Social Media Marketing for the Holidays

We are already in the middle of the year-end holidays and for those who are still figuring out how to get the best out of the social media during this season, we have culled out some of the best strategies to be employed for your benefit. Some people reckon only Christmas and the New Year as the busiest shopping periods during the season. But, when you dig in, you find that the Western nations have many other reasons to celebrate during the entire month of December and January.  Chanukah, Gingerbread house day, Candy Cane Day etc. are some of these happening in December.  That apart, when we bring retail business into focus, generally, December presents the biggest opportunity across the year and it is essential that you get the best out of this period in time.  Remember that if you fail to claim your share of the pie, competition will essentially take away your share.

What holidays do you focus for December?

Let us examine some of the holidays that you can exploit for your profit. Some of them are behind us this year, but would give you adequate time to prepare for the next season.

• Chanukah – December 2-10 – Important Jewish  holiday across the year
• Winter Solstice – Northern Hemisphere (shortest day in the year considering daylight)
• 24-26   December – Christmas Eve, Christmas and Boxing Day in some regions
• New Year Eve – 31^st December

Apart from the above, there are also some novelty holidays like National Ice-cream day, Chocolate Candy Day etc. and a full list of novelty holidays can fill this page. But, we will move on to other aspects that are relevant to your marketing efforts.

Design a strategy to suit your objectives

Think of what you should achieve through your social media marketing. Some of the common pointers include:-

Planning your strategy and tuning it with your objective

Set your objectives and determine your goals:-

• Boost sales
• Engaging your audience
• Generate awareness
• Promote a special offer for the holidays

It is important that you zero in on your pitch and plan your strategy for the social media. Once your goals are set, it gets a lot easier to weave together your plan and actually achieve those goals.

Start Decorating

Refreshing the cover images you have on the social media to suit the celebration and the offers you are handing out. You can go colorful or just stick to interesting and fresh content. Playing with colors is a good idea, but you should know what appeals to the masses. Wrong choice of colors can hurt your objectives. Yet, there is no harm trying to decorate your social media profile – the cover image using holiday motifs. Coca-Cola is a good brand to draw some ideas for this and build on. An added benefit is that you can also the opportunity to wish every visitor “Happy Holidays” straight on the cover photo so everyone can see that the first thing when they reach your site. This is also the best time of the year to promote your services or products if they can be desirable gifts.

You should make sure that your CTC is powerful and Crello and Canva are some very user friendly tools that can come to your aid. Depending on your needs and focus, you can also change these at frequent intervals.

Draw up your schedule

Draw up a schedule of the frequency at which you will publish fresh content and what would be the type of content. This should be done ahead of your actual idea, and in fact, what you can do at this stage is:-

• Determine the type of updates you plan publishing in December. Sales offers, contests, and promotional updates are the choice of most marketers. If you can come up with something unique do not hesitate putting it to test.
• Plan varied mix of content for every day across the week. For instance, it could be one promotional post and some funny giveaway for Christmas on Mondays and align similar things for the rest of the week. This way you can ensure that the right updates are getting posted and your objectives through the social media for December are met.
• Time it appropriately – Consider the analytics from your social media presence and comprehend the timing for adding updates. This will ensure that your updates receive maximum engagement (particularly with regard to discounts and offers)
• Locate the right hash tags for the holiday season and incorporate in your instagram updates and tweets. The right hash tag can make a significant difference in engagement as well as reach. Invest in time researching this and make out a list of the hash tags taking care to put them under distinct categories. This list will be very helpful when you need to schedule or post an update since you can simply copy paste the hash tags.

Prepare content with the holiday themes

Now that you have drawn up your schedule and have a broad idea of the type of content you will be dealing with, it is essential to find quality time. Quality time is needed to create most of the social media content for the holidays and in any case it is a busy season. By planning the content well ahead of the commencement of the season, you can ensure that the content you create fetches the desired results.  But, when you choose the first week of December or later, you are bound to do a hurried job and potentially end up with sub-standard content.

These days social media is the place where lots of actions happen across age profiles. While planning your campaigns you should also take care to ensure that all your content and your social media presence itself is mobile friendly. Do remember that most web browsing has moved away from the old world desktops.