Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Today, we're joined by Kerry Hall, founder of a website that would be very useful for a lot of people, including ourselves, called awareness-days.co.uk. It even rhymes and everything slips right off the tongue. Welcome, Kerry. How are you?
Kerry
Hi, very well, thank you. And thank you for having me along today.
Esther
We're very glad that we could finally pin you down because we've been trying to get you for a while. And between one thing and another, We're all very busy women, but we're glad that you're here now. So awareness-days. Why is it important that we know about awareness days? Or what are awareness days? But first, here's a quick message from our sponsor.
Melanie
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Kerry
So awareness days are days that can either just highlight the specific causes or specific products. And it can really help you promote what you're doing on social media. So for example, nowadays it's really important that your content is relatable and authentic, and it just brings your content back to what people are talking about in the real world in everyday life. And I set up this website because I wanted sources of inspiration for content ideas. Because I also run a business called Summit Consulting, and it's a digital marketing consultancy where I help businesses with things like content, social media, email marketing, Facebook ads, those kinds of digital marketing activities. And I was having to go to a lot of different sources to find out about awareness days that were coming up. And I find a lot of them were very American and not specific to the UK or Irish market. So to cut a long story short, I've ended up with this website called awareness-days.co.uk, which is a really comprehensive source of awareness days, public holidays, and major sporting and cultural events. So you can go into the website and see what's coming up So you can plan your content. And it's really important to plan your content because I really believe that success is scheduled. So you can go in, see what's coming up in a month's time, in three months time, and craft your content accordingly.
Melanie
That was interesting, both myself and Esther heard you say, success is scheduled, and we both wrote it down at the same time.
Esther
We did. Love it. Love it.
Melanie
So because you saw this big gap, did you find it hard to set up this website? Do you have a background in websites, Kerry?
Kerry
No, so even before COVID, I was writing monthly blogs with a list of what awareness days were coming up for the month ahead. And I suppose it has just evolved into a website. I think in 2017, I actually bought the domain name and I never actually did anything with it until about two years ago, I went along to a digital women event in the UK, and there was a breakout session where you had to come out with ideas for your next money making campaign or whatever and the girl who was sitting beside me really encouraged me to get going with this. And then I just bit the bullet and here it is today.
Esther
So it's a paid for website then, if it's your money making idea?
Kerry
So the money making comes from the Google ads that are on it. And also you can purchase a content planner, which is like a marketing calendar that you can download. And basically it's like an Excel spreadsheets where you can get an overview of all your upcoming content. And there's columns for each day. And in each column, there's the Awareness Day for that day. And there's over, I think I've probably got easily over 120 Awareness Days per month. There's a lot going on from, I think, coming up this month, for example, we've got the euros, the football Euros, Euros24. We've got Cancer Survivors Day on the second of June. It's a summer at the moment, so it's National Barbecue Week at the moment. We've got events like Royal Ascot, horse racing over in England. It's Freelancer Day on the 20th, and it's even halfway to Christmas, would you believe, on the 25th of June?
Melanie
I can't believe you said that.
Kerry
So you see what I mean about getting content that's relatable and interesting, so you can come up with ideas and just to help people give them inspiration and get their creative juices flowing.
Esther
But it's interesting That's the thing that you mentioned the C-word, the Christmas C-word, because there are a few C-words in there. Because as marketers, we do need to know when it's coming up, but we can, as people, bury our heads in the sand and just go, no, It's only halfway through the year, but at the same time we are halfway.
Kerry
Yeah, and I have a client called the Christmas Decorators who actually decorate businesses and people's home for Christmas. And at this time of year, we're starting to plan all the marketing activity. So marketers definitely need to work in advance.
Melanie
With the scheduling that people have to put into place, do you suggest how often they need to post as well? Or is there a particular niche that you cater for better? Or are you trying to be all-encompassing in your awareness-day's website?
Kerry
So there's two pieces on that. In terms of telling people how often they need to post, that's not included at all. On the website, when you click through into each awareness day, it gives you suggestions for content that you could go out with. And also at the bottom, there's, I think, 30 hashtags that you could include in your posts if you wanted. Then, sorry, what was the second piece?
Melanie
I don't know.
Kerry
All right, it just went out of my head.
Esther
It went out of all of ours. Answers on a postcard guys.
Melanie
Anybody listening to this, play back and let us know.
Kerry
The second part in answer to your question is that there are probably over a thousand awareness days on the website, at least a thousand days. But there is a section called Categories, and it is broken down into different categories. So there's one for animals, there's one for business and finance, there's one for schools and education, there's one for environment, so there's one for health. So if you work in a certain industry, you can sort them by category.
Esther
So there's something for everyone that's what you're telling us?
Kerry
Yeah, definitely.
Esther
And not just the industry you work in, but your interests as well. So if you're someone who owns a pet and National Pet Day or Adopt a Cat Day or whatever is coming up, then-.
Kerry
Things like that. Or if you're into sport or if you're into music and literature, you know those things.
Esther
Yeah. Okay. So how often should people use these awareness days? Should that just be their content?
