30-second Summary:
- Start early. As with many things, preparation is KEY.
- Be genuine and stay creative - push the boat out and see what happens. Some of the best campaigns we’ve seen are those that get creative with their brand.
- Team up with an influencer, and make something great happen.
- Get into the Christmas spirit with a festive giveaway!
- Don’t neglect your profile and cover pictures. Sprinkle joy on to each part of your social channel.
With Christmas just around the corner, it’s time for us to start thinking about our upcoming social media campaigns. A good thing to know is that, with the right planning, you can make sure your social media accounts are one less thing to worry about, and we’re here to help.
As you probably already know, social media has become a natural part of many brands’ marketing strategies, which makes sense.
“According to Social Media Week, 74% of shoppers make buying decisions based on social media.”
That’s why ensuring your social media channels are on top form this Christmas is crucial. You want users to learn more about your products/services through social media especially when looking for gift inspiration.
Prepare Your Social Calendar
It’s important to know what you are posting when and where. This will save you time by making sure you are organised. It’ll also allow you to schedule posts over the festive period when your team might be off and unable to post manually. We suggest mapping your social media content out a month in advance. Of course, leave wiggle room for ad-hoc posts, but most of your content should be mapped out in advance, ensuring the content is engaging and consistent. Not only that, but the volume of posting is important too. We suggest posting 3 / 4 times a week (more frequency on Twitter - even daily if possible!). However, as always don’t forget quality over quantity.
Let’s Get Holiday Ready…
If you’re active on social media professionally, then the Christmas season can be a great time to build your audience and create buzz around your brand. Decking out your profile can enhance engagement by providing opportunities to offer special gifts or promotions, advertise seasonal products, or just spread some Christmas cheer to your followers.
With all that being said, let’s now get started creating your December content calendar. We’ve broken up the following sections into specific areas.
We’d love to see you include most of these into your social planning over the festive season!
Create Genuine Holiday Messages
Your holiday messages must be genuine, not just Merry Christmas; try to add a personal touch to them and get creative whilst doing so!
You want to give the reins to your imagination, and don’t be afraid of striking some as being “too creative”. It will ensure your posts and graphics have a long-lasting impact!
“It’s been fantastic working with you in 2020 and we hope we can continue doing business together in the forthcoming year. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and a happy holiday season.”
Here are a handful of our favourite Christmas posts. They are all on brand, keeping their product as the feature, but have added a little Christmas sparkle for your enjoyment. This type of imagery is very well planned and thought out. Get together as a team and have a thought showering session.
Countdown to Christmas - Advent Calendar Style!
A fun and simple campaign you can run is a social media advent calendar. Each day you can reveal an exclusive piece of content to your followers- this can be anything from discounts to flash sales, or even sneak peeks.
Irene Forte Skin Care is a great example for anyone looking for inspirational Instagram Advent Calendars. Over the course of two weeks, the brand raffled their best-selling and favourite products to its customers. This can be tweaked to offer a free prize one day, a discount code the next, and a voucher the following.
This is a simple premise that can be easily recreated if you start now!
Run a Holiday-themed Giveaway
Running a giveaway is a great way to boost brand awareness, get more followers, and promote your products, but it’s also a nice thing to do. With everything that is going on in the world right now, taking time to sprinkle a little bit of joy would go a long way.
The key to a successful giveaway is proper planning – you’ll want to define your giveaway's goals and objectives before you get started, along with stipulating the T&Cs.
Things to consider:
- What are you giving away?
- How long will the competition run for? Opening and closing date and time are required
- How do users enter the competition? Comment, like, share, post using a branded hashtag?
- What do you want people to do? Like your page, head over to your website and fill in a form? Tag friends and family?
- How will you randomly select the winner? Woobox might come in handy!
- How will winners be notified? DM or public announcement?
- And finally, where can the T&Cs of the competition be found?
Once you’ve mapped out a plan you are great to go, now all you need is engaging graphics and copy to support it. You want to make the copy and simple and easy to understand as possible - that way more people will enter.
You can also make beautiful graphics FOR FREE on Canva or look at using stock imagery on websites such as Unsplash.
Christmas Editions!
Can your product/service be tailored for Christmas? If so, do it. Make limited Christmas edition versions of your best sellers.
Don’t have the time or money? Then simply swap out your posting packaging for something a little festive. You can also include holiday labels. A label usually includes all the important information on your brand and the items inside the package. However, adding in a festive label instead throughout December, wishing all your customers a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays!
Not only will this be great customer service for your customers, by adding Christmas cheer to their order, but you’ll also have imagery so share on your social media channels.
Encourage users to share unboxing photos using your branded hashtag which we will go on to talk about next...
Create Your Own Hashtag
Creating campaign-specific hashtags you can track is a good idea. They will help you gauge the performance of your campaign and its effectiveness too. Here are some examples for you;
- Ted Baker’s #TedsElfie
- UPS #WishesDelivered
- Kate Spade’s #MissAdventure
- John Lewis #ManOnTheMoon
Now you’re probably thinking: how to develop your hashtag?
Brainstorm. The hashtag will be representing your brand but it also needs to be short and sweet. Think of some potential ones based on your name, event, or theme etc. Then Research. Check if it’s already in use. You want to create a community around your hashtag, and you don’t want there to be many other posts that have already used it.
Once you have one, ask yourself:
- Is it catchy?
- Is it unique?
- Is it memorable?
You want to be answering YES to these questions. Then ta-da, you have your very own branded hashtag that can be used by all your new and existing customers.
Team Up with An Influencer
One of the fastest ways to gain followers and reach for your brand is to work closely with influencers in your industry. This can be a partnership - to create something limited edition for example or by simply running a holiday social media giveaway and partnering with an influencer to get the word out.
Worth noting, too, that influencer marketing campaigns don’t have to be overly complicated. You can host a giveaway or a simple account takeover and still generate great results.
Be Thoughtful
Choose a charity and support them. Christmas is all about giving, and this year maybe more so than ever before kindness is needed. But, with Christmas parties unlikely to take place, there’s still plenty of options for you to give in a virtual setting.
why not offer to host your work party online in exchange for donations. You can simply arrange a time for video conference drinks, or up the ante with a game or two. You could go for a scavenger hunt (the first attendee to find a series of objects – say a mince pie, Christmas decoration and paper hat – in their home and return to the call wins) or a quiz. We’ve even created the questions for you.
Don’t Neglect Your Profile / Cover Images
A quick and fun way to inject some festive flair into your social media presence is to decorate your profiles. Check out these leading brands who did it, and to great effect:
And it’s simple really, using Photoshop or Canva you can become festive in minutes (if you know what you want).
Get Ads Approved Now
While we’ve mostly focused on organic posting, this usually goes hand in hand with paid social activity too. If you’re planning to run paid activity alongside your organic efforts, the best thing to do is to start now. Ads can take a few hours to get approved, and this is likely to increase during the holidays when more companies are putting them Christmas ads live. Don’t forget, once ads are approved, they can always be paused if you’re not ready for them to be released.
If you’re looking to outsource some of your social media work, now is the time and we’re ready to help. Contact us today and let’s work together to make something special happen. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date with everything Digital Marketing, from Social Media to PPC and SEO, we’re the experts that are here for you.
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