12 Holiday Blog Post Ideas for your Business

As you already know, one of my favorite marketing tools for online businesses is blogging.  Your shop’s blog is a place that let’s your business stand apart from all of the others out there.  You can create a home for your shop.  A place where you can share your ideas with your audience as well as sell your products. 

You know.  It’s a place where customers know to go to find you (and lots of other amazing content).

With the holidays around the corner, it’s time to spruce up your business blog with some holiday blog posts.  The holidays are a great time to share some holiday ideas related to your products.  Although these blog posts are seasonal (instead of the evergreen ones I usually encourage shop’s to write), with the right keywords, they are sure to drive traffic to your shop for many holiday seasons to come.

Some of my best performing holiday blog posts were written a few holidays ago.  But every Christmas season, they continue to bring new customers to my shop.  It’s amazing to watch how one holiday blog post idea can grow into such a major traffic source.  Oh, the power of blogging.

But what blog posts should your business write this holiday season?  Here are some holiday blog post ideas to add to your blog post planning.

Gift Guide

A gift guide is my favorite holiday blog post idea.  It gives you a simple way to showcase your products without directly selling.

To make a holiday gift guide for your blog, choose a theme or focus that reflects the shopping needs of your buyers and can include multiple items from you shop. 

Remember, the purpose of the gift guide is to sell your products without “selling” them.  You want to provide gift giving ideas to your customers.  If you only include one product from your shop, you’re missing out on a key opportunity.  

In your gift guide, be sure to pick a theme that you can feature multiple products in.  

For example, let’s say you make bath soaps.  You could create a spa lovers gift guide and feature products those looking for a spa experience at home will love.

Once you decide on your gift guide’s theme, figure out what products from your shop you want to share.  Make sure that your gift guide doesn’t just include products from your shop.  There should be an assortment of products in the guide that will interest your audience.

But where do I get the other products from?

This is where affiliate links can come in handy.  Although there might be related products that you love and want to recommend to customers, it’s always nice if you can make a little money off of your referral.

(Please note… this isn’t always possible.  I’ve happily included others products – especially handmade ones – in my gift guides without an affiliate link. But I do try to include an affiliate link first.)

For example, if you find a product from a fellow Etsy seller, you can feature it in your gift guide and use your Etsy affiliate program link.  This way you get a little bit of credit if someone ends up purchasing it.  Always be clear in your post, though, that affiliate links are included.

Your gift guide can come in many different formats.  Be sure to choose the one that fits your blog best.

I usually treat my gift guides as round up posts where I include all of the items in a guide format.  Others have created a magazine style using Canva. You could also make a slide show of each product and insert it in the post.

After your gift guide is published, share it with your audience.  Most of your customers will be thrilled to receive gift giving ideas this holiday.

12 Days Series

Similar to a 12 Days of Christmas sale, a 12 Days series has a holiday theme broken into 12 different blog posts.  For example, our stationery shop might write a blog post called 12 papercrafts for the holidays or 12 unique Christmas card ideas.  In each blog post, I would share one of the ideas.

Use your shop’s niche to think about one theme that can be divided into 12 different posts.  When brainstorming, remember to keep your blog bigger so you can come up with 12 posts in that theme.

The negative of this kind of post series is that it can take awhile to write.  But if you decide to try it on your blog, leave yourself enough time to get all 12 holiday blog posts done.

Don’t have enough time for 12 posts?  There’s no rule that you have to stick with 12.

Why not try 5 or 7?  Just make sure that you complete the series that you set out to write.  Nothing is more disappointing to an audience than when you abandon a series in the middle of it.

Year in Review

Many of us are so wrapped up in the holidays that we forget that after Christmas comes the New Year.  In addition to holiday posts, you could also write a year in review post for your shop.

For my year in review posts, I usually include my favorite designs from the past year or the most popular trends that I saw in the event industry.  I also like to do a round up of our most popular blog posts.

A year in review post is a wonderful way to reflect on the year that’s been – both for you and your audience.

New Year Goals

Instead of reflecting on the year that’s been, why not write a holiday blog post that looks forward.  Share your New Year goals for your business and personal life.

