5 Content Marketing Ideas for October 2021

In October 2021, your content marketing could feature product-focused tutorials, storytelling, and annual observances, such as a little holiday called Halloween.

Content is an integral part of ecommerce marketing, impacting search engine optimization, social media, site traffic, sales funnels, and more. Unfortunately, coming up with ideas can be hard.

What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can try in October 2021.

1. Product-focused Tutorials

Tutorials are among the most potent forms of content marketing. They address customer needs and interests, offering a solution.

Tutorials that focus on the products your business sells should demonstrate how to use them and, thereby, prove their value.

For example, consider Superdrug Stores, one of the U.K.’s most prominent health and beauty retailers.

The chain recently published a short tutorial titled “How to: Glitter Festival Makeup.” The post included a 2-minute video hosted on YouTube and an instructional booklet-style list of glittering steps. The tutorial included four links to products.

Superdrug’s brief glitter makeup tutorial is an example of the how-to concept.

The Superdrug post is not high literature. But it’s likely useful for someone looking for glitter makeup and could send traffic and sales Superdrug’s way.

Take this idea and make it your own. Think about how you could create tutorials for your products and then use the tutorials in articles and videos, perhaps for TikTok.

2. Tell Stories

Beyond product-focused tutorials, consider publishing stories about customers or a lifestyle or worldview your company shares with them.

Here are two examples from Patagonia.

First, Patagonia has started a film series titled “Run to.” The series features “runners finding activism through sport.”

Patagonia tells stories about its customers and topics they are likely to care about, such as this “Run to” film series.

“Running is a powerful tool for activism. The act of traversing the planet’s most beautiful landscapes connects us to the places we run, reminds us of the importance of access, and impels us to stand up and fight when these places and communities are threatened,” the company wrote.

The first video in the series is “Run to Salvar Una Cuenca.” In its description, Patagonia notes, “Felipe Cancino runs 120 km through Chile’s Maipo River Valley to highlight the impacts that the Alto Maipo hydropower project is having on the local ecosystem and communities — and the water supply for Santiago’s 7.1 million residents.”

The 16-minute film is hosted on YouTube and in its first two weeks had more than 380,000 views.

Second, Patagonia publishes posts that mention individual customers. One recent example is “The Place to Go Downhill.” It tells the story of how a U.S. military veteran, Earl Cox, found relief from the symptoms of posttraumatic stress through mountain biking.

“Caught between the insidious symptoms of PTSD and heavy medications that dulled his senses, Earl stumbled upon mountain biking on a whim — and, in doing so, found a way to help heal a troubled mind and build a life beyond the war zones he left half a world away,” the article reads.

You don’t need Patagonia’s budget to tell interesting stories. For your first attempt, it can be enough to interview a customer about her priorities. Look for ways to connect the lifestyle with your brand.

3. International Day for Older Persons

October 1, 2021, is “International Day for Older Persons.” The United Nations created the observance in 1990 as a way to raise awareness.

First, older persons are valuable resources for our communities and our workplaces. Second, there is an increasing number of elderly folks worldwide.

Older persons are important to communities, especially as the world’s population ages. Photo: David Siglin.

“The composition of the world population has changed dramatically in recent decades. Between 1950 and 2010, life expectancy worldwide rose from 46 to 68 years. Globally, there were 703 million persons aged 65 or over in 2019. The region of Eastern and South-Eastern Asia was home to the largest number of older persons (261 million), followed by Europe and Northern America (over 200 million),” according to the United Nations.

“Over the next three decades, the number of older persons worldwide is projected to more than double, reaching more than 1.5 billion persons in 2050.”

Those older folks should not be marginalized.

“It takes a kind of guts to get this old and to stay healthy. You have to work at it,” said Helen Hamlin, a long-time representative for the International Federation on Ageing at the United Nations. Hamlin made the statement in 2015 when she was 92.

For your October 2021 content marketing, consider integrating the International Day for Older Persons in three possible ways:

• Produce content about the day and the topic.
• Feature older pioneers in your industry who are still active.
• Feature elderly customers who are still active.

4. St. Luke’s Little Summer

“According to legend,” wrote Paul Simons for The Times in London. “St. Luke did not get the sort of attention other saints enjoyed, so he perked up his public image by blessing the country on his saint’s day with warm, fine weather before winter set in.”

According to The Times, St. Luke the evangelist used fair weather as a public relations ploy.

Thus, St. Luke’s Little Summer, which occurs on October 18 each year in the Northern Hemisphere, is that hint of warm weather. It is a goodbye to the summer so recently passed.

Use the idea — a goodbye or a retrospective — to spark article or video ideas for your company’s content marketing. You don’t need to mention St. Luke. Rather you can apply the concept of a last warm day before a seasonal change.

Here are a few hypothetical examples:

• Power tool retailer: “5 Lessons of Contractors from 2021’s Drop in Home Inventory,”
• Gen Z apparel brand: “21 Ways TikTok Influencers Ruled Fashion in 2021,”
• Kitchen supply store: “How a Second Covid Summer Impacted Grocery Prices and Food Choices.”

You can also talk about St. Luke’s Little Summer. For example, Faith Magazine published a recipe, “St. Luke’s Little Summer Salad.”

5. Anything Halloween

Without question, Halloween is the most important commercial holiday in October. Photo: Bekir Dönmez.

Halloween is far and away the most important commercial holiday in October. It starts the Q4 selling season and is a season on its own.

Just about any Halloween theme would work. I’ve published these ideas since 2014:

• Halloween do-it-yourself projects,
• Halloween listicles,
• Entertaining Halloween articles, videos,
• ​​​​Educational Halloween articles, videos,
• Halloween costume ideas.