January 2022 Content Calendar Ideas

We are in the midst of the current holiday season, but if you are like most marketers and content creators, you are always planning ahead by a week or two — at least! It’s time to think about the new year, when holiday events, family gatherings, and the busy shopping season are all a thing of the past. Start planning and developing the content that will launch you into the new year with fresh and exciting topics and topics that your audience is interested in. From new year trends, resolutions, healthy eating, and January holidays, you have so many areas to cover. Be strategic in the content you choose and focus on during the month of January and remember to always focus on content that fits your brand and will resonate with your audience.

Holidays for January 2022 Content Calendars

• New Year’s Day (January 1)

• Science Fiction Day (January 2)

• Korean American Day (January 13)

• Martin Luther King’s Birthday (January 15)

• National Pie Day (January 23)

• National Green Juice Day (January 26)

• International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27)

• Hot Chocolate Day (January 31)

The above dates are just a handful of the holidays and notable days in January that you might want to incorporate into your content marketing. You can find many more, some silly, fun, or meaningful with a quick google search. Certain holidays on the calendar might not always make sense for your organization to recognize, but it’s important to keep track of the events that are happening and be mindful of the type of content you are posting. Posting ill-timed content can cause a stir if it’s viewed as insensitive.

Reset or refresh

The month of January is always a welcome time to reset — both personally and professionally. Use the new year to reset the goals of your business, brand, or organization and share these goals with your customers and audience. If a full reset isn’t necessary but you are planning to refresh your website, logo, and other brand styling items, the new year is the perfect opportunity to launch and announce the new look. You don’t necessarily need to launch all of your refreshed designs at once either, you could spread them out across the entire month of January. This allows for you to create more content about the refresh, plus gives you time to execute everything across your website, social channels, and other collateral.

Resolutions

When you think of the new year, of course New Year’s resolutions come to mind. This area is ripe for content that can span topics of goal setting, healthy eating, exercising, self-care and more. Don’t try to cover all resolutions, but rather hone in on the type of resolutions or goals that fit with your own brand. A general list of new year resolutions may not be very unique or particularly interesting to readers, so you may find that you drive better engagement by really focusing on specific resolutions along with helpful content on how to set a new year resolution and actually keep it!

If you are setting any specific goals or resolutions for yourself or your organization, again it’s always a great idea to share this with your customers and readers. Not only will it create interesting and personable content, but it will help keep you on track and you can even continue to share milestones, check-ins, and your own experience as it relates to keeping the resolution.

Lifestyle changes

Beyond the simple new year’s resolutions, the start of a brand new year is like a fresh slate. Many people are ready to make changes to their lifestyle and are looking for all the content they can find. Readers will engage longer with content that provides ideas and information about ways to enhance their lifestyle, why it’s important and then tips on how to make the change in their own lives. Popular lifestyle changes people will focus on in 2022 include:

• Healthier eating habits, but not diets. 

• Removing certain food types, i.e. meat, dairy, gluten

• Increased mindfulness

• Reduce screen time

• Read more

• Spend time outdoors 

This is hardly a comprehensive list, but should help to start a brainstorm on the content that your readers will be interested in as they approach a new year and decide to make a lifestyle change. When developing content, make sure you incorporate all of your own expertise, or tap the expertise of people in your organization or partners. The more specific and unique your content can be, the more valuable it will be to the readers and the content will drive the right traffic to your organization. These topics are also fairly broad and you have the potential to build out an entire series of content across your website, blog, social and more.

Get organized

January is a popular month to get organized! This trend fits along the same lines of resolutions and lifestyle changes, yet it’s a topic with so much potential on it’s own. There are many different areas of organization to focus on or lend tips and tricks. Whether it’s personal or professional organization needed (or both!) — these organization topics are bound to be popular in January.

• Home

• Business

• Car

• Desk

• Digital - files, music, photos, emails

• Closets

• Garage

Sustainability

The movement towards sustainable products and businesses isn’t new for 2022, but it will only continue to grow and be an even more important factor for customers when they are deciding which organizations they want to support and spend their time and money with. Evaluate the state of sustainability within your organization. For companies that are already mindful of their environmental footprint, make sure you are creating content that shares the details and aligns your brand with the value of sustainability. 

For example, in the past year, Issuu has shared content to demonstrate how our digital publishing platform is saving trees by limiting the amount of publications that need to be printed. Sustainability is a key principle for Issuu and our content demonstrates this.

Diversify images and contributors

In January and throughout the year organizations and brands should continue to offer diverse images and content that is representative of all skin colors, ethnicities, backgrounds, sexual orientations, and gender identities. View all of the content, photography, designs, and graphics through a lens of inclusivity and diversity. At the same time, you are making sure to diversify the content you share with the world, evaluate whether the content creators and contributors are a diverse group as well. If you can incorporate more diverse perspectives into your content you will also find that you can attract a larger audience. For many small businesses, this might seem challenging, but you should also look to your own partners, customers, and colleagues that might not be the usual content creators. Listen to their ideas, give them a chance to develop content that is important to them, and see how more diverse content benefits your organization — both internally and externally.

Outdoor and indoor winter adventures 

January is one of the coldest months of the year and yet people are adventure-seeking all year round! Highlight activities that you can do outdoors, regardless of weather, or the specific winter activities that readers will find inspiration to try themselves. Skiing and snowshoeing might be the most obvious, so bonus if your winter adventure content highlights an activity that’s less common. 

January is also a perfect time to highlight indoor activities. Whether the indoor adventures are for groups or even a little alone time. The month of January can be a little dull after the busy holiday seasons, so readers are looking for ways to liven things up! Create new winter adventure and activity content by sharing game night ideas, cooking activities, top book and movie recommendations, and other creative ways to pass time during one of the colder and drearier months. 

January social media content ideas and more

The January content ideas are a perfect jumping-off point for your own content calendar planning. If content planning is new for you in 2022, learn more about creating a content calendar for the new year. As always, don’t try to tackle all of these January content ideas, but be deliberate in the type of content that aligns with your brand and audience. All of these content ideas can be utilized for your blog, website, social media, and if the topic is right don’t be afraid to really go in-depth or create multiple assets. January is not only a new month but a new year, so don’t be afraid to take chances with your content either!

The Issuu blog will hone your content marketing in 2022 with resources and tips. Once you are ready, join Issuu to maximize your new and improved content marketing too.