The holiday season is upon us and it’s time to get your Santa hat on, but have you remembered everything you need to do to be prepared?
In this article, I share 12 useful social media tips for the holiday season. The tips are based on Facebook, however the principle is relevant across most social media platforms.
Let’s jump straight in with the tips.
1) Create A Content Calendar
This is a busy time of year and it can be easy to get bogged down in the craziness, so creating a content calendar will help you stay on track during the mayhem. It will also ensure that your brand message is aligned across all platforms but be sure to add some festive fun along the way to show your personality.
2) Create Your Graphics
Now that you know what you are going to be posting and where, it is a good idea to get on with creating all the images that go with them as these can be time consuming. Leaving it till you are in the middle of the chaos will only add more stress.
3) Create Facebook Campaigns Early
If you are going to be sending out Facebook Ads as part of your sales strategy then I would advise getting the campaigns prepared as soon as possible and get them sent for approval. You can then add a start and end date to them and schedule them. Facebook gets extremely busy during the holiday season and approvals can take longer
4) Use Retargeting Campaigns
The holiday season is a great time to reach out to your website visitors. After all, they have already shown an interest in your company. This is especially important if you have a product-based business. These are warm leads and a well-placed ad from you may be the gentle reminder they need.
5) Update Your Cover Images
Giving your social media cover images a festive twist helps to show you have a personality behind the brand. If you have a special offer then this is a great time to advertise it on your banner. But don’t forget to add a Call to Action button with a clickable link (For Facebook). If you’re not sure how to do this, check out our Marketing Munch video here that shows you.
6) Use Holiday Hashtags
Using popular holiday hashtags in your posts can help you to increase reach and engagement. Hashtagify is a great tool to help you find the most popular ones being used.
7) Keep An Eye On Your Competitors
It can be easy to get bogged down at this busy time, but now is when you want to be checking on how your competitors are getting on more than ever. What type of posts are they sharing? What level of engagement are they receiving? As I have said before, competitor analysis is not so that you can copy their efforts, after all this won’t help you to stand out, however it can give you some inspiration for future efforts.
8) Respond Immediately To Engagement
People are more stressed and in a rush over the holiday season so be sure to answer their questions and respond to their comments immediately, especially if it is a product related questions, as this could be the deal breaker for a potential sale.
9) Identify ALL Holiday Dates
We all know when Christmas Day and Black Friday is, but make a note of the smaller dates too and create posts for them. For example, National Gingerbread House Day 12th December and Winter Solstice 21st December. Some of these can be used for fun posts whilst others can be important sales dates like National Free Shipping Day 14th December. Make a note of them and see how best you can take advantage of them.
10) Update Messenger Bots
We all know how annoying it can be if you send a message on a business page and you don’t get a response. Make sure that you update your auto messages to reflect your opening times BEFORE you take time off over the holiday season. A simple response to say that your team are enjoying some well-earned time off and will respond on ….. is far more likely to evoke a positive response than leaving it on the standard message and no one is there to reply.
11) Pin An Announcement With Closing Dates
Create a nice image of your closing times over the festive period and add this as an announcement so that it is pinned to the top of your page so that when people visit your page, they can clearly see when you are available and your message doesn’t get lost further down the page’s feed. But do remember to remove this when you return.
12) Wish Everyone A Happy Holiday
The final tip is to share an image on Christmas Eve to wish your customers and followers a happy holiday. Many businesses prefer to say ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’ as not everybody celebrates Christmas, so do bear this in mind.
So there are my 12 useful social media tips for the holiday season. Did you have all of them covered? I would love to know in the comments below.
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This is Suzii, signing out for now. Have a great day everyone!
