Here’s how to boost your reader engagement in April

Easter, spring break and Earth Day offer big reader engagement opportunities

April is such a fun time of the year for families: The temperatures finally start to feel a little more spring like, flowers start to bloom and there are lots of reasons to celebrate.

And all of those moments are opportunities to engage your audience.

Today’s newsletter is all about April reader involvement with several practical ideas:

1. Easter contests, vacations and church service listings and photos

• Contests: There are lots of paths you could take with contests for Easter. Three of my favorites are: Cutest dressed kid for Easter service/dinner, most creative decorated eggs and most over-the-top Easter basket. Sponsors are a fit for all of those.
• Story idea: With egg prices still high, families may be looking for creative alternatives to traditional egg coloring. You could develop a story with budget-friendly options like painting rocks, crafting paper eggs, or using wooden or plastic eggs that can be reused.
• 3-day trip ideas: Many school districts are off on Good Friday — and our school district in Texas actually has made it a four-day weekend. If that’s the case for you, offer families a few fun weekend road trip getaways perfect for a long weekend. Crowdsource this ahead of time asking your audience for their top picks and use those to develop the content.
• Church services: Share with readers a list of church services in your community for Easter. Put a request out on all of your channels inviting churches to send the information. This kind of guide could be helpful for newcomers to your community or those thinking about visiting a church for the first time. It’s also a highly searched term the week headed into Easter.
• Bonus idea: Many churches will have photo booths or backdrops set up on Easter. Reach out to several and see if they would be willing to share those images with you so you could create a gallery on your website (make sure the church explains that the images are going to be shared). In addition, ask readers through your channels to share photos on how they celebrated on Easter to ensure a wide range of experiences are featured in your gallery.

2. Spring break contests, video challenges and parenting survival guides

Some school districts have already had their spring breaks and others are coming up in April, so consider the timing on what would make sense with these ideas:

• Spring Break photo contest: Ask readers to submit photos of their best spring break family moments. Don’t just make this general but ask for specific things like best beach photos, creative staycations and coolest road trip.
• Spring break bucket list challenge: Provide families with a checklist of fun, affordable activities they can do over spring break and encourage them to share their progress using a hashtag or tagging your publication.
• Video or Reel challenge: Ask parents to share short videos of creative ways they’re keeping kids entertained during spring break. Feature the best videos in a roundup post or Instagram Reel.
• Parents’ survival guide to spring break: Crowdsource ideas for keeping kids entertained and share them in an article. You could ask for specific ideas to make the content a bit more targeted like rainy day ideas and screen-free activities.

3. Help families celebrate a healthy planet

April 22 is Earth Day, and I think there are a few interesting strategies you could consider around reader involvement:

• What Earth Day means to me: Ask a local classroom to draw pictures or write essays about what the planet means to them or what they hope the world does to take care of the planet for future generations. Either could be a nice contest.
• Show your garden: Ask readers to show off the gardens they are planting with their kids. This also makes for a great tip-oriented guide, all of the best things to plant in the spring with kids in your specific area. This is a good, sponsored content pitch to a landscaper.
• How to impact climate in your town: What are the volunteer activities kids and families in your community could get involved with to help make your town a better place to live? Again, a good guide, but also a nice opportunity to ask readers to share photos from the past on how their kids have done just that or the best ways or organizations to get involved with.

We can help you

We’d love the chance to help you build and implement reader-involvement content strategies. Email me today at david@davidarkinconsulting.com or call me at 832-407-0188.