Did you know that you could use national awareness days as content prompts for your photography blog or social media channels?

Honestly, it’s a great way to overcome writer’s block. Instead of struggling to come up with ideas, simply piggyback on the many awareness days happening throughout the year.

Awareness days can give you a huge number of potential topics for your photography content, so you needn’t be short of content ideas again!

Related reading: A step-by-step guide to using awareness days in your photo marketing content

Awareness days are invaluable as content prompts

Using awareness days as prompts for photography marketing content can provide a steady stream of ideas throughout the year. By focusing on the theme or topic of a specific awareness day, week or campaign, you may find inspiration for stories or experiences to share with your audience.

With a wide variety of awareness days happening every month, you can use them to inspire content ideas for your photography business. You just need to be prepared to spend a little time thinking creatively about how those topics and themes could apply to you and what you have to share.

Related reading: How to use awareness days to inspire photography content ideas

Free calendar and February awareness days 2024

If you’re reading this around the time this article was originally published, now’s the time to start creating content for your photography marketing channels for February!

Despite being a shorter month than most, February still has many awareness days and campaigns. Therefore, I’m confident that you should be able to find some that are relevant and could inspire content ideas you’ve not thought of yet.

Here’s a list of February awareness days that you might want to look out for in 2024:

February Awareness Days

Month-long awareness campaigns in February

There are month-long campaigns during February including:

  • National Children’s Mental Health Month
  • Black History Month
  • Boost Your Self-Esteem Month
  • LBGT+ History Month
  • National Library Loves Month

As an example of how some of these could be applied…

  • If you’re either a family, personal branding or a beauty or boudoir photographer, for example, you may be inspired to use ‘Boost Your Self Esteem Month’. You could talk about the positive benefits of having professional portraits taken.

You could emphasise the immediate and long-lasting confidence boost that your clients could gain from hiring you to take their photographs.

You could also share case studies or testimonials from your clients that vouch for the power of professional portraits. Think about what content you could create to build desire for having portraits printed and made into wall art.

No doubt, a flattering professional portrait could empower your ideal client and boost their self-esteem. So, why not use this topic to inspire and educate your online audience? Entice them with a strong call to action. Perhaps even a special offer running throughout February?

  • LGBT+ History Month may also be appropriate to your photography business if you’re a member of the LGBT+ community yourself, or if you have photography projects in your portfolio that are relevant.

Why not showcase this work throughout February in support of the month-long campaign? With their permission, you could also perhaps feature your LGBT+ client’s stories, share their portraits or the weddings you’ve captured. You could use the awareness month to educate your audience and increase the visibility of LGBT+ people online.

Awareness days and week-long campaigns in February

Now, let’s focus on February awareness days and week-long campaigns. These include the following:

*Please note that the dates below apply to the U.K. and are subject to change year on year. Although they are correct to the best of my knowledge at the time of publication, please check the dates of any awareness campaigns you plan to use.

Week-long campaigns in February include:

  • Second-hand Wardrobe Week (from the 4th) 
  • Children’s Mental Health Week (from the 5th)
  • National Apprenticeship Week (from the 5th)
  • Take Your Family to School Week (from the 11th)
  • Random Acts of Kindness Week (from the 17th)

Awareness days in February 2024: A (non-exhaustive) list of key dates

01 Optimist Day

02 Groundhog Day

03 Golden Retriever Day

04 World Cancer Day

04 Grammy Awards

05 Children’s Mental Health Week

07 National Girls and Women in Sport Day

08 Laugh and Get Rich Day

09 National Pizza Day

10 Chinese New Year

10 Umbrella Day

11 White Shirt Day

12 World Marriage Day

13 Galentine’s Day

13 Self-Love Day

13 Shrove Tuesday / Pancake Day

13 World Radio Day

14 Ash Wednesday

14 Valentine’s Day

14 Pet Theft Awareness Day

17 Random Acts of Kindness Day

18 Drink Wine Day

20 National Love Your Pet Day

20 Handcuff Day

20 World Day of Social Justice

21 International Mother Language Day

21 Innovation Day

22 Single Tasking Day

22 World Thinking Day

22 Margharita Day

22 Be Humble Day

22 Walking the Dog Day

27 Strawberry Day

29 Rare Disease Day

29 Leap Year Day

Related reading: 29 ‘Leap Day’-inspired marketing ideas for photographers

Ideas of how you could use these February Awareness Days in your photography marketing content