Your audience will love to hear where your shop is going.  Share the things that you’re inspired by right now, what products you’re working on creating and what you hope to accomplish this coming year.  You could also write about the creative projects you’re planning.

As the new year progresses, be sure to return back to this post and give your audience updates via social media.

I spent one of my early business years focusing on stellar customer service.  As the amazing reviews came in, I would post a couple of them on social media.  It was a wonderful validation about the hard work that I was doing.

Holiday Favorites

We all have our favorite things around the holidays.  For me, it’s Christmas lights.  I love finding beautiful Christmas light displays in our surrounding towns and neighborhoods. 

Think about what your holiday favorites are.  There are no rules here.  You can love anything around the holidays.

Take those favorites and write a holiday favorites post about them.  Your audience will love making a personal connection with your business.  You can even follow up the post by sharing on social media when you find those favorites.

I love sharing my favorite holiday light displays on Instagram.  It let’s my audience know a bit more about me and what makes me happy during the holiday season.

Teach How to do Something

Share your expertise this holiday season by creating a DIY or tutorial post.  Teach your audience how to make something or learn a new skill. 

This is also a great way to connect gift giving ideas to your blog posts.  Use your tutorial post to show your readers how to make a gift for their friends and family. 

I love sharing my crafting skills around the holidays with tutorial posts.  These kinds of holiday blog posts are very popular, easy to share on Pinterest for years to come and drive a lot of potential customers to my shop.

Holiday Bucket List

Do you have things that you MUST do around the holidays?  At the beginning of each holiday season, my family and I create a holiday bucket list of all of the things that we hope to do this Christmas.  This list includes everything from places we want to visit and acts of kindness to do to strangers.  

If you make your own holiday bucket list, share it with your audience.  Or brainstorm a list that your business could work on.  Maybe you could choose other local small businesses and craft fairs for your holiday shopping.  Or feature an Etsy shop or artisan on social media each day or week.

As you complete items on your holiday bucket list, share the experiences on social media.  Your audience would love to know that you heard the philharmonic play last night or you volunteered at the food pantry making holiday food baskets.

Whatever you hope to do this holiday season, sharing your ideas helps give your business the personal touch.  It also gives your audience ideas on ways they can enhance their own holiday season. 

Free Printables

As I always say, everyone loves something for free.  One of my favorite holiday blog post ideas is to give your audience a gift this holiday season with a free printable design.

Think about what kind of free printable they would use. Your design needs to relate to your shop’s products. Create the design or hire a designer to make it for you (try Fivrr).

Then, write a blog post featuring the design. If desired, you could use your free printable as an incentive to opt-in to your mailing list. This is a great way to grow your mailing list with new visitors. If you do this, make sure that you send the free printable to your current email list. You don’t want to leave them out of the holiday fun.

Give Back

One very effective holiday marketing strategy is giving back to your community.  Whether you sponsor a child or family this holiday, volunteer at a local organization or give a certain percentage of your sales to a special non-profit, your efforts to make a difference will not be overlooked by your customers.

Use your work with a non-profit as a holiday blog post idea.  It’s a wonderful way to showcase your give back campaign.  Share your experience working with your chosen organization.  Or if you giving a percentage of your profits to a non-profit, write a blog post telling your customers how your contribution will help others.

Most importantly, include your why.  Your audience will want to know why you chose that organization and the reasons that it’s important to you. (This is another wonderful chance to get personal!)

Festive Photos

If you hosted a photo contest on Instagram or collected pictures from customers of your products in action this holiday season, create a round up post featuring your favorites of these festive photos.  

Before writing your holiday blog post, make sure that you have explicit permission to use the photos.  Either state this clearly in your contest rules or contact the person directly.  You never want to risk getting into trouble with photo copyright laws.

Holiday Tips

Do you have some tips for surviving the holidays that you can share with your audience?

How about creative ways to use your products to make the holidays easier?

Write a holiday tips blog post to share all of your great ideas.  Everyone always needs ways to make life easier.

