Every year, the holiday season seems to come out of nowhere. All of a sudden, you’re met with a flurry of tempting shopping deals and Christmas advertisements left and right. The festive period is one of the busiest times of the year and it’s fast approaching.
With almost every business offering discounts on their products, preparing your social media content and campaigns to meet demand is key. However, being realistic with your social media strategy is also important – posting content on every channel every hour of the day is not only unrealistic, but won’t get you anywhere. In fact, you could end up putting people off buying from you!
Instead, you will see great results from a well-planned schedule with content that suits each platform. Below, we are going to share our top tips so that you can get the most out of your social media marketing this festive period!
Plan Ahead with a Social Media Calendar
First things first, create a social media schedule. That means you can have a visual representation of what you plan to post and it helps to keep you organised. This is a plan that highlights captions, imagery and days you plan to post. You can also include which platforms you’re going to post on and the exact times – which is something that you should pay attention to as you may need different content for each platform. It allows you to plan ahead and ensure that you’re pushing content that your target audience wants to see, and can help you get ahead of your competitors.
Tip: Check out our blog on social media tips for Black Friday!
Engage with your followers
During the festive season, your social media marketing strategy should not only focus on posting content, but engaging with your followers, too. Ensure you are responding to questions and comments on social posts as soon as possible. You should also put effort into thanking users who have shared your content, or even invite other users to follow you. Stories are also another great tool to engage with your followers and let them know that you value their opinion. Engaging with your audience shows you care about them and helps build a valuable relationship that will build trust and loyalty to your brand.
Put extra emphasis on visuals
You must select imagery and visual content that stands out to grab the attention of your audience. There are hundreds of social media posts daily and so, creating content that stands out is imperative. Unfortunately, most of our attention spans when it comes to social media are incredibly short, meaning if your content isn’t eye-catching, you’ve just missed out on a potential sale or new customer. Research shows that you have around three seconds to catch someone’s attention on social media, so getting the imagery right is arguably the most important bit!
Depending on the business we find using real-life imagery works best, and adding a festive design element to the post will help tie it into the festive season, whilst still representing your brand image and business.
Use a giveaway to build engagement
Everyone loves a good giveaway, especially around this time of year when people are buying gifts for their loved ones! Make sure you have a clear goal when conducting a giveaway, such as improving brand awareness, gaining new followers or driving traffic to your website. Think thoroughly about what you will give away and make sure it will be worth giving this away. For example, if you have 100 followers on Instagram and are giving away a £2,000 bed, the chances are you’re not going to see enough ROI (return on investment) for this. Think about realistic goals and something that is valuable for your target audience, as well as the terms and conditions attached to this. Remember to make it clear what the user will win to avoid miscommunication and damaging your brand.
Run Polls
Polls are a great way to get your audience engaged. Whether you use them for a bit of fun to keep your audience entertained, or you use it for research to know what your audience wants from you as a business. However you decide to use them, make sure you make it something your audience would be interested in, not just what you want to know.
Make It Personal
Use the festive period to share glimpses of your business, such as a behind the scenes, day in the life or even sharing yourself! There is a famous saying that is perfect for this point:
People buy from people.
This means that the people and story behind your business are just as valuable as your products. Sharing more about your business, rather than just the products or services, helps build trust and makes your social media interesting.
Utilise Specific Days
Using national days to plan your social media content is a great way to tap into algorithms and engage with your audience. What we mean by that is if there’s a specific day such as “Make a Gift Day” (which falls on 3rd December), this can be a great way to encourage your audience to engage with you. Encourage them to make things, or show off things that you and your own staff have made or done in the spirit of the day. There’s so many days you can find and utilise, try using sites such as “Days of the Year” for inspiration!
If you’re interested in how our social media management service could work for your business, contact us today for more information.
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