Summer Content Strategies for Small Business Owners

I am NOT a summer child. Once the weather heats up, I struggle as much as every other business owner to balance vacation plans and lower concentration levels with the need to keep marketing consistent.

I’m lucky enough to be over a decade in business with the same regular clients as always, many of which have taken a step back during the slower business cycle, which leaves me with plenty of time to rest and recover. I have plenty of energy for their content and they have me handling enough of their marketing to give them time to relax.

However, if you’re juggling things on your own, it might be hard to get the most out of your summer. For you, it might be time to switch gears and shift your strategy to focus on low effort content creation.

Low-Effort Doesn’t Mean Lazy.

Before we dive in, let's clarify what ‘low-effort’ content really means. It doesn’t mean ‘lazy' content.

Low-effort content focuses on reducing the workload required to produce high-quality pieces. This approach might involve reworking old content or curating materials from other sources, but it should still reflect your personal touch.

The goal is to provide value for your audience without spending unnecessary time and energy during the busy summer months. It does NOT mean having ChatGPT do all of your work for you and hoping no one notices.

Now, let’s explore some effective low-effort content strategies.

1. Recycle Your Old Content

Recycling content should be a regular practice, especially after your first year of consistent posting. During summer, when time is often in short supply, repurposing lower-performing content can give you a much-needed break. This might mean merging similar posts, updating older content for a new audience, or transforming it into a downloadable resource.

How to do this:

• Review your existing content and ask yourself:

  • Can you combine it with another page on your website?

  • Can several lower-performing pieces be merged into a more comprehensive post?

  • Can you update it for the current year or a new audience?

  • Can you repurpose it into a downloadable resource?

  • Can you combine posts into cornerstone content?

Update your content to better serve your current audience and replace the old with the new. This updating IS something that you can have an AI help you to do, so long as you train it to maintain your brand voice and edit it to include your personal touch before it’s posted. (This post, in fact, was edited by AI to repurpose it from a 2019 winter post to a fresh new summer post. I wrote a new intro and made sure to add all my personal stories and footnotes so you know it’s still my work.)

2. Highlight a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is an incentive offered to potential customers in exchange for their contact information, often a downloadable resource like a checklist, eBook, or video. If one of your lead magnets isn’t attracting the traffic it used to, now is a great time to bring it back into the spotlight.

Common mistakes business owners make:

• Launching a lead magnet once and never mentioning it again.

• Neglecting to promote it on social platforms.

• Failing to offer it during networking events.

Pick one of your lead magnets and write a post about it. This can be a shorter, impactful piece that reintroduces a valuable free tool to your audience. It doesn’t have to be a blog post; share it on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Medium.

3. Share Cool Lead Magnets from Others

Building relationships with your community or even your competitors can be mutually beneficial (especially if you’re an introvert like me who wants to build relationships without putting even more time into networking events.) If you find an interesting lead magnet in an adjacent niche, share it with your audience.

Here’s how to do it:

• Review what others in your community are offering.

• Download and vet the resources to ensure they’re relevant to your audience.

• Create a list of 5-10 lead magnets from businesses offering complementary services.

• Write a post sharing this list, adding your personal insights on what you loved about each one.

Reach out to those you’ve featured to let them know about the post—some may share it, increasing your reach.

4. Compile Your Own Lead Magnets

If you’ve spent the year creating content upgrades, summer is a great time to bundle them into a single post or even dedicate a page to them if you have enough resources. Who doesn’t love a good library page on a website full of free stuff?

Steps to compile:

• List all your current opt-ins, both paid and free.

• Write a quick snippet highlighting the benefits of each.

• Include images for each downloadable.

• Create a post with these elements, ensuring each link opens in a new window.

• Promote this post with images featuring buzzworthy phrases like:

  • "XX incredible tools to help you…"

  • "My top XX tools for your…"

  • "My gift to you…"

5. Reflect on your Mistakes

A candid post about the mistakes you’ve made over the years and how you fixed them can be powerful. It builds trust with your audience and shows that perfection isn’t necessary for success.

How to approach it:

• Brainstorm a list of things that went wrong and how you corrected them.

• Choose scenarios that your audience can relate to.

• Write about 5-10 situations, detailing what happened and the steps you took to resolve them.

Have someone review your post to ensure it’s not overly negative or disclosing sensitive information. Again, this would be a good use of AI to make it less effort, but still keep it compelling.

6. Create an Affiliate List Post

While not typically considered low-effort, an affiliate post can increase revenue and save you time in the long run. These posts allow you to share the tools and products you use, potentially earning a commission while also answering common questions.

How to do it:

• Make a list of tools you use regularly (both affiliate and non-affiliate).

• Gather your affiliate links and product links.

• Write a short snippet about why you love each one.

• Include screenshots of the products in action.

• Compile everything into a post and promote it.

I like to keep a bookmark bar full of things I use regularly so when I have time, I can put together a list of affiliate links.

Low-Effort Content Still Needs Promotion

Creating low-effort content doesn’t mean you can skip on promoting it. Schedule it to be published and promoted on your website and social media platforms as usual.

And remember, optimizing your posts for SEO is just as crucial as the content itself. If you have some extra time, using AI to edit your content for specific keywords is a great way to refresh old posts.

Is there a low-effort content idea I missed? Let me know in the comments below!