5 Content Marketing Ideas for September 2021

In September 2021, content marketers can offer courses, suggest gifts, celebrate holidays such as Grandparents’ Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival, or provide how-to help.

Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and promoting content to attract, engage, and retain an audience of customers. Content marketing can drive search engine optimization. It can support social media campaigns, and it can facilitate email lifecycle marketing.

What follows are five content marketing ideas that you can use for your business.

1. Offer Lessons

Content marketing can teach a skill related to a product or a customer’s lifestyle.

For example, Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, an iconic brand, sells electric and acoustic guitars through most retail channels, including direct-to-consumer.

Fender also teaches novice guitarists how to play via its aptly named “Fender Play” service. This approach almost certainly improves customer retention as advanced guitarists tend to collect instruments.

Fender Play provides video-based guitar lessons. More committed guitar players should represent relatively more repeat customers.

For your company’s September 2021 content marketing, identify one or two skills to teach relative to the products you sell and the lifestyle they encourage.

Here are two examples.

A health and beauty retailer that sells skincare products based on India’s Ayurveda alternative-medicine lifestyle could offer instructional, introductory yoga videos since the two are related.

A B2B power tool shop that sells to contractors might offer online classes describing the basics of holding safety meetings to lower the cost of workers’ compensation insurance.

2. Offer Suggestions

Consumers appreciate gift ideas and suggestions in the Christmas season. Image: USA Today.

For many direct-to-consumer brands and retailers, the fourth calendar quarter is a peak sales season.

Consumers’ quests to find the perfect gift (or at least a passable one) will almost certainly include visiting a search engine and asking something like, “gift ideas for a female coworker” or “best gift for an 11-year-old boy.”

September is a good time to produce gift guides, articles, podcasts, or videos suggesting products for the upcoming Christmas season. The content can help with SEO, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns.

Draw inspiration from other sellers or even publishers. For example, here are five gift suggestion articles that show up for the aforementioned search query, “gift ideas for a female coworker.”

• USA Today: “20 great gifts your coworkers will actually appreciate“
• Vantage Circle: “41 Best Secret Santa Gift Ideas For Coworkers“
• Town & Country: “55 Best Gift Ideas for Women“
• Inc: “37 Holiday Presents That Employees Loved Getting From Their Bosses“
• MagForWomen: “7 Christmas Gift Ideas for Female Coworkers“

3. Grandparents’ Day: Sept. 12

Grandparents’ Day focuses on the contributions grandparents and seniors make in our lives. Photo: Monkey Business.

September 12, 2021, is Grandparents’ Day in the U.S. It’s meant to recognize the contribution senior citizens and grandparents make to our communities. The holiday has existed since 1978, although the particular date has changed.

Content created to honor Grandparents’ Day can appear in email newsletters, social media posts, and blogs. It could take one of three angles: profiles or interviews, historical articles, or how-to posts.

For example, online jewelry shop Audry Rose could produce a profile of the founder’s grandmother. The company already has a brief mention of “Nana” on its about us page.

“The name, Audry Rose, pays homage to my grandmother, a beautiful woman with impeccable style who was generations before her time. Our company is infused with her spirit.

“Some of my most cherished memories with Nana (as I called her) are sitting on her bed listening to the stories behind the jewelry in her collection,” write Audry Rose founder Jaclyn Elbaum.

Audry Rose mentions the founder’s grandmother on its site.

Similarly, many marketers could interview or profile grandparents who impacted a business or industry.

Consider, also, publishing articles about the holiday’s history or how to observe. Here are a few examples.

• Parents: “How to Celebrate Grandparents Day“
• Care.com: “10 Ways to Celebrate National Grandparents Day“
• Lovingly: “How to Celebrate Grandparents Day 2021“

4. Mid-Autumn Festival: Sept. 21

Multiple Asian regions celebrate a Mid-Autumn (or Moon) Festival.

Although the holiday has its origins in moon worship and a handful of Chinese myths, it serves as an opportunity for families to gather, be thankful for their blessings, and pray for one another. For these reasons, the holiday is sometimes called “Chinese Thanksgiving” in the West.

Mooncakes are a favorite treat during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Photo: Huong Ho.

Content created for the Mid-Autumn Festival might be similar to Grandparents’ Day. A business could discuss the holiday, provide how-to tips, or produce related profiles or interviews.

Discussing the holiday could take a form similar to ThoughtCo’s article “All About the Chinese Moon Festival,” which provides a brief overview, or China Highlights’ post “Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.”

The holiday is known for its mooncakes. This allows kitchen supply and grocery shops to publish mooncake recipes. And Asian-owned businesses might profile or interview family members or industry leaders about how they celebrate the festival.

5. Cross-border How-to

The final content marketing idea for September 2021 combines two things about content and business.

First, we know that how-to content makes for some of the best marketing. Second, an increasing number of direct-to-consumer brands and online retailers are selling internationally. So why not create how-to content that attracts, engages, and retains these international shoppers?

For example, September 1, 2021, is the first day of spring in Australia. In contrast, September 22, 2021, is the beginning of autumn in the United States. Seasonal articles are an effective way to engage an audience, but remember that seasons could differ among customers if you sell internationally.

Seasonal articles are engaging to a global audience depending on where the reader lives. Photo: Flip Urban.

Say we have a garden-tool store in Australia, but we also sell into the U.S. September is springtime in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane and suitable for content around getting gardens started. Conversely, a September post describing how to prepare a garden for the coming winter would apply to North American customers.