Top Ways of Using Holidays to Promote Your Brand in Social Media

This is an article by Lucy Benton. She is a business consultant, marketing specialist at Admission service. She helps people to turn their dreams into the profitable business. Lucy writes posts for websites, blogs related to marketing. If you’re interested in working with Lucy, you can find her on FaceBook.

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Holidays are special moments where we can sit back and relax. Excuse me…I mean that our customers can sit back and relax.

Us? Well, we must pursue and leverage our opportunities. At least that’s what entrepreneurs do, right? Holiday campaigns performed on social media have an enormous potential, and could definitely enhance the performance of your brand, along with benefits of a wider brand awareness.

During today’s post, we’re going to discuss the best strategies for promoting your brand during your holidays. These insights are driven by various success stories of giant brands – companies that first understood the power of holiday campaigns.

In case you’re new to social media marketing, you definitely need to check out these common mistakes that marketers always do. This should save you some time, as you don’t need to go through what others already did – you just need to learn from their mistakes!

Get Creative with Holiday Themed Content

Holiday themed content is basically your way of delivering creative ideas through various promotional channels. More often than not, this type of content is covering anything that’s related to a specific holiday. Remember Coca-Cola’s Christmas ad? The one with the Christmas trucks, bringing happiness and Christmas to everyone around?

They have managed to create a very strong association between Christmas and their Christmas advert. When it was taken off TV, people started to go crazy. Plenty of both online and offline requests of bringing the ad back were made. The ad finally came back, making people feel the “Christmas spirit” again.

During holidays, you should unleash your creativity and do something unique. You can create a series of special posts for your audience, or you can simply create and deliver a better offering. A special product that’s only available on holidays.

If your budget affords it, you should definitely try to come up with a visual advertisement. To better understand what I’m talking about, check out this amazing Christmas video ad made by John Lewis. Come back for the explanation.

Now, if you have watched the video, you can see that besides the awesome quality of the video, there are so many subliminal messages that make you feel your emotions kicking in. Take that example and think of something that your brand could represent.

Hire a professional graphic designer who knows what he’s doing, and start investing in your ad. Start distributing it on more than a few social media channels, and who knows? Maybe it gets viral in a matter of weeks!

Focus on Provoking Strong Emotions

Humans are emotional beings that react and behave according to their feelings (at least most of the times). Holiday campaigns that are targeting people’s deepest feelings are always successful. If you enjoyed first John Lewis’ Christmas ad, let me show you another brilliant advertisement which will make you shed a tear and want to love more.

Start this process by reviewing the most powerful emotions:

1. Love, Affection, Care
2. Desire, Wish, Dream
3. Protect, Preserve, Defend

Notice that I never included negative feelings, holiday social media campaigns should only lead to good and beautiful things. Think of something remarkable, and put it into action. This emotion you have to put into the words and compose the slogan. Here is some tools that can help you:

• iSynonym
• Shopify
• BestEssayTips
• Visme

Also it’s good to create a series of illustrations that are extremely linked to something holiday-specific. Add your brand’s name and/or products, and figure out a way to connect them with your content’s message. This is the perfect way to ensure that whoever’s consuming your message will remember you.”

Discounts, Coupons, and Other Promotions

Special holiday prices are always stimulating. This strategy is not new at all, but it never ceases to work. Your holiday campaigns should include discounts for different products and services, coupons such as 1+1, and other types of special offers.

Think of this as an investment. All the attention that you’ll grab during the holiday season will greatly influence your brand’s reputation over the longer run. Getting as many people interested in your products (even if they’re sold at a discounted price) is a sure way formula to improve your business performance.

Moreover, if you’re not playing Santa during the holiday season, other brands and companies are going to shine through their gifts. You’ll lose a lot of attention, and you’re most likely to be forgotten during the holiday season.

Support Charitable Causes

Everybody loves heroes and good figures. It might not be extremely altruistic because you’re doing it with a marketing purpose, but it’s still better than nothing! Supporting charitable causes during holiday times is a great way to grab attention.

Many companies do this on a consistent basis, and they’re focusing their holiday campaigns on charity causes. These type of messages are always welcomed by the public because holidays are times when people give more and expect less.

One of the basic human needs is the need to contribute, so hitting this spot might be a truly efficient way of grabbing more attention. You can also encourage other brands and social media influencers to join your cause. Transform it into a collective campaign, leaving your brand’s name on the top of the list.

User Generated Content

User generated content rocks! If you want huge floods of traffic on your website and social media pages, you must create engagement among your followers. Engaging is the most effective way of building your brand’s image the way you want.

Being innovative and keeping in touch with your possible customers makes you a professional presence within your niche. People always feel special when they can contribute to something bigger, win something for free, or remark themselves by doing something special.

That’s where holiday contests and giveaways come in. You can organize special contests in which people have to do something specific (a well-purposed Call-to-Action) in order to win the prize. For example:

1. Facebook Shares & Likes on Posts/Page – Win an iPhone 7 on the Christmas day
2. Instagram Retweets – Follow, Retweet, #hashtag, and win a special gift.
3. YouTube Video Likes & Channel Subscribes – grow your YouTube subscribers and get passive traffic from all the videos that you’ll upload next.
4. Encourage competitiveness – Make people use their imaginations and create something like a good story, a great picture, or a photo of their special dishes. Reward their creativity by promising a special prize for the best … (it could be anything, all depending on your niche.

Think Out of the Box

As a matter of fact, this tip is the best tip that somebody could give you. Holiday campaigns that kick-off and create huge brand awareness are always original. If you’re able to think out of the box and deliver original ideas through amazing content, you’re most likely to succeed to capture the marketplace’s attention.

Don’t be afraid to think different!

Conclusion

Never neglect your social media marketing campaigns! Understand the stakes, get ready as soon as possible, and start making an impact over the holiday seasons. Following today’s tips, you’ll be able to create something of an impact.

Take advantage while people’s guards are low, and offer them as much value as possible. They’ll come back after the holidays are over, be sure of that!