The holiday season is a perfect opportunity to enhance your social media marketing plan. Your friends, followers, clients, and prospects are all eager to score holiday deals and to learn tips and tricks that stand to make their lives easier during this hectic season. Give them what they're looking for, and you stand to be rewarded with more likes, shares, and follows.
This means providing great content, rich with unique ideas about embracing and sharing this holiday season. Peter Roesler, President of Web Marketing Pros explains: “Social media marketing is an important component to an integrated marketing campaign all year long. However, business owners and marketers should expect to use social media more often than usual during the holiday season. A recent study from Sprout Social suggests that consumers are significantly more likely to connect with brands through social media during the holiday season.”
Consider these tips to maintain fresh and focused social media offerings for the 2020 holiday season.
Provide holiday insider tips
Everyone is looking for ways to make this unusual holiday season special, inviting, and warm. It feels challenging, with all the Covid concerns and restrictions that we’re managing this year. Creative ideas that help people feel close to their loved ones while remaining safe are all the rage in 2020; post and share those far and wide!
If you’re in the business of providing care to seniors, for example, and you have some great holiday recipes for festive, diabetes-friendly treats that can be prepared and shipped to loved ones, lay those out with some lovely holiday pictures. Then get those recipes posted. Likewise, if you have samples of holiday ornaments, cards, or projects that seniors can make for their families, post those!
We are all looking for fun ideas, success stories, and tips to help connect us this year. As a business owner, you're the expert; show us what you've got, and we'll reward you with our attention!
UGC (User Generated Content)
There are two things that you know about your friends and followers: they are stuck at home this holiday season, and social media users love a contest! Maximize their attention on both fronts. If, for example, you work in real estate, get a kid crew to build an adorable snowman on the front lawns of one of the homes you’re selling. Creating a time-lapse video of the construction makes great social media content! Then, dress him (or her) up adorably and give your friends and followers the chance to name the snowman. Offer a cute prize for the best name - a gourmet hot chocolate and cookie gift set, for example. Then let the creativity fly!
It’s fun to see what your friends, followers, and their kids come up with; plus, everyone will be noticing that gorgeous house behind the snowman.
Go vid or go home
When it comes to commanding attention on social media, video is king. If you have kids, tween, teens, or young adults in your household, you know this. Nothing draws the attention of Gen Zers like video clips.
Roman Daneghyan, Chief Marketing Officer at Renderforest explains the dominance of video on social media: “Let's face it — since social media has a lot of posts bringing almost no value at all to the audience, the best way to stand out is to create something new and refreshing. You need content that engages, entertains, and informs the audience, and the video content happens to be the best medium to achieve that. Statistics show that 55% of people watch videos online every day, and social media videos generate up to 1200% more shares than texts and images combined.”
Be the best version of your social media self
Up your commitment to social media responsiveness during this busy time. Respond to user's questions, complaints, and worries. Make sure that queries or complaints don't go unanswered.
Post often. Post adorably. Stay in your users’ feeds and on their minds. Be a part of their holiday solutions and celebrations.
This holiday season stands to be a bit challenging. We're all this place where we're trying to be connected, despite the obstacles. Facilitate how your friends and followers can achieve this, and they will appreciate you for it. We are not just celebrating this year; we’re surviving. Show off your creative flair, your survival skills, your commitment to making it through. Those vibes are infectious, and we need them this year.
Happy holidays - we’ve got this!