Most of my customers are worried about finding time to entertain around the holidays.  During this busy time of year, I’ve written holiday blog posts about hosting holiday parties and easy entertaining solutions.  I’ve provided tips to help make your holiday get together a breeze and ways to survive your family’s annual celebration.

Whenever I write a holiday tips post, I feature different products from our shop that can help or are related to the holiday tip.  This way my holiday blog post is still a marketing tool to promote my business.

Upcoming Trends

Everyone wants to know what’s going to be the “in” trends next year in your niche.  Your customers want to know colors, textures and themes so they can plan early.  And they want to know it now, so they can prepare.

A wedding planner that I know, Fizzy Party, just shared with her Facebook followers that naked cakes for weddings are out and brushed texture cakes are in.  Who knew?

But if you are planning a wedding for next year, this trend information is important.  You wouldn’t want to get married with the wrong type of cake.  At least some brides wouldn’t.

Your customers want to know about these new trends.  Share about the upcoming trends in your industry in a blog post.  You can write about the new colors, themes and even patterns your customers will see in your business’ niche. 

Although not really an evergreen post, this type of blog post is very popular.  Especially at the end of the year.

And if you already have items in your shop that feature some of these new trends, link to them.  You want to show your audience that your online shop is cutting edge in your industry.

When should I publish my holiday blog posts?

Good question.  The first few holiday seasons, I always published my holiday blog posts in December.  Silly, I know.  But I wanted to share with my audience what I was doing at the moment.  That was the true essence of blogging, right?

Unfortunately, waiting so late to publish my holiday blog posts didn’t have the same impact if I’d published them a lot earlier.

I know some bloggers that actually start publishing their holiday posts right after Labor Day.

Your holiday blog post needs a number of weeks to start generating traffic in the blogosphere.  Just because you published it, doesn’t mean that Google SEO has added it to their databases or it’s gained traction on Pinterest.  

Although after Labor Day seems early, focus on publishing your holiday blog post no later than Thanksgiving.  I try and publish mine right before Halloween.  This is also when customers start thinking about the holidays.  December is almost too late for the online world.

By publishing your holiday blog post early, you also allow for time to promote your post.  Share it in your Facebook groups.  Create pins and market them.  By getting your holiday blog post out there early, you can expand your audience’s reach and increase potential website traffic.

Don’t Forget your Holiday Blog Post’s Purpose

I love writing blog posts.  It’s one of the reasons I started Katarina’s Paperie in the first place.  It’s an opportunity to share my creative side in a whole new way.  

The problem is that not all of my blog posts always work to help sell my products.  Although this marketing strategy might be okay for a personal blog (even today, this is frowned upon if you need to make money), it’s hard to use blogging as a marketing tool if you aren’t connecting your blog post with something you want to promote.

When writing your holiday blog post, start with a product or group of products in mind to promote before you begin.  Know how you can work this product into your holiday blog post idea.

Even the best blog post ideas in the world aren’t good enough if they don’t help your business make money.  Without a money making aspect to your post, you aren’t really marketing.  You’re just writing.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with just writing.  But make sure your spending your marketing time on the right things that will grow your business.  

Final Thoughts…

Tis’ the season for holiday blog post ideas.  Blogging is such a crucial tool for growing your online shop and making you stand out from the crowd.  Use it this holiday season by writing some holiday focused posts that will keep your audience coming back and encourage new customers to click.

Not sure what to write?  It’s not always easy come up with holiday blog post ideas.  When writing for your business blog, think product first. 

What kind of holiday blog post ideas will let me feature my products the best?  Start there.  Because the main purpose of any blog post is to increase your sales and reach.  Not just get clicks.

And remember, publish early.  Holiday blog posts that come out in December aren’t going to be read until next holiday season.  I know.  That used to be when I published my holiday blog posts.  (That being said, they always got great traction the following holiday season).

Get your holiday blog posts into the blogosphere way before the holiday crunch time and promote them often.  This will give your them the best chances of being found.  

Time to get writing those holiday blog post ideas.  There’s some holiday cheer to share!