As you may have noticed Christmas is soon upon us, with retail shops stacking their shelves with the latest Christmas gifts and store owners slowly starting to update their playlists with their favourite Christmas songs. It won’t be long before your timelines are filled with festive cheer. With consumers already looking at what they should be purchasing for their loved ones to gift on the big day, it’s time to get your social campaign into full swing and set objectives which allow you to stand out from the rest.
This handy holiday guide will give you all you need to know about how to successfully run your social media campaign in the countdown to Christmas.
1. Put your social media decorations up
Show the online world that you have put your Christmas tree up by making sure that your profile shouts festivity. Add a little sparkle to it this festive season! Put a Santa hat on your profile picture logo as a quick win or add snowflakes to your current image to welcome in the winter. If you have ideas already as to what your company will be offering this Christmas, incorporate this into your cover photos. Also, pin a great Christmas post to the top of your page to allow users to get into the holiday spirit with you.
2. Festive events
Whether you’re a small, medium or large sized organisation, if you’re having an event this Christmas that is open to your customers or the public, be sure to have this as part of your social media campaign. Events can be set up on most social media platforms to make your customers aware what’s going on, when it’s going on and where it’s going on. Create group posts in the run-up to the events, as engaging with customers prior may mean the difference of if they show up to or not.
When the event is live, don’t let the social stop there; post while your event is going on, show your audience who aren’t there what they’re missing out on and engage with the audience that is in attendance. If you have decided to use a unique hashtag for your Christmas campaign or event, make sure people are tweeting about it when they are there and ensure to use the hashtag in all social posts in the run-up to the event to embed it in people’s minds.
3. User engagement
We all know that engagement is important on social media and a crucial ranking factor in how your post performs on the relevant platform. Nevertheless, engagement is arguably more important during the festive season as your users are willing to part with their cash for great products and services for their loved ones.
Engage with your core audience and new audiences as these users will be heading to their social media platforms to find recommendations and reviews on the products that they wish to purchase this holiday season.
So how do you tackle engagement in the social space well? Firstly a quick response rate is always preferable and may be the decisive factor over a quick purchase. If a user takes the time to write a comment, you should definitely take the time to write one back or at least react with aor a to show them that you acknowledged the comment.
If the comment is a question then you should answer it fully and as successfully as possible, giving relevant links where needed and potentially even following up with this user to ensure that their query has been answered and they are wholly satisfied. If the comment is negative one, your response may seem a little bit more tricky to plan. Think ahead and ask friends for advice before replying.
4. Be a part of the Christmas conversation online
As well as engaging with your core audience, seek out conversations that you wouldn’t usually be a part of by searching for relevant hashtags and get involved in the conversation online to increase your brand awareness. Also, if you see posts about your organisation that you haven’t been tagged in, ask how they will be using your products and services over the festive period – you may even learn something about your product that you’ve never known before.
5. Christmas charity
Christmas is a time for giving… Show your audience how you are giving this year by incorporating your charitable activities into your social media campaign. Charities can pull emotional strings with your audience, so ensure you are publicising this in the right way. A top tip for this is to encourage a personal approach, whether you are uploading pictures of your company at a charity meeting, posting a video of how you have helped the charity or sharing their posts online to encourage engagement with the chosen charity.
If you are not involved in any charitable activities this Christmas, be assured one of your competitors will be and this may be the time to be thinking to yourself if you should up your CSR game. For inspiration, check out what we have done for charity this year.
6. Competitors
Always check what your competitors are doing this time of the year. Questions you should be asking yourself when completing your competitor research are:
- what competitions are they running for their customers?
- how are they engaging with users on social?
- are they involved with any charities this year?
These questions will give you a great overview of the competition, but more importantly, it will allow you to stack up your own activity against others and see if you are doing enough.
7. Share Christmas posts
Christmas is a great time to share with the ones you love. If you see a post that you think your audience will really enjoy then share it with them. If you have been touched by a post by another organisation online let your audience know. However, steer away from sharing direct competitors’ posts. Instead look for organisations which have similar core values to your own and get involved with them on social. Their customers may also be yours!
8. Christmas competition
Let the fun begin… Create a competition online that your audience just can’t say no to. Showcase the competition as many ways as you can by changing your cover photos, pinning competition posts and directing traffic from web and store to your social competition – all whilst telling them how great your competition is.
