Here are creative content and sales ideas your media company can easily create in February

Love is in the air or will be soon and so will taxes. I know they don’t really go together at all, but it’s time to start thinking about what you’re going to be doing next month that can grow audience and revenue.

I have a nice list below that takes a single idea and then showcases how you can create content from it, revenue and be innovative.

Here we go!

Valentine’s Day

Content idea: Very soon, it’s going to be hard to get decent reservations for Valentine’s Day. So opposed to a restaurant guide, why not a list of 25 ways under $50 to show love to your sweetheart. Think about including things like art classes, an evening hike and star gazing.

Sales idea: Create a “featured advertiser” section in the guide and provide five advertisers with exclusive placement at the very top and appropriately labeled. This is the idea that is similar to what I have mentioned many times on how parenting publishers are selling best schools lists with the featured advertisers at the top of an organic list.

An innovative idea: If you have the content to support it (and many magazines do from evergreen content), create a Valentine’s Day pillar page that has filters built into it (indoor/outdoor, events, kid-free vs family). It could serve as a great template for other holidays and is a wonderful way to flex to your audience and advertisers the depth of what you have.

Black History Month

Content idea: Create a guide on ways that your family can participate and learn about Black History in February in your community. This guide would introduce readers to museums, exhibits, historical markers, famous Black people and events. It’s meant to be a bit all encompassing. Each of these could be short mentions in a guide or full stories that you link up to the guide.

Sales idea: Create a 5-consecutive day newsletter series with these themes that carries a single sponsor:

• Day 1: Places to visit

• Day 2: People to know

• Day 3: Events to attend

• Day 4: Local resources

• Day 5: Black-owned restaurants list

Innovative idea: Launch a Black-owned business directory that would be updated regularly and connect it to different times of the year with special promotions like Small Business Saturday and back to school. So the advertisers in it get new promotion and positioning each time.

Tax Season

Content idea: Many states made changes to their tax laws for 2026 that are going to impact deductions, so opposed to just a general tips piece with a CPA, get into what changed, why and what consumers should be asking their tax preparers.

Sales idea: Getting yourself organized can be everything during tax season so why not create a downloadable tax checklist that your audience can get access to that is co-branded with the sponsor. An additional idea would be to run that as a social media campaign. To get the guide, someone would have to provide their email that could be used as lead-gen for the advertiser.

Innovative idea: People have questions so why not be there with quality answers from experts. Have a live virtual “Ask a CPA” event promoted through email and social with lead capture.

St. Patrick’s Day guide (publish ASAP)

Content idea: Your readers (very soon) will be seeking things like tickets, reservations and making plans for St. Patrick’s Day eating and drinking. Your guide — to meet people when they are searching — should be updated or created from scratch, really any day now. Focus on what’s already on the calendar, what places fill up first, and what’s new or different this year in your town.

Sales idea: I love this as a four-part newsletter series or Reels series — or both! The idea is that the guide can be broken into numerous pieces (events, restaurants to eat at, bars to check out, etc.)

Innovation idea: Add a short St. Patrick’s Day quiz that asks readers a few quick “this or that” questions like parade or pub, family-friendly or adults-only, daytime or night. Based on their answers, the quiz provides them the events, restaurants, and activities that best match.

We can help with content & revenue strategy

We would love to work with your team on strategies like these that weave content and revenue together. Reach out to me today at david@davidarkinconsulting.com so we can talk about how.