Before you know it, it’s that time of year again. When people are in the holiday spirit, it’s time to get festive! On the commercial end of the scale where most businesses operate, this means showering them with promotions, discounts, freebies, and warmest wishes all at once.
Whether you’re in it for the joy of it all, strictly from a business perspective, or somewhere along the middle, the fact remains – this is the time of the year when people turn on their spending mode. Choose not to participate (or be careless enough to forget), and you’ll find yourself leaving piles of dollars on the table that your competitors will happily treat themselves to.
At the same time, don’t get overwhelmed! Although there are plenty of proven ideas and concepts on how to structure your social media marketing campaigns this Christmas, there is also plenty of room for creativity. What we recommend doing is that you seek inspiration from what we’re about to show you and put your own spin on it.
Are you ready to attract more customers this Christmas season? Then let’s get this party underway!
1. Organize a giveaway
You’ve probably seen it a million times already, but nonetheless, Christmas giveaways tend to attract eyeballs like nobody’s business. Since everyone wants to get their hands on free stuff (and who would blame them), it’s up to you to come up with Christmas giveaway ideas that resonate with your target audience.
Ideally, this would be something related to your product line, but it’s not a must. Just make it so that what you’re putting up for grabs is actually worth giving away. Ask yourself this: would you be willing to pay for it if it came with a price tag attached to it? If the answer is “no”, your Christmas giveaway ideas probably need some refreshing.
Speaking of giveaways, make sure to design them in a way that requires your visitors to do something in order to qualify! Whether it be sharing an experience they’ve had with your products or services or tagging a friend, make it so that the giveaway is a mutually beneficial exchange. Which brings us to the next point...
2. Tag a friend
Christmas is and should be about establishing a warm connection, whether it be with a friend, relative, or even your local community. Since people tend to be more receptive to it during this festive period, it can be an effective social media marketing tactic this Christmas.
Why not tag a business partner or a customer who left you some heart-warming feedback? If the relationship has gone stale, now is a good time to rekindle it. At the end of the day, this strategy is all about strengthening an existing relationship and making it last.
Below, we’ll show you how to tag a friend across a multitude of social media networks.
How do you tag a friend on Facebook? As you’re typing up your post, simply start writing their name and a dropdown menu will appear from where you should click ‘share’.
If you’re wondering how to tag a friend on Instagram, it’s quite simple. To tag someone you recognize in a photo, tap them, select ‘tag people’, and input that individual’s full name or username. As soon as you’ve tagged them, that person will receive a notification in their profile.
How to tag a friend on Twitter? Simple. If the tweet is directed at someone, make sure to include their Twitter handle in the tweet that starts with ‘@’ followed by their username. They will receive a notification as soon as your tweet goes live.
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3. Captivate them with a Christmas sale they can’t resist
If discounts and Christmas sales is all you see on other businesses’ social media feeds during this festive time of the year, it’s because it works! Not only are people conditioned to increase their spending in general during the month, throw in a nice little discount, and you’re bound to get some sales.
The key to making this work is to create a time-limited offer. The simplest way to do so is to give out coupons on your social media channels and make them easy to remember (‘CHRISTMAS25’, for example, can be a coupon that gives the buyer 25% off their next purchase).
Don’t forget to design cool-looking graphics when you’re announcing a sale. It should be simple, to-the-point, and with bright colors that will get the message noticed. A gif animation works wonders too. It can be something as simple as a jumping Santa with a coupon in hand or similar.
4. Post a Christmas countdown
During winter holidays, everyone is awaiting in anticipation – Christmas is a special time of the year after all. If you’ve seen an advent calendar, a Christmas countdown on social media could look very much the same, with lucrative rewards being given out each and every day.
Of course, a Christmas countdown on social media shouldn’t be too bland either; a colorful image appended to every post you make is pretty much a must. The idea is to condition your audience to expect a new piece of content from you on a daily basis. In turn, this will ensure that you get people visiting on a regular basis. As a savvy social media marketer, the importance of this is self-explanatory.
But how should you design a social media Christmas countdown? We’ll leave this one to you. In general, a blend of your brand’s colors with a holiday theme should work nicely. You can even opt for other multimedia elements such as gifs or short videos to make them stand out even more.
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5. Share gift ideas
Sharing gift ideas on social media during this festive period is a proven recipe for success. The reason being is that people are on the lookout for them almost all the time, so it’s a welcome kind of content to put in their sight.
In case you’re an eCommerce owner, you’re going to love this one. The idea is, why not thematically package up your offerings as a gift idea for moms, dads, golf lovers, tech geeks, and so on? Then, the only thing that’s missing is an ‘add to cart’ button, which, as you might have guessed, leads directly to your online store.
