How-Tu Tuesday: Celebrating Seasonal Holidays On Social Media
Seasonal holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah or Chinese New Year, are universally known as a reason to spend quality time with family and friends, experience cultural traditions and indulge in lots of good food. However, if you are a digital marketer there may be one thing you are forgetting about; your social media strategy.
Seasonal holidays don’t require drastic changes to your existing strategy, but they do need a special approach and a plan for leveraging the trending topics that are associated with each holiday as well as avoiding any social media crises. Check out our list of dos and don’ts for creating holiday campaigns across your social channels.
DO: Choose a holiday Theme
The easiest way to tell your followers that you are taking part in holiday celebrations and show acknowledgement of a special occasion is to change the theme of your social branding. This helps create a consistent message throughout the holiday season and brings relevancy to all your holiday-related posts.
DON’T: Ignore Existing Customers
It can often be tempting to use the holiday period to only focus promotions on attracting new customers. However, this special time should also be seen as an opportunity to thank your existing customers for their ongoing loyalty and support. Appreciation can be shown through featuring customer stories across the social platforms, sharing customer-only previews and promotions and sending invites for customer-only events via Facebook.
DO: Adjust Your Schedule
The content being posted on your social feeds during seasonal celebrations will differ from your usual schedule and your social calendar should also be adjusted accordingly. The content being published during popular holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, when most people are not working, should reflect this and have less business engagement and more meaningful and playful posts.
DON’T: Overshare Company Celebrations
Just as your followers will be celebrating, many of your employees will also be enjoying the festivities (Easter egg hunt anyone?). However, companies should think twice before uploading an album of images to Facebook or a constant stream of tweets updating followers on what you are doing. Avoid giving people any reason to post negative comments and only publish a couple of times about the company’s celebrations; communicate your human side by showing that you know how to celebrate, but the trick is to remain a respectable human and a brand that consumers will keep in high regard.
DO: Feature Follower Holiday Posts
On the other hand… DO share posts of your followers enjoying the holiday celebrations! Encourage your community to share their images with you, using a specific hashtag so you can find them easily. Most people love getting a shoutout and it will simultaneously entice the people they are celebrating with to follow you and do the same.
DON’T: Offend
Most holidays that are celebrated across the world involve some kind of religious or cultural meaning. Therefore it is crucial that brands do not offend their following by using certain wording and imagery. During the holiday period, it is important to be extra mindful of your target audience and the ethics/religion they follow. Always err on the side of caution and if you’re unsure, don’t post it.
DO: Run A Competition
Holidays are the perfect time to be generous. Whether it is running a competition or giveaway, make sure you are offering something that people really want (experience or product), increasing share-ability and encouraging engagement and ultimately, brand awareness.
Happy Easter!
