There can be a lot of pressure and expectations when it comes to the holidays — not just for consumers looking to top off their year with a perfect bow, but also for companies who are in a mad dash to close out their quarters on a positive note and cater to the needs of their customers.
Social media has become critical during the holiday season not just for sharing news about your brand but also for creating a wonderland-like experience for customers that balances product or service promotion and lighthearted, cheery content.
It’s never too early to get started on planning. If the holiday months are already on your mind, continue reading to learn how to prepare and what ideas to come prepared with.
Getting Your Accounts Ready
While our social accounts may be in use at all times, some fine-tuning and double checking will ensure they’re ready to face the rush of the holiday season. This is one of the few times of the year when people are flooding the internet in search of ideas, gifts, inspiration, and anything else they might need to close out this year and start the next one off on a good foot.
Take the time to go through the following before each holiday season:
Profile Information
The time right before the holidays roll around is ideal for cleaning up your profile and making sure everything is consistent across your accounts. There are several items to tick off your list here but they should be relatively quick to go through.
Number One: Your profile picture should match your current brand logo or reflect whatever holiday-themed logo you’ve decided to switch to for the season. Also, be sure the same logo is being used across all of your social media accounts. While it may be fun to change it up based on platform, this can confuse users.
Number Two: Skim through your about me or biography section and ensure it’s not only eye-catching but also informative. This is a space dedicated to explaining what you’re about at a quick glance so make the most of it.
Finally, take a look through your company details and information to make sure it is all still accurate. For example, does your website link still work? Are your hours and holiday hours still correct? Are your address, phone number, and contact email still a good place to reach you?
Content Calendar
You know it’s time for the holidays when deep oranges, purples, and black sneak their way onto the social feed and gradually transition to dark greens, vibrant reds, and ice blues. Your content strategy is one of the most crucial parts of your marketing plan. Take the time to curate your feed and plan out the type of content you want to share whether that’s information or entertainment.
The best part is people are just as excited to see these posts show up as you are to create them. Just look at the holiday cheer on these three Instagram feeds and tell me they don’t make you happy:
Messaging
Beyond the pre-planned calendar and the messaging that goes with it, you should also brace yourself for the questions and comments you’ll receive from your audience. They may be curious about holiday sets, product releases, holiday shipping or hours, deals, etc. and start to see your social accounts as an extension of customer service.
It can be useful to have your answers pre-written when it comes to general questions that you expect to receive. You can also consider using automation tools to answer basic questions or run a chatbot that can guide your customers to where they need to go before elevating it to an actual person. This can help the holidays feel less hectic and allow you to focus on your strategy rather than managing a full inbox.
Holiday Social Media Campaign
Now that the basics are top of mind, you can fully dive into creating the kind of content you want to see on your feed. Ideas can come from anywhere and are limitless.
Your posts can serve a variety of purposes — from being informative about holiday products or entertaining like a cute puppy video. The key is to have an objective in mind and to tailor your content depending on your strategy needs.
It’s also important to diversify your content depending on which platforms you are sharing on. Each social media platform functions in a unique way and audiences are going to be used to interacting with each platform differently. Take that into consideration when curating your posts and avoid sharing the exact same thing across all of your social media accounts.
Holiday Social Media Posts
Looking for some inspiration? We’ve prepared a whole list of ideas to include in your plans along with creative, exciting, and downright cool examples to go along with them!
Product Features
Showing off products is one way to go and is great for reminding people what is available for purchase. Whether you’re reintroducing your regular line of services and items or revealing your holiday-related merchandise for the first time, a dedicated post will get your customers excited about what’s to come.
View this post on Instagram
IG Product Tags
As an add-on to featuring products, don’t forget to take advantage of the advertising tools that social media platforms can offer. Instagram, for example, allows you to tag products in the post which makes it that much more convenient for your audience to see something and go straight to it without having to search for it themselves.
View this post on Instagram
Product Guides
Finally, to end off our product-focused ideas, holiday guides are useful every season and are a fun way to share products that may be the perfect fit on someone’s wish list. There’s a lot of directions you can take this from “gift ideas for dads” or “gift ideas for teachers”. Draw inspiration from your target audience profiles and get creative from there.
View this post on Instagram
Product Restocks
It’s possible that the holiday season becomes busier than imagined. How many times have you hoped to purchase an item only to find that it is sold out or wanted to get in on a collection drop but missed it? Use your posts to communicate this with your audience. A “sold out” post can make people feel like they’re missing out while a “we’ve restocked” post can bring lots of relief to holiday shoppers.
View this post on Instagram
Holiday Tips
The holidays are known for being packed and hectic so if there was ever a time for helpful tips, this would be it! Lots of companies share useful information all throughout the year but the holiday season is a great opportunity to take it to the next level.
View this post on Instagram
FedEx also created a series of helpful holiday content with a variety of tips featured throughout the month of December that fall right up their alley like making returns through the mail:
Fun Content
Going off of holiday tips, all sorts of fun holiday how-to posts can be brainstormed in preparation for the upcoming months. You can share decorating tips, DIY ideas, ways to use your services to connect with others, etc.