This way, not only are you helping them out and thus giving value, but also saving them time since everything is right at their fingertips. Do be careful, however, that you give it some thought and recommend the kind of products that actually make sense for the target audience.
Bonus tip: for added effect and shareability, transform your gift idea posts into infographics or carousels. If they’re super useful, people might pass them around without you even asking.
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6. Don’t forget about paid ads
Even though your general campaigns may mainly rely on organic traffic, consider running some paid ads – if nothing else, just for the holiday season.
The exact costs depend on the platform you’re going to be using, but the great thing about these is how trackable they are. If you segment your campaigns correctly, it shouldn't be too hard identifying which ones are profitable – keep these and discard the rest.
It’s tough to say what the best social media network for paid ads is. In most cases, it mostly depends on your niche. In this day and age, most social media marketers are raving about TikTok because it’s the new kid on the block and it’s somewhat easier to launch a profitable campaign.
On the other hand, Facebook’s interest-based system of identifying your potential customers who are the most likely to be interested in your products or services could be just the thing you need to get your brand on their radar. Once again, experimenting is key.
Bonus tip: if you’re running a brick & mortar store, don’t forget to enable location-based filtering. In other words, your NYC-based tennis racket store is probably of little interest to those who live on the western coast.
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7. Put out helpful content
Too many marketers are trying to reinvent the wheel while their time would be better spent focusing on the essentials (in other words, putting out helpful and informative content). This is something that you should be doing all-year-round anyway, so at this point, you should be experienced enough to give it some winter flair.
Can’t think of anything? We’ve already mentioned posting gift ideas, an all-time holiday classic. But why not go far above and beyond that and also post delicious winter holiday and Christmas recipes or how-to guides on how to organize the perfect Christmas celebration?
Perhaps the easiest way to draw some inspiration is to analyze what your competitors are doing and do something similar. Just be sure to make it unique in some way. For instance, if they’re writing about serving Christmas salmon, you could make your post all about Christmas pork or whatever dish is popular these days.
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8. Create Christmas memes
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably already familiar with memes, these edgy jokes people share around the internet so often. After all, winter holidays should be about laughter and fun, which makes for the perfect occasion to throw some memes around.
The trick is to find something holiday-related (of course, it should also be funny). Things like:
- The most likely frivolous argument to get into at the dinner table
- Getting one’s tongue stuck to a flagpole
- How the current year can go yank itself
- etc.
As long as you keep it respectable, anyone with a decent sense of humor will more than likely appreciate giving them a laugh. Simply avoid the obvious no-no’s like content that’s intolerant to ethnic minorities and you should be fine.
9. Include the right hashtags in your posts
As we’ve established in our in-depth article on how to use hashtags on social media, hashtags make it easier for your content to be found. For seasonal events like these, Christmas hashtags work very well and they all fall under the umbrella of seasonal hashtags.
Of course, to know what the best Christmas hashtags are, you’re likely going to need to research them first. These can either be funny Christmas hashtags or simply the ones that best describe your content and brand, all while having a decent popularity.
If you don’t have the time to do this manually or simply can’t be bothered, there’s a better way. Did you know that Ocoya uses smart algorithms to analyze your content and suggest the most fitting hashtags at the click of a button? This way, you can spend more time growing your social media following and less of it doing grunt work.
The first step is to go to the main page of the app and locate the copywriter section to the left.
Ocoya has a rich selection of templates to choose from. To view it, click the button to your upper right.
Keep scrolling down until you find Ocoya's hashtag generator.
Enter your content in the relevant fields and let Ocoya analyze it and generate hashtags for you.
To the right, you will find Ocoya's smart hashtag suggestions.
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10. Curate other people’s content
Social media marketing isn’t as strict regarding duplicate content as SEO is. This means you don’t have to be original or creative all the time without giving yourself a break – simply curate other people’s content! As long as you give credit where credit is due, you should be in the clear.
The beautiful thing about doing this is that you have the entire internet right at your fingertips. Are you running a Facebook account but found an awesome video on YouTube or TikTok? You know what to do. Indeed; the content you share can take on any form, from traditional articles in the written format and all the way to images and videos.
Curating, as opposed to having to come up with something from scratch, can be a massive time-saver. The value of your work comes from utilizing your good taste as you untangle the question of what kind of content is likely to resonate with your audience best.
The winter holiday season calls for making some adjustments to your social media marketing campaigns. As strategy-driven it all seems to be, don’t forget to have some fun with this as well. Perhaps Santa won’t notice if you’re being a nagger, but your audience surely will. So put a smile on that face of yours and have fun with your social media following this Christmas!
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