The AdLeaks Content Engine

Seasonal EventsPART 2 - Outbound & External

Roll With The Calendar joinadleaks.com

Holidays and seasonal events are ripe for themed and
coordinated marketing efforts.
Incorporating a festive spirit into your content can give you a
template that makes new ideas and creation easier, and can
give a unique spin to your paid and organic campaigns.

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Why Seasonal 01
Events Work

Seasonal events and holidays are peak times for consumption -- and we
aren’t just talking about eggnog.

Outbound & External Research shows that mobile shopping
and app usage increase during the
holidays, and consumers are looking for
deals and bargains to minimize the
financial impact of gift-giving.

If you can stand out from the crowd,
you can increase the share of holiday

traffic for yourself with creative
content -- and increase your content

output by incorporating holidays.

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02 How to Use Seasonal
Events

SCHEDULING EASE
Holidays are useful content scheduling milestones because, with the
exception of Easter and Thanksgiving, the dates don’t change from year-
to-year.

PREPARATION IS KEY
The most effective way to use seasonal events is to prepare your
content weeks in advance. By scheduling your themed collateral before
the holidays arrive, you won’t be pressured to produce materials under

a looming deadline.

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Seasonal Event Tools

01
National Day Calendar

Find one or more holiday ideas for each day of the year that you can use
for themed content.

02
CoSchedule

Robust work management software for marketers
with advanced calendar and scheduling functions.

03 A s a n a

One of many project management systems with a built-in calendar and
task scheduling.

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Seasonal Event Outputs

01

HOLIDAY SALES COLLATERAL

Everybody knows about Black Friday and Cyber

Monday, but what about ad campaigns for 02
National Say Something Nice Day (June 1) or

National Pancake Day (September 26)? Out-of-

the-box holidays can spark user interest. SOCIAL POSTS

Scheduling social media posts ahead of

the holidays can help you stay

03 productive when things get busy.

BLOGS

Themed blogs for upcoming seasonal events (or “best-
of” posts after the fact) can be a valuable output.

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$87 Billion

Amount US consumers were expected
to spend on Black Friday/Cyber Monday

2019 

86%

Americans who planned to spend
during pre-Christmas sales

-FINDER.COM

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Customer SurveysPART 2 - Outbound & External

Your Pit Crew joinadleaks.com

If the internet has taught us anything, it’s that everyone feels
entitled to an opinion. And that goes double for someone who has
purchased your product or interacted with your brand.
As a content marketer, these opinions are extremely valuable. Users
who are engaged enough to share their thoughts, good or bad, are
a core part of your audience. You can use your content to respond
and continue the conversation that they began with their feedback.

57

Why Customer 01
Surveys Work

Customer feedback from surveys and reviews can open up avenues for new content that you
hadn’t even considered.

Outbound & External If you couple that data with With enough respondents, you
useful analysis, other content can start producing content
creators will start citing you as a based on your own research.

source, which can build Original data will always boost
authority for your brand and your credibility in the echo
generate backlinks to your chamber of the internet. 

website.

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02 How to Use
Customer Surveys

Customer surveys can be collected on your website, through email, text, and traditional offline channels.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
For content marketing ideas, look for unique uses or unexpected experiences that
include your product or brand. These can inspire everything from website copy updates
to entirely new marketing campaigns.

LIKE A SPONGE
Also, take the time to absorb both positive and negative responses. Even a cranky
respondent who blames you for all his life’s problems might generate some content

angle or idea you might have otherwise missed.

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Customer Survey Tools

01 HubSpot

Comprehensive marketing system that 04

includes customer feedback options via Google Consumer Surveys

surveys, net promoter scores, and Leverages Google’s broad reach to
conduct research and gather
02 customer satisfaction polls. feedback quickly.

SurveyMonkey

Customizable platform for requesting,
tracking, and analyzing feedback from

customers and employees.

60 joinadleaks.com Google Forms

Free, simple tool for creating and sharing

03 custom forms and surveys.

Customer Survey Outputs

02

01 GUIDES

Feedback about specific functions or operations could spawn
new how-to guides or step-by-step blog posts.

FAQs

Collaborate with your sales and support 03
teams to create useful responses to
common questions or objections. CASE STUDIES
Incorporate that content into your website,
or expand on it with blogs and videos. Use data points from your research to
highlight your growth and success in your

industry.

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“

Only 1 in 26 unhappy
customers provide
feedback after a bad
experience.

Customer Experience Magazine

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InfluencersPART 2 - Outbound & External

The Fuel Injector joinadleaks.com

Simply put, influencers are the celebrity endorsers of the social media age.
Instead of paying millions of dollars for Ryan Reynolds or LeBron James to
represent their brand, many companies are opting to partner with social
media personalities who have credibility within a niche market or audience.
Many content marketers are working with influencers as part of their ad
campaigns, but their output can also serve as a reference for your own
strategies.

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Why Influencers 01
Work

Outbound & External Influencers are in the trenches
with their audience, so to speak,

even more than content
marketers.

Because influencers’ livelihoods are The interactions these micro-
usually connected to engagement authorities have with their
metrics and social following, they’re
audiences can be great fodder for
extremely involved with their new content ideas.
audience and on top of trends.

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02 How to Use
Influencers

HEADHUNT
Start by finding the influencers in your market who are already sharing
content relevant to your business. Both the influencers’ insights and their
source material can suggest a new angle or direction for your content.

