At the time of writing this blog, Christmas is only 92 days away. I might be getting a bit ahead of myself, but if we’ve learnt anything this year, it’s that it is always better to be prepared! As we prepare for the upcoming festivities of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas here at DPOM, we thought it would be a great opportunity to share some tips, tricks and ideas in this seasonal guide!
A great way to get prepared is to sit down with a good cup of coffee and brainstorm all of your upcoming events and the national holidays. Creating a Social Calendar for the year is your best place to start. Here are some ideas surrounding the type of content that works well around certain seasons:
Seasonal Blog Content
Let’s start off small and simple. All businesses should be regularly uploading blogs to their website and sharing it on their social media. It’s a simple way of assisting your Organic Rankings and keeping knowledge and personality alive on your website. Creating fun, seasonal blogs and sharing them on your social media is a great way to start the festivities and draw traffic to both your website and your social pages.
The same can be said about Local News. For example, we have an office based in Nottingham and the Christmas market is a team favourite here at DPOM, getting involved with the local community and festivities can help increase your local traffic and customers.
Another thing to consider when creating social media is your festive branded hashtag. For example, a few years ago Harvey Nichols brought out a campaign and branded it #SpentItOnMyself which was trending in the UK for two days after the campaign was realised. Another, for example, would be the #ManOnTheMoon hashtag from John Lewis, which represented their TV advert in 2015. Something simple, clever and consistent with your branding is the way to go!
Seasonal Competitions
Similarly to blogs, a great way to get people involved on your social media is to create a competition centred around the holiday season. Christmas is a great time to be in the gifting spirit and to bring people together online. For example, if you’re a beauty salon, you could hold weekly competitions for a free hair cut and colour or 50% off voucher for your next treatment. Or as an ecommerce business, you could do 12 days of gifting. Here are a few benefits of holding competitions and giveaways on your social media:
- Increases your brand awareness – Sharing your competition posts and asking people to tag their friends will draw in a larger audience, increasing the number of people who know your brand.
- Gives people an incentive to follow your page – Asking people to follow your page to enter the giveaway automatically grows your following and increase your future customer base.
- Increases sales – While not everyone who enters the competition may be interested in your product, the majority of people are. Therefore, if they are not the winner, they may wish to purchase your product now that they know more about it.
- Increases engagement – Similarly to brand awareness, giveaways are extremely popular and help brands to increase comments, shares, retweets, likes, pins and more!
According to the website, Neal Schaffer, successful online brands hold a competition/giveaway at least once a month. This suggests that your competitors will also be planning to hold seasonal contests. Moreover, now’s the best time to get your giveaways scheduled in your calendar so you don’t miss out to your competition.
Promotions
Another thing that you should prepare for in advance is your seasonal promotions. Brands of all sizes across the globe utilise the festivities to showcase their offers online, specifically social media. As we move more towards Christmas people will be looking for offers on gifts to get for their loved ones. Therefore, getting ahead of the rest is one of the best things that your business can do.
According to a recent study, 86.8% of shoppers have said that they purchase their gifts during the holiday sales so that they can take advantage of the deals that are available during those times. Furthermore, making sure you’re ready and have content scheduled for your promotions, is clearly vital.
Paid social ads
By now everyone whos been on any social media platform has seen an advertisement that they’ve thought, “that product would be perfect for my loved one”. The reason for that is that these campaigns have been designed for them, people who have similar interested to them or people that have visited a similar website to them. It’s all planned and strategically manipulated to find an audience that will engage and convert. The same strategic thinking should also be conducted when planning for the upcoming holidays. Around a holiday like Christmas for example, every advert that you’ll see online or on the TV will be focused around Christmas and selling Christmas presents, decor or food. There’s no doubt that you should be doing the same with your business. Making themed image templates, graphics and videos can really help your social media campaigns to stand out and will encourage people to get into the festive spirit.
All of the above is designed to give you and your business an idea of how to use planning and scheduling to your advantage this year. While 2020 has been different, to say the least, the online shopping trends are still there and should be watched very closely and implemented.
Get the experts involved
If you are interested in learning more about Online Marketing services and how our team can benefit your business, please do get in touch with a member of our team. Since 2011 we have been working extremely hard to offer up-to-date services that are relevant to the times. As the world continues to develop and shift it is vitally important that all businesses take a look at those that succeed and follow in their footsteps.
There are several ways you can get in touch with a member of our team. You can call us on the number 0115 727 0038, or you can complete our form on our contact us page. All of our specialists are ready to help you you so feel free to get in touch whenever you are ready to start this project.
