides for every age group — elementary school through college, as well as parents.
The guides should be specific to the industry your online store serves. For example, a store that sells household cleaning supplies could publish the “Definitive Guide to Back-to-school Stains and How to Remove Them.”
This guide would feature cleaning supplies and, perhaps, cleaning supply bundles or kits aimed at common back-to-school stains. One section of the guide could address how to remove grass stains from a soccer or football uniform. Another article might focus on removing mud from carpets.
Let August 2021 be the month you do something extraordinary with your content marketing. Create an ebook related to the products your business sells that are 10-times better than anything else available.
And then use that ebook to generate site traffic, leads, and sales. This approach is tried and true. Consider BigCommerce, for example. The company creates excellent ebooks and guides. It uses these for lead capture, but a B2C seller could easily use the concept to build an email list.
B2B SaaS companies such as BigCommerce have been using ebooks to encourage traffic, capture leads, and make sales for years.
Next, BigCommerce creates lots of blog posts around the topic of the guide. The posts often draw content from the ebook.
The ebook you create can also be repurposed into several articles, such as this direct-to-consumer example from BigCommerce.
Take this idea and apply it to your products. For example, an online store selling house plants could create a 30-page ebook titled “The Ultimate Guide to Growing Plants in an Apartment.”
Music Television — MTV — was revolutionary when it launched on August 1, 1981. Anyone old enough to remember early MTV probably remembers watching hours of music videos played back-to-back with little interruption. The channel changed how a generation related to music. This explains the first video played on MTV: The Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star.”
For your company’s August 2021 content marketing, use MTV’s 40th as a springboard to focus on 1980’s nostalgia as it might relate to your store’s products. You could do this in a few ways.
If your business is music-related, treat the anniversary as history or analyze how MTV impacted the industry. If your products are not music-specific, use MTV as a landmark and compare its launch to your company or the popularity of your products.
Here is an example. Say that you have a direct-to-consumer brand selling beard oils and beard grooming supplies. You could publish an article with a headline of “Did MTV Give Rise to the Modern Beardsman?”
In the example, a store selling beard grooming products could create a humorous article about how MTV may have encouraged beard growth.
This article could analyze the first 100 music videos played on MTV in 1981, counting the number of men shown in the videos and calculating the percentage with facial hair. This percentage, which is near zero, would be compared to the percentage now appearing on MTV. The article could be funny.
If there is a way to connect MTV’s 40th anniversary to beard grooming products, there is likely also a way to connect your products to the milestone, too.
If your company’s brand is casual, consider creating content for Presidential Joke Day on August 11, 2021.
President Ronald Reagan started presidential joke day, but any president can get in on the laughs. Shown here are presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
As an example, you might produce a video. Ask 10 of your company’s employees to tell a favorite presidential joke and release the combined video on social media or promote it with email.
If you need some inspiration, read Andy Simmons’s article from Reader’s Digest, “17 Sick Presidential Burns to Steal on ‘National Presidential Joke Day,’” or Julia Davis’ Mental Floss article, “9 Presidential Jokes for Presidential Joke Day.”
You will find jokes about presidents and from presidents. Here is a one-liner from President Eisenhower: “An atheist is a guy who watches a Notre Dame-Southern Methodist football game and doesn’t care who wins.”
Finally, as you contemplate National Joke Day, take a moment to remember its origin. During a microphone check before giving a speech on August 11, 1984, President Ronald Reagan said, “My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
The “joke” was not broadcast live, but a recording was later leaked.
Ecommerce has made retail international. And content knows few borders, too. So a blog post hosted on an ecommerce site in China, Germany, or the United States can reach customers worldwide.
In August 2021, aim at least some of your company’s content at an international audience. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to make significant changes; rather, think of ways to include readers or viewers from outside of your region.
For example, look at men’s apparel retailer Mr. Porter. A recent post, “The Best-Dressed Men Of June 2021,” featured males photographed at events around the world.
Mr. Porter’s article has an international feel.
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