Now let’s look at some ways that you could intepret these events, days and themes to your photography marketing content: 

3rd February

  • Golden Retriever Day – One for the pet photographers perhaps, or for you if you’re the owner of a Golden Retriever! This one could inspire simple posts in tribute to your dog, or the Golden Retrievers you have photographed.

They are one of the most popular dog breeds around the world, and people love pet-related content, so why not share a photo, tell a story about your pet or dog you’ve worked with, or share a tip or joke that might make fellow pet lovers smile? 

Remember, there is no need to keep 100% of your content business focused. If you’re happy and willing to share a little about yourself, this can be useful to help build know, like and trust with your audience. Talking about your pet is a great way to do this!

10th February

  • Umbrella Day – Wedding photographers, maybe this awareness day could inspire you to create a blog article. Or, share tips on social media about how you manage to still capture photographs in the event of rain.

11th February

  • White Shirt Day – If you’re always telling clients to keep their clothing simple for portraits, then one way to interpret this awareness day is to inspire some helpful and educational content about what clients should wear to a portrait session. Explain why a classic white shirt or T-shirt works well on camera and show examples (perhaps create a Pinterest board) so that your clients can get outfit inspiration ahead of their shoot with you.  

13th February

  • Shrove Tuesday / Pancake Day – This lends itself to some fun, light-hearted social media content. If you’ll be making pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, why not share a favourite pancake recipe and list some topping ideas?

Share a Reel on Instragam showing you flipping a pancake. Or, ask your audience who does the pancake making in their house on pancake day through an interactive Instagram Story?

Remember, your content doesn’t always need to be business focused. Light-hearted content along these lines can help to build visibility for you and the know, like and trust factor, so is well worth doing occasionally. 

14th February

  • Valentine’s Day – This is the date that February is most famous for, and February is traditionally known as the month of love. This creates the perfect opportunity for you to hook onto the love theme. It could work well for portrait photographers (promote couples’ photography perhaps), baby and family photographers, as well as wedding and boudoir photographers. Or any photographers with images to share that convey love!  

17th February

  • Random Acts of Kindness Day – A day to help out a stranger or spread kindness in some form. You might want to do a giveaway or recommend other small businesses to your social media audience. Or, you could make it your mission to give someone a heartfelt compliment or even to provide testimonials on LinkedIn and Google to endorse local businesses that you have purchased something from recently. This is a day to spread some love!

21st February

  • International Mother Language Day – English not your first language? You could use this day to inspire some content that focuses on your heritage and cultural background. You might want to share an interesting fact about your mother language, and reveal to your audience something about your personal journey or things you love about the country where you were born.

22nd February

  • Margarita Day – Food photographers or product photographers, this is just one of many food and drink-related awareness days in February that might work for you!

    Showcase your photos, share recipes and talk about your client’s cocktail-related products. Portrait or personal brand photographers, perhaps you’ve taken photos of mixologists? Interiors photographers, have you been hired to capture the interior of a cocktail bar or hotel, and could talk about that venue in your content? Or simply, if you’re a keen mixologist yourself, why not talk about that?!

29th February 

February awareness days can inspire tons of content 

I hope that this may have helped to show you how you can use some of the February awareness days in your marketing content this year. Of course, these are just some ideas I’ve put together. I share them simply to give you some quick-fire inspiration on how to apply them to your content.

Don’t overthink this!

Remember, there are many more awareness days in February than those listed above. Cherry-pick a few of the February awareness days that speak to you and then interpret them however you wish.

P.S. Keep checking back to this blog for more similar articles. This is the second of a monthly blog series about content ideas based on awareness days.

Related reading: January Awareness Days

Good luck with your February content planning!