How to Create Holiday Social Media Posts:
1. Show Your Human Side
Holidays are a symbol of our connection with each other, so appeal to your customers’ hearts rather than their eyeballs. When coming up with holiday social media ideas, try posts that your guests will find relatable. If you sell decorative candles, you might tweet a feel-good list of other items (like candles) that make houses feel like homes, and encourage customers to reply with their own ideas. Fostering these connections will pay off in loyalty that lasts beyond the holiday season.
2. Wit is Free
We all know the end-of-year clichés – family dinners, jingle bells and ugly sweaters. After a while, the spiel gets repetitious. Take note from brands who ditch traditional holiday social media campaigns for cheeky reversals on the holiday routine. Strive to stand out in your space by turning old ideas on their head, making jokes or even poking fun at your competitors. Creativity will make your posts more memorable, entertains readers and will make them more likely to be shared, too.
3. Help You Help Me
Studies show that people are driven to share content by emotion, especially the need to help others. Your holiday social media posts should show customers how you can make their lives easier this season. Try sharing tips about your product they may find useful. You can even release them in a series, and encourage viewers to return for the next installment. Don’t forget to enhance your posts with festive branded images to make them more eye-catching and shareable.
4. Invent A Catchy Hashtags
All holiday social media campaigns should have a way to track effectiveness. Hashtags are a nifty tool that let you do just that. Many platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram lets you see at a glance how many people are using and engaging with specific hashtags. Attach a unique phrase (for example, “#christmasatyourstorename”) to all of your holiday social media posts. Encourage customers to engage with it and use it in their posts when promoting your business online.
5. Try A Different Holiday
Your customers are inundated with marketing material around holidays like New Year’s. That means you’ll have more work trying to distinguish from the pack. You may find your niche among lesser-known calendar events like “National ‘Ditch Your Resolution’ Day” (January 17). You can even pay to register your own day with National Day Calendar, which will announce your invented holiday to its 20,000 media outlet subscribers.
6. Hire Some Holiday Elves
The holidays are a hectic time for everyone, but especially small businesses. If your mom-and-pop business is already feeling stretched, you may want to hire seasonal employees to come up with holiday social media ideas during the holidays. Only need help for a short time? Look for social media experts through online freelancer marketplaces like Fiverr and UpWork who may work short-term, as-needed, or on a project-only basis.
7. Start Your Holiday Social Media Campaigns
While viral marketing campaigns may seem like the domain of deep-pocketed corporations, social media offers small business owners the chance at an even playing field. Genuine, heartfelt communication will trump buzzwords and focus group-tested corporate campaigns any day.
Have any valuable tips for crafting social media campaigns during the holiday season? Share them with us in the comment section below!
Editorial Note: Any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author's alone, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.