If you don’t think your competition is amazing, neither will your audience. Get your company excited about the Christmas competition and show this through your social activity. It will be a great way to increase brand awareness and gain those extra few followers over the Christmas period. Most importantly users will be engaging with your company and will consider your products as an option when they are purchasing their festive shopping list.
Ensure that your competition finishes within a timely manner, as you don’t want your competition finishing way into January or cutting it short and finishing mid-December. Finish it around Christmas time allowing the winner to receive their prize in time for the big day. When the competition has closed, make the winner feel like a celebrity on your social pages by showing all the other users what they missed out on and why they should enter the next competition. Go a little further and give your audience a teaser to when your next competition will be, whether it’s a themed competition for Easter or it’s a competition the very next month.
If you are stuck thinking about what your competition should consist of, think about your other Christmas activity. Planning to work with a charity at Christmas? Why not create a competition through them? If you know your audience loves another brand as well as yours, try to collaborate to make great competition. Do you know what your audience has problems with this Christmas? Create a competition to solve the problem. Or at very least, offer your showcase Christmas product as a prize for the winner.
9. Go live
If your company is doing something great this Christmas that you know your audience will want to see, then go live and share the experience with them in real time. Allowing users to ask questions, like, love and be a part of the experience from their desktop or mobile device. This is also a great opportunity to upsell your Christmas products or service offerings, as the audience on live videos is much more engaged.
10. Christmas jumper day
Have a Christmas jumper day in your office and share this on social media. Show your audience the face behind the brand and allow them to get more personal with you and your employees this Christmas. Promote this online by asking your audience to send you a picture of their favourite Christmas jumper or comment with what they are planning to wear on Christmas Day. If you have a Christmas jumper which is unique to your company, run a short competition allowing one of your social media users to win one. You may be surprised how engaged some customers are with your company and find some great endorsers.
11. Christmas playlist
Share your Christmas playlist with your followers. It’s so easy nowadays to set up a playlist on Spotify and share with friends. Start by having a whip around the office to find out what everyone’s favourite Christmas song is and then populate the playlist with these songs and share it online. This is not only a great way to get your audience involved in what songs you love, but it will also give you something great to listen to in the run-up to Christmas.
12. Content
Create great visual content that fundamentally speaks about your brand values and your Christmas offerings. If you are unsure how to do this, try adding reds, greens and golds into the colour palate as these colours shout Christmas. Create moments online through Twitter about your Christmas campaign to allow your audience to go back and look at what a great job you did for your Christmas. Try your hand at making truly engaging videos that tell a story to your users and showcase this on numerous platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
13. Make shopping easy
Link your posts to your e-commerce channel, allowing your audience a clear path to purchase the products they want this Christmas. The great benefit of social media marketing in regards to e-commerce is that your customers are already online. You are not relying on them for brand recognition after seeing a billboard or reading a magazine to pick up their mobile phone or open a laptop and type in your website name. Do this by popping a link into your post or share a piece of information on a video which will direct your audience to the e-commerce platform.
14. Your very own advent calendar
Run a countdown to Christmas on your social channels, getting your audience excited for what will appear tomorrow. Link this with all the actions above to create an audience-friendly and fun-filled calendar this Christmas. Use a scheduling tool to plan this out in advance, however ensure you are on hand to engage with any audience enquiries.
15. Let your voice create your content
As social media marketers, we are very time poor at Christmas. One way to create great Christmas content ideas is by using Google’s voice typing tool. I started this blog by speaking into my headset, with all the great ideas I wanted to share with you. Once you have your creative ideas out of your head and onto the page in front of you, creating a great campaign will become much clearer. It will allow you not to miss out any of the amazing ideas you have, so what are you waiting for?
Finishing up
Please find this handy tick sheet below to ensure that you are making the most of your social media campaign this Christmas:
- Change your social media images to incorporate a festive theme
- Showcase your festive events online
- Be friendly and engage with your audience
- Engage in social conversations online which will benefit your social media presence
- Involve yourself with a charity this Christmas
- Check what your competitors are doing online
- Share great posts that your audience will love
- Create a competition that even you couldn’t say no to
- Take the plunge and go live!
- Throw a Christmas jumper day
- Share your favourite festive tunes
- Create amazing content
- Make the route to purchase easy for your audience
- Form your campaign around your very own Christmas advent calendar
- Get your creative thoughts on your screen with voice technology
Your turn…
Let us know what your favourite Christmas campaign is in the comments below!
If you would like to discuss your Christmas social media strategy with us, get in touch here today.
