With Christmas days away, retail stores are lining their shelves with their best products as well as updating their playlist to include the latest Christmas songs in an effort to capture the holiday’s essence. As a digital marketer, you need to do the same to attract new people to your brand. One of the best ways to make your business more Christmas-friendly is by tweaking your social media campaigns a bit. That means ramping up your social media mockups, making a few new banners, and the tips listed below.
Create Christmas Videos
A lot of businesses forgo making Christmas videos because they’re time-consuming. But if you want your brand to retain current clients and find new ones during the holidays, you’d better make sure your digital marketing strategies and social media campaigns include a video or two.
Done correctly, your videos could spread on social media like wildfire. And with the right strategies, you can ensure that it reaches your target audience. Some of the things you can do to make your videos viral include injecting humor in it, keeping it short and brief, and tapping into your audience’s emotions.
Run a Poll
Social media polling offers a great way for you to get to know your customers better. By running one on your social media campaigns this Christmas, you’ll be able to give them the products or services they need during the holidays.
Now polling can only be done through the big three social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. So if your business doesn’t have an account on those platforms yet, now’s the time to create one. Moreover, running a poll varies depending on the platform you use. For Twitter, it’s just a matter of creating it from the timeline. Meanwhile, Instagram’s polling feature is found in its stories application. And running a poll via Facebook is a bit complicated, since you can only do it if your business has its own page there. As soon as you make one, click on the Event, Product, Job section, and then look for the “Create a poll for people to vote” option.
Inspire Christmas UGCs
Aside from increasing awareness and exposure for your brand, UGCs (user-generated content) can help improve customer engagement. Basically, it can make your audience feel like a participant of your brand’s promotion instead of just being an onlooker. This will lead to people becoming more enthusiastic about your products or services, cultivating more loyalty in the process. And with Christmas just around the corner, people are twice as likely to create or share UGCs through social media. So better add it on your social media mockups this December.
When attempting to inspire people to make Christmas-themed UGCs, make sure you have a specific goal in mind. Take Williams-Sonoma for example. By using the hashtag #mywilliamsonoma, they were able to collect thousands of photos from various food lovers, chefs, and bloggers. At the same time, they managed to obtain lots of email addresses, which they can leverage to further promote their brand.
Hold a Photo Competition
Holding a friendly contest is a great way to promote your brand during the Christmas season. And one of the most creative events you can host for the holidays is a photo competition. Through it, you can better connect with your target audience, improving your relationships with current customers as well as forging new ones. Plus, employing the images can boost your social media rankings.
A great way to hold a Christmas photo contest is by posting a photo of one of your Christmas-edition products on Instagram. Then encourage your followers to like and share your post, and tell them that one of them will be randomly selected and given a price (i.e., a free product or service). You can even hold this contest every week (using different photos for each one) to keep people engaged.
Make a Unique Christmas Gift Guide
Given the holidays, most people are probably out shopping for presents to give to their family and friends. By including unique Christmas gift guides in your social media mockups, you’ll make their lives easier, not to mention make your products or services more visible.
Creating a Christmas gift guide that can inspire shoppers to go for your products is no mean feat. However, there are several ways for you to accomplish that. One is that you need to list the right products. You’ll need to look at your business’ sales data to determine which one to put. You should also consider throwing in product bundles, as customers always love a good bargain. And in case you’re having a hard time coming up with ideas on your own, work with your team and even your suppliers.
Work With Charities
Teaming up with a charity can benefit your business in many ways. One, it makes your brand more endearing for many people. Two, it’s a great way to reduce your taxes. And three, it’s one of the easiest ways to boost your social media campaigns. Plus, giving back to your community through charities is the right thing to do!
So look for charities and organizations that operate in the same areas your business does. Then meet up with them to discuss how you can work together. Some of the activities you can consider doing include photo contests and UGCs (as mentioned above), as well as Christmas community events that are open to everyone.
Host Festive Events
Lastly, consider adding an event to your Christmas social media campaigns. This allows you to keep your customers aware of what’s going on in your business, and it’s a nice way to increase brand awareness.
Luckily, setting up events through social media is easy these days. Just create it on Facebook, promote it on your page, and let your followers do the rest. You can even create a special group where you’ll provide more details about the event, and you can also use this group to interact with your customers. And once the event is live, you can continue to post on social media about it. That way, you can show people who didn’t attend what they’re missing.
Build Christmas-Friendly Social Media Campaigns
Christmas is the season to be jolly – and to step up your social media campaign efforts. So as you make your social media mockups, banners, and ads, better do so with the tips above in mind.
