Make that social media list, check it twice.
It’s hard to believe we have officially reached Q4, which means the holidays are quickly approaching and it’s time to start planning your social media holiday calendar. You might be thinking, “do holiday posts really matter”? The answer is “yes”! Holiday posts are relevant and timely, create emotional touchpoints, and are the easiest type of content to create. In addition, the holiday season is the time when customers are ready to spend, spend, spend.
With all that said, it’s important to make sure you can cut through the clutter with engaging content that drives your relevance this season. To help you get started, we created a social media holiday guide with tips and tricks to prepare you for a successful social media holiday marketing plan (and hopefully get you in the holiday spirit).
Our Holiday Gift To You: 8 Content Ideas
One of the easiest ways to enhance your brand’s organic reach is to create content for social media during the holidays. These festive days are sure to resonate with consumers and encourage them to engage. Below are some content ideas to incorporate into your holiday social media plan.
1. Make Festive Graphics
What’s the best way to get your content noticed on social media? VISUALS. Create visually appealing graphics during the holidays to announce a sale or to simply wish the community a great holiday season. The best part is, you don’t have to be a graphic designer to create these. Tools like Canva offer free templates that are easy to edit and make your own.
2. Create Holiday Polls
Polls have proven to be an effective and easy way to drive engagement and get the community talking, especially on LinkedIn. Create some holiday polls that will encourage and entice your followers to participate in. (e.g. – What’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish?)
3. Share Behind-the-Scene Footage of Your Festive Office, Pets, or Team
Everyone loves a look at the faces behind the brand. Show your social media audience what your team is up to during this holiday period whether it’s decorating the office, wearing costumes, or debating whether Die Hard is a holiday movie (it is), this content is sure to spark joy!
4. Strategize Holiday Themed Reels
We all know that videos are taking over the social media space. This is a great time to create holiday themed reels that show off your festive office, community service you’ve recently taken part in, holiday team outings or anything else that could give your followers a look inside how you and your team are celebrating the holidays.
5. Give to Charities
Tis’ the season of giving. As part of your holiday social media marketing plan, showcase how you’ve been giving back to the community. Promoting your values is an easy way to build trust with your audience while giving back to the community.
6. Leverage User-Generated Content
The holiday season and events go together like Thanksgiving Day and turkey. As soon as October starts, so do the events. Whether it’s office parties or end of the year celebrations, these celebrations are a great way to get the community involved and deliver authentic, trustworthy content.
Tip: Make sure to include a holiday specific hashtag and ask your audience to share photos using that same hashtag in the caption.
7. Host a Giveaway
Hosting a giveaway is a great way to reach a larger audience beyond your brand’s existing followers. By running a brand awareness-focused giveaway using a holiday or seasonal theme, you can drive interest in your products while reaching more potential customers during a key shopping period.
8. Show Up in Stories
If you are feeling unmotivated or overwhelmed, lean on stories as a way to show the community that you’re still celebrating the holidays. Stories can be used to highlight your employees, thank your customers, or show your festive office. After all, you don’t want people thinking you have turned into Scrooge.
Community Matters
Nothing fosters a sense of community more than the holidays. To ensure you are making the most out of your marketing efforts during this time, it’s critical to spend time engaging and showing gratitude toward your followers, customers, colleagues, family and friends.
Showing gratitude and providing excellent customer service during this time humanizes your company or brand, and adds a warm, authentic feeling into your social media presence. Remember, people love to have a purpose, and the feeling of being part of something bigger than just buying a product will encourage them to come back again and again.
Take Time For Yourself
While the holidays are meant to be a happy, relaxing time, they can also be extremely stressful. Who is going to handle your social media presence when the eggnog has been pouring and you’re too full to lift a finger? Here are some steps to ensure your bases are covered:
- Develop an operations plan that includes how you are going to respond to negative comments and reviews during this time. If you have a team, meet with them and go over the plan in detail.
- While prioritizing certain interactions with direct, real-time responses is important, you can make this process a little easier by using tools such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social to collect comments, messages, and mentions across all platforms into one central space.
- Nothing is worse than forgetting to push your perfectly crafted content out to your pages. Schedule your content out in advance using the tools mentioned above to have peace of mind. If you prefer to schedule your content manually, you can set up alerts and reminders through those tools as well.
- Plan ahead! Develop your content calendar and promotional plans well in advance so you can focus on eating, drinking, and being thankful.
- Get some rest and enjoy your time with friends and family.
Wrapping Up
We have officially entered the busiest time of the year. We hope this social media holiday guide provided you with helpful suggestions on how you and your brand can ramp up your holiday social media game and utilize this special time to drive engagement, growth, and sales. The VSSL crew wishes you a happy holiday season! Cheers.