Free Resource
A free calendar of every seasonal link moment in 2026. For each one: when to pitch, the data-led angle journalists actually cover, and the outlet types to send it to. Make a copy and plan a year of earned links.
Digital PR earns links from real publications. We bang this drum at StudioHawk because of how Google actually works: a site-wide quality signal lifts every page on a domain at once, and one placement in a top-tier outlet feeds that signal harder than a hundred cheap links ever could. The catch is timing. Seasonal desks plan weeks ahead, so the story window opens and closes long before the date itself.
This calendar fixes the timing problem. It maps every recurring seasonal moment of 2026 to the week you need to pitch, the angle journalists actually cover, and the outlet types to send it to. You bring the data, it tells you when to move.
| Moment | When to pitch | Data-led angle |
|---|---|---|
| Quitters Day (mid Jan) | Early December | Your retention or usage data: how many new sign-ups drop off by mid January |
| EOFY (30 June, AU) | Late April | Year-over-year spend or claim data in the final fortnight |
| Black Friday | Late September | Discount-depth or cart-abandon data from your own transactions |
| Year in review (Dec) | Early November | Your category's defining first-party stat of the year |
One tab, every seasonal moment of the year. Columns for the trigger, the week to pitch, the data-led angle, the best outlet types, an example story, and the industries it fits. AU and global. Make a copy, filter to your industry, and you have a year of earned-link opportunities mapped.
The calendar is a planning tool, not a content generator. The value is the timing and the angle. Four steps:
Filter to your industryMake a copy, then filter the Industry fit column to your sector. You will land on the handful of moments worth pitching, not all thirty.
Find your numberSix to ten weeks out, dig a real figure out of your own data that fits the hook: a survey result, a transaction trend, an anonymised client outcome, an internal benchmark. The number is the story.
Build a tiny linkable assetOne chart, one survey result, one page. You are not writing a report. You are giving a journalist a number they can cite and a link they can attribute it to.
Pitch the window, not the dateSend it to the outlet types listed during the pitch window, with the number in the subject line. Pitch on the day of the moment and you have already missed it.
Every angle in the calendar says "bring your own data" for a reason. Journalists do not run your opinion, they run your numbers. A pitch built on a real first-party stat (your survey, your transactions, your anonymised client results) is the one that gets covered, because nobody else has that number. Never invent a stat to fit a hook. If you do not have the data for a moment, skip it and pitch the next one.
The calendar pairs naturally with two other free resources. The Data PR and Outreach skill turns your raw business data into the newsworthy angle and the journalist outreach email. And the 3 Ranking Laws Cheat Sheet explains the domain-authority law that makes one good placement worth so much.
