When should I start posting about a season?

Just before your customers start searching. People look things up before they buy, so the week searches start to climb is the week your first posts should already be out. Last year's searches show you that week, for free, before this year's season arrives.

Here is how to find your week on Google Trends, how early to start, and how to plan every season you sell into in one sitting.

Searches come before sales

A wool blanket is rarely bought on the first cold evening. People search "wool blanket" first, compare a few, read a review, and order days or weeks later. By the time your sales pick up, the looking started a while ago.

That gap is where your posts belong. A knitwear maker who posts when the orders come in is talking to people who have already chosen. One who posts as the searching starts is there while they are still choosing.

Find your week on Google Trends

Google Trends is free at trends.google.com. Type in your kind of product the way a customer would say it: "sun cream", "wool blanket", "Christmas hamper", not your own product name. Set the country to yours and the time range to the past five years.

The line shows how interest rises and falls through each year. Look for the week it starts to climb, not the top, and check that the climb starts around the same week each year. A sun-care shop checks when searches for sun cream start rising in its country, and writes that week in its diary. If your word shows too little to draw a line, try a broader one: "scented candle" instead of "fig candle".

Most seasonal plans start from a hunch, like "people buy blankets when it turns cold". The line is last year's evidence of when they actually started looking. Where the two disagree, go with the line.

Start a week or two before the climb

Have your first posts out a week or two before the line starts to rise. The first people looking then find you ready, with the product in its season: the blanket on the sofa, the hamper being packed, the sun cream in the beach bag.

From the climb to the top, post more than usual, then come back to your normal rhythm. How often a small brand should post covers when to go up and when to come back down. A garden shop that gets its first seed posts out early already has a fortnight of them on its feed when the first searchers arrive.

Use the weeks before the top

Between the start of the climb and the top of the line, people are still deciding what to buy and where. That is where posts that answer their questions do the most: which one to choose, how it works, when to order by. The questions people search before they buy tell you what those posts should say.

A florist heading into Mother's Day posts "how to choose" and "order by" in those weeks, and keeps the finished bouquets for the last few days.

Do every season in one sitting

List the three or four seasons that matter to what you sell. Look each one up in the same sitting, and put a note in your calendar a week or two before each climb: "first season post". Next year, look again and move the notes if the line has moved. A candle label marks autumn, Christmas and Valentine's Day this way, and each season starts on time.

What CP3® does here

Market Trends shows what your audience is searching for, scored for fit with your brand and refreshed every month, and each trend comes with a campaign angle. Branded Content drafts the posts with a date onto your calendar in review, and you move the first season posts to the week you found. Looking up last year's line for your own seasons, once a year, stays with you.