Kerry
Well, no. They should use... I think you should get into a content creation schedule. So maybe once a month, you're setting time aside to plan out your content. So I would really recommend to bookmark this website, awareness-days.co.uk, and use it as one of your tools when you are creating your content. And it will really just help you come up with ideas. I would recommend with Awareness Days that don't go crazy with them. You want to just pepper them through your content. We don't want every single post to be about an Awareness Days. That turns people off. It's really important to have a variety of topics and formats of content that you're going out with. And Awareness Days could be like what we call content. It could be one of your content pillars or a subcategory of one of those content pillars.
Melanie
That's really interesting, actually. How many content pillars do you feel people should try and build so that they can build a relevant scheduling profile for them?
Kerry
So content pillars are like buckets or topics that your content should hang off. And I would normally recommend that you have about four or five of these. So if we take the example of a hotel, you might have your services as one of them, everything about the hotel, everything about your restaurants. And then you might have another one that is about things that are going on in your area or reasons why people will come to your hotel. And then the awareness days could be off that one. So then you'd have things like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, those things.
Melanie
Does every piece of content have to include an image, do you think?
Kerry
It really would depend on what channel you're talking about. I think humans are very visual people, and it really helps us to absorb content. If there is some graphic or video content. Obviously, if you're talking about TikTok, it has to have a video or a post. But I have seen people on LinkedIn, obviously just typing in the copy. There doesn't have to be an image, but But when you're looking at, obviously, Facebook and Instagram, definitely it needs to have an image.
Melanie
I think it also gives you ideas for what you want to write blogs about as well and copy that goes up on your website as well. So it's It's not just down to your social media either, is it?
Kerry
It's all your digital content. Yeah, like your website copy or email marketing as well. It can really help for that. And it can really help you with what we call repurposing content because You don't always have to be creating new content from scratch. You might have written a blog last year on a topic, and you can repurpose that in a different way.
Esther
It can also help you realise why people aren't answering you, right? Because if you go on to the awareness-day website and notice that it's a bank holiday somewhere in the world, then that can help you go, oh, so that's why they haven't replied to me in three hours when they're usually so quick. Or that's why my post failed and didn't see enough people, none enough people saw it because they're all at the beach or they're all having a barbecue.
Kerry
I know. Exactly. And I can just... Yeah, just It help you frame what is going on in life at a certain time.
Melanie
Just out of interest, is it just days or is there weeks and months as well?
Kerry
No, there's weeks and months as well. So as I talked about a minute ago, National Barbecue Week And I think it was sunscreen week or something at the start of May. So there's definitely months and all the other months, especially a lot of health related months and things like that.
Melanie
Could I create one and submit it to you?
Kerry
Yeah. So there is a section on the website that's called Add Your Day. So it's a little form that you can fill in and we'll decide whether we publish it on our website or not. And even in the last week, I've had one from the Co-op. They're having a big green week in June and there's Create Week in July. Somebody contacted me about. So as long as there is a web page with information about the Awareness Days and it applies to or it keeps up with our terms and conditions, then And normally I would post it and it's free of charge as well. And also there's a section on the website that's all about using awareness days. So there's more guidance there on how you should be using awareness days. And also I've included a section on best dates for awareness days. So if you want to create an awareness day yourself or your business or whatever you're working on, it gives you some dates that don't have very many awareness days at the moment. So maybe they'd be good for you to choose.
Esther
And there's some very random ones, like talk like a pirate or backwards day. There's loads of them. So finding a day that's not saturated, you were saying that there's some days of 120?
Kerry
No, no, that's per month.
Esther
Oh, per month.
Kerry
That was per month, yes. Some days, especially September and May, they are very popular days, a popular month, sorry, for Awareness Day. So maybe stay away from those.
Esther
So, Kerry, you mentioned about your other business, Summit Consulting. How can people contact you through that? Do they find you through the awareness-days.co.uk? Or is there another way?
Kerry
So first of all, if you can bookmark the awareness-days.co.uk website and start using it as your content in your content creation process, I think that would be really helpful for you. Then if you could sign up to my mailing list, so you'll find that on the Awareness Days website just towards the bottom of the home page. And you'll get weekly emails from me with lots of digital marketing tips and tricks, as well as information about Awareness Days. Also, if you would like to, you can follow Awareness Days on Instagram, and the handle for that is Awareness Days UK. Those are the main takeaways for today. And if you want to contact me through my business, If you go to summit, so that's S-U-M-M-I-T, Consult, C-O-N-S-U-L-T.co.uk, you'll find all my contact details there.
Esther
Perfect. Well, we're so glad we finally got to pin you down and get all this information out of you. Melanie and I will definitely, I say Melanie because she missed a day the other day, but definitely both of us will need to be using awareness-days.co.uk, and we highly recommend that our listeners do as well. No matter where you are in the world, these days will help you because like I said, it'll help you realise why people aren't replying to you, why suddenly the internet The internet is quiet because everybody's watching the Euros. So it will really help you understand what's going on in the rest of the world and see how to manage your content around those events.
Kerry
And there are a lot of international days that apply to the UK and Ireland as well. So, yeah, no, it's just a really good source to help you with your content creation.
Esther
Brilliant. Well, thank you for joining us today. I think we've lost Melanie for now, but she'll be back along with me next week for another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing. Until then. Bye bye.
