A Designer’s Guide to Holiday Content

In the midst of client meetings and pressing deadlines, developing holiday content for designers can feel like a low-level priority. But here’s the deal: content planning for interior designers is an incredibly important marketing tool, and the holiday season is strategic for several reasons. Holiday content created with your brand in mind means you can expect increased traffic and content engagement, not to mention an uptick in revenue from affiliate link programs or e-commerce sales directly on your site.

Wondering how to develop a branded content plan that’s ready to deliver? We’ve put together your ‘holiday content for designers playbook, with tips and tricks to make the absolute most of this upcoming season.

Map Out a Marketing Plan

The best advice we can give for holiday content comes down to this: plan ahead and publish early. As a designer, your online audience is looking to you for everything from decorating inspiration to product curation, so NOW is the time to begin putting together those resources. Whether that looks like beginning your gift guides, staging a photo shoot, or filming holiday styling videos, this content should be planned well in advance. If you’re feeling stuck for ideas, try polling your followers on Instagram to see what type of holiday content they’d like this to see this year. Remember, content planning takes time and effort upfront, but the early bird always gets the worm.

For more ideas to ace the content game, check out our Studio Sessions course Content Planning for Interior Designers.

Publish Branded Seasonal Content

Once November is officially underway, it’s time to kickoff that holiday content on your blog and social media. Start by adding a “Holiday” tab to your Instagram highlights, so your audience can keep track of everything you’re sharing throughout the season. From there, you’ll want to publish your holiday content loosely following this schedule:

• • Thanksgiving Tablescape Design (early-mid November)

Showcase your tablescape expertise with a guide to setting the scene for Thanksgiving. Curate a corresponding food and cocktail menu as an added bonus! Check out our Thanksgiving tablescapes here and here.

• • Curated Gift Guides (mid-late November)

Don’t wait until Black Friday has come and gone to put your gift guides in action. Take advantage of early holiday shopping, and have your products ready for publication just before Thanksgiving. Gift guides can be published as blog posts, swipe up products in an IG highlights tab, saved to a Pinterest board or both.

• • Holiday Decorating Tips (late November-early December)

Whether it’s mantle styling, Christmas tree inspiration, or present wrapping tips, give your audience a branded guide to decorating for the holidays. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and do something a little different from everyone else.

• • Holiday Home Tours (early December)

Followers love to see a glimpse into how the pros decorate for the holidays, whether it’s your own home or a client’s. Be sure to work with a professional photographer for high-quality images, and don’t be afraid to pitch your design work to a media outlet for additional coverage. Most digital publications are always looking for great seasonal content, and the earlier you send that pitch email, the better.

• • “Best of 2020” Content (mid-late December)

Use a “best of” series to highlight your favorite projects of the past twelve months. This is the perfect opportunity to show off the scope of your work and drive inquires for the upcoming year.

Prioritize Affiliate Links + E-Commerce

Holiday content is a great opportunity to inspire your followers, establish your brand, and drive new inquiries. But it’s also about increasing that end-of-year revenue for your business. Affiliate programs like RewardStyle are the key to success by helping you monetize everything from blog posts to newsletter links to Instagram swipe ups, and more. To use affiliate programs well, make sure every piece of content contains shoppable products to help get the most return on your holiday content investment. For a more in-depth guide to using RewardStyle as a designer, plus tons of helpful tips, check out this post. 

Similarly, if your website involves an online shop, this season is the perfect time of year to drive sales. Start by adding a dedicated ‘holiday shop’ to your site, and help your clients take all the guesswork of gift-giving. Take it one step further by creating custom shop tabs based on demographics, hobbies, and interests. For example, Gifts for the Home Cook, Gifts for the Art Enthusiast, Gifts for Children, etc. Put your curation skills to work, and the sales will follow. 

P.S. If you’re looking to add online shop capabilities to your website this holiday season, we have several IDCO website templates (including the Auburn) that make e-commerce easier than ever.

Consider Ways to Give Back

There are so many ways to give back during the holiday season, both big and small. Whether your business participates in a toy drive or raises money for a local cause, create content around your brand’s plans to give back and let your followers get in on the fun. Your audience will love learning more about the causes that are important to your business, and you never know the positive impact your outreach might have.

For more tips for elevating your interior design or lifestyle brand, check out these posts:

• How to Say NO to Projects that Aren’t Right for You
• What to Include in Your Interior Design Inquiry Form
• How to Start Selling Products as an Interior Designer

IDCO Studio is a full-service creative studio for interior designers and boutique lifestyle brands. Offering bespoke branding, web design and social media content creation, we help brands built around beautiful living elevate their digital presence to represent the physical spaces they design. Our recently launched limited-release website templates are the perfect way for interior designers to get a luxury website on a budget. These templates allow designers to maintain control of their content. Want to work together? Shoot us an inquiry here.