Ideas to Leverage Holiday Season for Your Brand on Social Media

Very soon Christmas and New Year will be upon us and brands will be looking to make this festive season the crux of their marketing campaigns. It’s the time to shop, eat and celebrate and with everyone in the festive mood here are some social media campaign ideas for this season.

Create a brand image for the Holiday Season

Start by building your own brand image for Christmas and New Year. Change your website, Facebook cover photo and Twitter background to show you’re prepared for the holiday season. You can get a lot of low cost graphic downloads from sites like FreeDigitalPhotos, Fotolia or Shutterstock for this purpose.

Spruce Up Your Facebook Page with the Right Photos and Apps

Facebook Photos

Use lots of pictures because that is the first thing people see when they land on your page. Use Facebook photos to your advantage.  Your holiday cover photos must reflect the essence of your brand while capturing the spirit of the season.

Fresh cover photos motivate people to check your page often. It is also that time of the year when people are browsing more than they usually do, looking for special offers and gift ideas, and checking out friends’ recommendations.

You can also use your cover photo to direct fans to a custom holiday app, showcase your holiday products, promote exclusive holiday deals and encourage fans to interact.

In case you don’t want to use a holiday-specific cover photo, you could try posting a general holiday message or feature typical winter or Christmas colors.

Don’t forget to adjust your profile image for the holidays to keep your Facebook page looking fresh and up to date.

Seasonal Apps Ahoy!

It is the season when people are looking for promotions and giveaways. Facebook recently updated their promotion guidelines, whereby greater opportunities for promotions and giveaways are now available. Businesses can use the timeline in addition to custom Facebook apps to run promotions.

You can build apps and get creative with them eg: giveaway apps and giving/charitable apps. You can offer Facebook-only coupons, host holiday-themed photo and video contests that award a prize or a Christmas giveaway. Or try giving apps through which you can run a campaign that benefits a local or national charity and ask your fans to get involved.

Remember people will be more involved once there’s something in it for them.

Try Facebook Ads

The festive season might be the perfect time to experiment with Facebook ads.  First define a budget, next create a few different ads and implement or experiment with promoted posts and sponsored stories. Promoted posts and sponsored stories are existing Facebook posts that you pay to promote, versus creating ads.

Make an Impact on Twitter

1. Come up with your own Twitter hashtag. This is necessary to bring people together on this micro blogging site. For example #MyStoreNameChristmasPresents or #MyStoreNameNewYearSurprises.

2. Twitter is all about conversations so be sure to get people talking about their festive habits, purchases and activities. Start discussions like: What was is the best Christmas gift you ever got? What’s the thing about Christmas that you love the most? Which is your favorite Christmas treat?

It is also possible to make the Twitter campaign more impactful by automating these questions using Sendible and let it target people who have mentioned predefined keywords.

3. Track Mentions. If somebody mentions something you stock, tell them. Include a unique hashtag and retweet the tips that anyone posts with this hashtag.

Building the buzz on YouTube

1. Use videos to engage with audiences by creating fun seasonal video campaigns with hidden offer codes. Letting people know there is a discount code hidden somewhere in the video will be motivation enough to encourage active viewing and sharing.

2.  Alternatively get people to film something festive and link to your YouTube channel.  They can film things like mixing fruit for Christmas cake, dressing and stuffing a turkey or decorating their Christmas tree.

Social media campaigns for the festive season can be as creative and impactful as you want them to be.  But be sure to:

1. Plan ahead
2. Use lots of pictures
3. Encourage audience participation and engagement
4. Reinvent and provide novelty
5. Reward people for participation