How To Make The Most of Holidays as a Recipe Creator

What if every major holiday could boost your traffic, grow your email list by thousands, and create your biggest affiliate revenue days of the year? 

For recipe creators who know the playbook, that's exactly what happens. 

While others post random holiday recipes and hope for the best, strategic creators follow a simple system that turns holidays into their most profitable content periods.

Here’s exactly how some of the best creators out there turn holidays (big and small) into a goldmine for their businesses. And you can too.

Put Together A Roundup of Relevant Recipes

Pulling your best holiday recipes into a single place is the perfect way to do the heavy lifting for your audience.

There are so many ways to do this. Emails, blog posts, social posts.

Here’s what Molly Thompson (@what_mollymade) did for Mother’s Day:

Simple and straight to the point with direct links to each recipe in the email.

Tieghan Gerard (@halfbakedharvest) took a slightly different approach. Her Memorial Day recipe roundup highlighted a blog post she pulled together with 50 recipes:

The matching blog post showcases a photo and link for each recipe, making it easy to skim and find exactly what you’re looking for.

Roundups are amazing because you’ve already done the hard part. You’ve already created these recipes, now you just have to pull everything together into a single place.

The best part? Once you do this once, you can use each roundup as a starting point for the same holiday the following year. Add any new recipes that are relevant and boom, you’re done. 

Send a Meal Plan or Sample Menu 

Just like a roundup, but even more curated. Meal Plans and Sample Menus for holidays give your audience direction about exactly what you’d make.

Lexi Davidson (@lexiscleankitchen) Lexi’s Clean Kitchen put together an incredible sample Mother’s Day menu here:

I love that she gives super specific options like an Eggs Benedict Bar or Breakfast Charcuterie with tons of other options below. So whether people want to be told exactly what to make or they’re just looking for inspiration, there’s something there for them. It feels like it was written by a friend, which is exactly what you want.

Michelle Hoover (@unboundwellness) went a different direction. Rather than sending a meal plan specifically for Memorial Day, she leaned into the fact that she did the work for her audience for the upcoming week so they don’t have to spend their holiday weekend planning:

I love this play. Especially if you’re stuck about what to send for a specific holiday. Just lean in to making life easier for people who already know and trust you. This is exactly the kind of thing that will keep them coming back for more.

Even if you don’t send weekly meal plans, holidays are the perfect excuse to send one-offs. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. 

And if you’re on the fence about sending weekly meal plans, holidays are an amazing way to test the waters so you can figure out if they’re worth doing longer term.

Show off Your Favorite Products

Weaving in your go-to products for holidays feels authentic and can boost your affiliate revenue in a big way.

I love how Michelle incorporates her favorite summer cooking items as part of this Memorial Day email:

The number of links isn’t overwhelming and it’s perfectly on theme. Bonus that she includes a photo of one of the items from her real life (proving she actually uses and loves this griddle).

Nisha Vora (@rainbowplantlife) does something similar in her Memorial Day email here:

Not only does she highlight her favorite cookware with some of the recipes she planned to cook for the long weekend, she explains why she loves the products so much and how she uses them. Plus, it’s super timely because the products were on sale.

You can also do this for specific seasons, like Lexi does here with her favorite kids products for the Summer:

While this specific topic may not work for your audience, it’s perfect for Lexi. She constantly highlights her family and the products they go back to over and over again. 

There are endless ways to incorporate affiliate links in your holiday promotions. If you’re sharing products you genuinely love in an authentic way, you have absolutely nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

Launch a Limited-Time Email Series

While this definitely requires more time than a single email, a limited-time email series is such a good way to drive engagement around holidays.

Aimee Shugarman (@shugarysweets) does an incredible job with these.

Here’s a peek at the first day of her 12 Days of Father’s Day email series:

Notice how she wove in an affiliate link here, too.

You can also do this for seasons! Aimee did something similar with her 12 Days of Spring Desserts series.

And while you don’t want to overdo email series, they’re such a great way to stay top of mind. Your audience is much more likely to see a series of emails than a one-off email send.

Aimee also adds holiday-specific popups to her site, like this one for the 4th of July:

Give a holiday-specific series a shot for the next holiday you have multiple recipes to share. Then, you can compare engagement to your one-off holiday emails and decide if it’s a strategy you want to add to your playbook.

Make Your Holiday Recipes Easy to Find

While emails, blogs and social posts are incredible ways to promote your recipes, they can easily be lost. Which is why it’s so important to make sure they’re easy to find on your website.

Check out Michelle’s nav that features Spring-specific recipes here:

Or this one on Aimee’s homepage that features specific holidays:

You can also feature a holiday or season-specific blog post on your homepage like Tieghan does here:

It doesn’t matter how you make holiday recipes easy to find, just that you do. If your audience has to search for them, you’re not making it easy enough.

Share on Social

Once you have your holiday content ready to go, turning it into social posts is non negotiable. You’ve done all the hard work, make sure you’re getting as many eyes on it as possible.

Here are a couple great example from Molly Thompson:

Notice how she had both a carousel post and reel for Memorial Day recipes. Interestingly, the carousel got significantly more engagement. By the way, she’s using Grocers List “Comment for Recipe” in both of these examples.

Here’s an example of what this looks like when someone comments “recipes:”

P.S. Grocers List has helped Molly grow her email list by 100k+ subscribers.

The bottom line? Try multiple content types to promote your holiday content. Don’t just post once and call it a day. There’s so much you can do to repurpose content you already have for specific holidays throughout the year. Squeeze as much as you possibly can out of the work you’ve already done.

Embrace Holidays ASAP

The next major holiday is your chance to test these strategies. Pick 2-3 tactics from this list and go all-in. Don't try everything at once. Master a few approaches first, then expand your holiday playbook as you see what works for your audience. Your future self will thank you. I promise.