Valentine’s Day Content Ideas for Blogs and Websites
You may feel like you’re still recovering from the biggest shopping holiday of the year, but it’s already time to prepare for the next one. With Valentine’s Day coming up, your marketing team should switch back into full gear to capture some of the $18.9 billion people usually spend on the romantic holiday.
One part of your marketing plan for Valentine’s Day should include creating seasonal content that helps your audience navigate the holiday successfully this year. Valentine’s Day can come with a lot of pressure for some people. Why not use your content to ease some of that stress and equip your customers with tips and ideas to make the holiday fun?
Here are a few Valentine’s Day content ideas to consider for your blog or website.
1. Gift Guides
This is an obvious and useful place to start. A lot of people struggle to figure out what to buy for a loved one for Valentine’s Day. A gift guide does the double work of helping you promote relevant products to your audience and helping them make a decision on what to buy.
Keep in mind that Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be all about flowers and chocolates. If your business sells something that isn’t conventionally associated with Valentine’s Day, it may still be exactly the right gift for someone a customer loves.
And your gift guide doesn’t have to be focused on romantic couples either. Many people will buy Valentine’s Day gifts for friends, coworkers, maybe even their pets. Don’t feel stuck focusing on the obvious when creating a gift guide, anything that could make a good gift for anyone is fair game here.
2. Advice Videos
Valentine’s Day isn’t just about shopping and gifts (although that’s a big part of it for some people). It also involves figuring out how to create memorable moments and meaningful celebrations. For some people, that can feel challenging. Help them out by creating video content designed to answer questions they have and give them ideas for how to get Valentine’s Day right this year.
Blue Apron hosted a video Q&A last year on Facebook Live about good wines to consider for Valentine’s Day. They provided information on how to pick the right wines that pair well with common Valentine’s Day foods like chocolate, and answered questions that viewers asked in the comments.
For anyone trying to create a perfect dinner and worried about how to pick the right wine, Blue Apron provided the answer (and included some recommendations from their own wine club).
3. Recipes
Food is going to be a big part of Valentine’s Day for many people that celebrate. Some people will eat out for the big day, but others will want to try out special recipes that are a little fancier or more ambitious than usual. If your brand sells any type of food or ingredient that can be used in a great Valentine’s Day recipe, then this is a great type of content to make use of this Valentine’s Day.
Pillsbury goes all out for Valentine’s Day recipe content with suggestions for sweet recipes, savory recipes, recipes for different times of day, and tips on how to make the food you cook look the part for Valentine’s Day.
4. Creative Date Ideas
Dinner and flowers are obvious. Some people are happy enough with the old standards, but some will want to find ways to make the night special in more creative and interesting ways. If you can help inspire an idea outside of the ordinary, your audience may be grateful for it.
Barnes and Noble does a great job with this idea with their post on the Best Valentine’s Day Dates for Book Nerds. It includes ideas like re-creating your favorite romantic scenes or going on a literary scavenger hunt.
Think about what your audience loves and use that information to come up with activities that can inspire an unconventional Valentine’s Day celebration.
5. Video Stories
Great content often involves telling a good story and video can be a great format for it.
For Valentine’s Day, you can use video tell any number of types of stories. You could create a comical take on someone falling in love with your products. You could tell a story of the way your products help bring people together. Or you could find customers with a compelling love story and feature their tale in a marketing video.
Sweethearts candy went the latter route by telling the story of Jack and George, a couple that was finally able to get married in 2016 after 55 years together. The video includes them picking out candy messages for each other from a box of Sweethearts: 'me and you' and 'soulmates.' It’s touching. It’s a sweet story for Valentine’s Day, and it ties the video back to the product in a way that feels natural.
6. Love List
Valentine’s Day is all about celebrating love. In the spirit of celebrating love, you can create content around things you love about your customers, or that highlights things they love.
Round up a list of your 10-best selling products or the products with the highest reviews to create a list of products your customers love the most (and offer a special holiday discount on all them to show some love back).
Join the holiday love fest by celebrating how much your customers mean to your brand and the love they’ve expressed for you.
7. Valentine’s Business Tips
Admittedly, this one’s a little meta you’re reading a post on Valentine’s Day ideas for businesses as we speak! If you’ve been reading along so far wondering what content ideas make the most sense this time of year for B2B businesses, then here we are. Write content that will help your business clients make the most of the holiday this time of year.
That could include marketing tips, ideas for special events to offer, or ways to make your customers feel special when they’re in your store this year. If you’ve got ideas that can help your clients make more money this Valentine’s Day, then get to work sharing them.
People want to feel special on Valentine’s Day and buying things often becomes a part of that. If your content can help provide real value to your audience as they’re working out their Valentine’s Day plans, there’s a good chance they’ll turn to you when making their purchases for the holiday as well.
Kristen Hicks is an Austin-based freelance content writer and lifelong learner with an ongoing curiosity to learn new things. She uses that curiosity, combined with her experience as a freelance business owner, to write about subjects valuable to small business owners on the HostGator blog. You can find her on Twitter at @atxcopywriter.