Chewy created this fun video highlighting a pet-friendly sugar cookie recipe with full details and instructions linked in their bio:
View this post on Instagram
In search of some more fun content ideas to include? You are free to go as big or as small as you’d like. T-Mobile came up with a Santa Stream Along event and shared tons of posts covering it from virtual tours of the North Pole to a whole array of videos that promote the event:
Sign up for a LIVE virtual tour of the North Pole with Santa! https://t.co/uRMpljfUkY pic.twitter.com/p6BRbpQUsN
— T-Mobile (@TMobile) December 18, 2021
Create your own sort of holiday and run with it. We’ve all been wished a Merry Chrysler and Happy Honda Days. These are just creative puns that came from the masses but ended up in holiday campaigns from the actual companies behind them.
We were able to find a Honda Days Twitter post all the way from 2016!
Time is running out on Happy Honda Days. Grab a deal on a 2016 HR-V or CR-V today. #HappyHondaDays https://t.co/styH84FZMB pic.twitter.com/nHNzqlOrAp
— Honda (@Honda) December 27, 2016
And over half a decade later, people are still being wished a Happy Honda Days:
Finally, there’s no shortage of shenanigans and creative spirit when it comes to the holidays. Take inspiration from The Marine Mammal Center, which released a series of videos about the “12 Days of Fishmas”, featuring staff and animals at their conservation center:
Company Highlight
What better way to spread love and that feeling of family by sharing more about your own brand and its employees? Get everyone on board and involved with creating content. This could look like a simple video of the team wishing the audience a happy holiday season or some fun get-to-know you scenes featuring holiday traditions each member of your team enjoys.
Chewy incorporated the fam into their holiday content last year by sharing a few of the hundreds of pet holiday cards sent to them. Who doesn’t enjoy some wholesome content of dogs in winter sweaters?
View this post on Instagram
Behind-the-scenes posts are another way to go if you’re trying to give people a glimpse of what you’re all about. FedEx created this short video showing how packages get from you to your loved ones during the holiday season:
Collaborations
It’s fun to partner up with other companies or create content around themes at any point in the year. The holidays just give us an excuse to try out some of our wildest ideas. Valentine-themed t-shirts, plant-lover guides, you name it! Check out a few that Shatto Milk Company created throughout the year:
Pumpkin spiced everything is a common occurrence during the fall and Shatto was not one to miss out with pumpkin spice eggnog hitting the stores last year just in time:
Partnerships can literally come from anywhere as Shatto Milk Company has shown. Last year, they released a special edition of holiday eggnog in collaboration with Weston Brewing Company. This holiday drink featured the company’s classic eggnog with a hint of holiday spices and some rum:
Reflection
The holidays are a time for looking forward but also looking back at all that’s happened within the past year. This season has a way of making us feel nostalgic for all sorts of things. Tap into that by creating your own year in review post.
Honda did so with polaroid shots and videos of events and moments throughout 2021:
We couldn’t have done 2021 without you. Here’s a look back at all the #HondaLove. #NYE #YearInReview #NewYearsEve pic.twitter.com/D4yqctJtvO
— Honda (@Honda) December 30, 2021
Reminders
We all need reminders especially when there are ten million other things on our mind. While holiday events may be front and center for you since that is your marketing focus for the next few months, others may forget. Take the time to remind your audience of any holiday events or promotions that are going on.
Pandora released a quick video reminding customer of their Black Friday sale:
View this post on Instagram
Giveaways and Donations
The season of giving is another name that people associate with the holidays and you’re able to do your part to join in on that sentiment. Create your own giveaways to share or offer to make donations on behalf of your audience.
Oftentimes, these will also get paired with some sort of promotional activity such as “follow, like, and comment to be entered” or “x amount will be donated for every share” creating a win-win situation for you, your audience, and your charity of choice.
Em Cosmetics had a giveaway and collaboration all wrapped up in one post. They partnered with a jewelry company to gift products and gift cards to those that followed both accounts, liked the post, and tagged some friends in the comments section:
View this post on Instagram
T-Mobile pledged to donate $5 for every retweet they received up to deadline date with their #TMobileGivesBack campaign:
Fa la la la la layayaways with @PayAwayLayaway ?#TMobileGivesBack with your help (unless you’re an angry elf). For every retweet through 12/14, we’ll donate $5 to pay off layaways for families, up to $200k. pic.twitter.com/C8RgDbRcpt
— T-Mobile (@TMobile) November 30, 2021
The Takeaway
We know we’ve thrown a lot of ideas at you but couldn’t help but get caught up in the spirit of the more the merrier. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, refer back to your set of goals and objectives for the holidays and use that to drive what you post and what you do.
The holidays can be a lot of pressure, we completely get it. Just remember that everyone else is also in a phase of some sort of trial and error and if you feel like there are ideas you can’t get to or forgot to get to, don’t worry. The holidays will be back again next year for you to try them out!