USE WHAT WORKS
Also, look at metrics like domain authority, comments, and shares to see if

what an influencer posts resonates in the market. Use those indicators to
determine whether a given subject is worth a deeper dive on your part.

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Influencer Tools

01 Upfluence

An influencer platform with a search and
discovery engine featuring a database of

more than three million influencers.

02 Podbay.f m 03

Podcast ranker for niche genres and Hunter.io
categories. Look for interview-based podcasts
Browser extension for collecting
with guests in your market or specialty. email addresses related to a given
website. Use it to find contact
information for influencers or other
industry notables.

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Influencer Outputs

01

BLOGS 02

Use the “Skyscraper Technique” in the Q&A INTERVIEWS
Competitor Research section to
develop your own unique take on any Conduct your own conversation with an
relevant topics referenced by influencer regarding industry trends
influencers.
and tactics, and then cross-promote the
03 content on your channels and theirs.

OPINION POST joinadleaks.com

Explain what you think an influencer got
right -- or wrong -- about a given topic,
then share the content and tag the
influencer. (Be respectful and you might
create more content opportunities
through collaboration.)

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“Our research shows that real
life influencers who are
passionate about what they

are recommending have
significantly more buying
conversations, and consumers
are more likely to act on their

recommendations.”
- BRAD FAY

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Hosted EventsPART 2 - Outbound & External

The Winner’s Circle joinadleaks.com

Hosted industry events are usually built around two objectives. First,
to provide valuable information for attendees. Second, to create
opportunities for networking and collaboration among professionals.
These are worthy goals, but content marketers can add a third -- to
discover new ideas, underreported trends, and specialized secrets
that you can build content around.

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Why Hosted 01
Events Work

Hosting industry events or meetups is like making a smorgasbord of the
content sources we’ve already discussed.

Outbound & External You’re having conversations with
industry insiders and experts about
relevant topics. You can learn about
trending topics directly from
influencers and other featured guests.
And you can survey customers in a
social setting to get ideas about your
branding and content.

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02 How to Use Hosted
Events

ENGAGEMENT IS HUGE
Arranging a successful industry event could be an entire eBook on it’s
own, but for the sake of content development, try to include guests and
speakers that will draw engagement. 

VALUE, VALUE, VALUE
By packing your event with value, not only are you more likely to draw
the right crowd, but you’ll have an entire agenda full of ideas that you

can draw from for future content creation.

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Hosted Event Tools

02 01
Meetup

Infrastructure for creating events and groups with like-minded local
insiders. 

Eventbrite

Event management and ticketing service for
creating, promoting, and finding local events.

03 Crowdcast

Scalable platform for live video events online, including Q&As,
interviews, webinars and more.

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Hosted Event Outputs

01

PROFILES 02

Short social snippets highlighting topics and RECAPS
featured guests can fill your content calendar
before the event. Use your event’s agenda and top
talking points to create a recap blog,
03
social posts, and email blast.

SLIDESHARES

Use presentation materials and notes from the event to
share valuable content with group members who didn’t
attend.

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The need for connection with
others is becoming increasingly

important as we move to a
world where people’s

knowledge and expertise are a
function of the networks

– both face-to-face and online –

they possess rather than the
contents of their heads.

-ADRIAN SEGAR

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Pop CulturePART 2 - Outbound & External

No Spoilers Please joinadleaks.com

Even if your target audience is technical or highly specialized, they’re still
people too. They go home and watch TV, listen to music and podcasts, and see
a lot of the same commercials, memes, and social media posts that you do.
By using pop culture references in your content, you can make dry content
more entertaining, generate new collateral based on popular sources, and
engage an already-interested audience.

75

Why Pop Culture 01
Works

Popular culture is an easy entryOutbound & External
point for content marketing
because it draws from sources that
are much more well-known than
your brand or market.

Timely pop culture references can
also inject humor and personality
into your content, which can be hard
to generate from scratch if you’re
only writing about specialized topics

for a niche audience.

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02 How to Use Pop
Culture

BALANCE IS KEY
To incorporate pop culture in your content, you’ll need to balance the
reference you’re using with both your marketing goals and your target
audience’s interests. 

THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Big events like the Olympics, the Super Bowl, or summer movie releases
can also be opportunities to create, schedule, and share themed content

when the timing is right.

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Pop Culture Tools 03

01 Pocket

BuzzFeed An app for saving links and
articles to read later that also
Pop culture site that shares engagement provides updates on trending
metrics for top posts and topics. content similar to what you’ve
saved.
02

Google Trends
See which pop culture topics are still on
the rise, and which are passed their prime,

when you’re creating content.

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Pop Culture Outputs

01 02

SOCIAL CONTENT BLOGS

Use popular memes or topics in ways that link Themed posts that use pop culture as a
back to the benefits or features of your offer. framework or reference can help you

03 reinforce branding and core messages.

VIDEOS

Spliced-in clips or memes can make dry or
educational content more engaging.

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28

Percentage of highly successful
content marketing campaigns (100+
media placements) that included a
pop culture reference.

FRACTL

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Before You Go…

Each of the 12 content sources we’ve discussed can help you create more engaging and valuable content for your audience.
But like the parts of an engine, they’ll work best if you use them all together.

Try reviewing and returning to these sources regularly, especially if your content marketing calendar starts to look empty.
With a little practice, you’ll always have enough fuel in the tank to keep your content engine revved up. 
Drive safe out there!

2020

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