5 Tips for a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy This Holiday Season

There’s a lot to look forward to in the holiday season, especially for business owners. Along with hot chocolate, there are hot spending trends to boost revenue. If you’re looking to push your profit margins from red to black, Black Friday could be the day to make that happen. You can beat out your competition and capitalize on the holiday rush by tailoring your social media marketing strategy specifically to this time of year. Here are some tips to optimize your campaign for the holidays.

1. Plan Your Social Media Marketing Strategy in Advance

Ideally, the holiday rush will keep you too busy filling orders to leave much time for creating social media content. Planning ahead can make all the difference. Rebecca Lee Armstrong of SatelliteInternet.com describes their experience: “The holidays are a rushed and wild time. If we don’t have our holiday marketing campaign planned ahead of time, then it doesn’t happen.”

Identify the goals of your campaign to keep your team focused going forward. Are you looking to endorse specific products? Find new customers? Whatever you decide to work toward, gather or create images, videos, promotions, and other content that will help you meet those goals. Most social media platforms allow you to create posts and schedule them to be published on later dates.

2. Consider Sponsored Content

The average American user clicks on 8 Facebook ads per month. For most businesses, they’re a worthwhile investment, especially if customized and targeted efficiently. Keep in mind that there are different kinds of ads. Facebook Ad Manager allows you to create content for specific demographics, based on gender, geographic location, online behaviors, and more.

Another option is to have your post “sponsored.” Sponsored posts fit into the news feed and look more like a post than an ad. They’re slightly less versatile than ads, but they blend into the user experience more organically and can spark a lot of user engagement. Depending on your unique goals, ads or sponsored posts can help make the holidays “the most wonderful time of the year” for your revenue stream.

3. Avoid Common Mistakes

With all the online shopping that takes place during the holidays, it’s important to prepare for everything. You can avoid the most common holiday headaches in ecommerce by preemptively reviewing your online accounts and the processes behind them. Social media pages and websites should be equipped for increased web traffic. Published content and internal links should be up to date. And you should gear your marketing strategy toward common holiday trends, like age-specific gifts and services, quick shipping, and more.

4. Be Consistent with Branding

A good social media marketing strategy accommodates multiple platforms—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—and multiple media types, such as videos and images. It’s easy to think that quantity trumps quality, but carefully building your brand into each piece of content can help your campaigns perform better if you put in the work.

According to Twitter Business stats, ad recall is 60 percent higher if the brand is consistent with logo placement. Little things like color, font, hashtags, and logo placement really do matter, so make this a priority in your campaign.

5. Respond to Your Followers

After working so hard to get users to interact with your content, don’t forget to maximize their experience by interacting with them. Social media strategist and podcaster Brian Fanzo of iSocialFanz warns, “If you don’t have time for your current customers, your current customers won’t have time for you.”

Respond to comments, reply quickly to messages, and listen to what your customers are saying. Showing them your brand voice isn’t just an emotionless robot can win over customers to invest in your service and your products.

Happy Holidays and Merry Marketing

If you pick clear goals for your campaign and start planning early, your holiday social media marketing strategy can be a big success. Prepare your accounts for increased traffic and consider sponsored content as a part of your campaign. Be consistent with branding and respond quickly to new and existing customers. If you make sure customers have a good experience while holiday shopping, you can win their loyalty to your brand.

*Source: 5 Tips for a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy This Holiday Season