Top Tips for Social Media Marketing This Christmas

The festive season is well and truly upon us, and for many brands, this is the most crucial time of the year. This is something that couldn’t be more true in 2020, it’s been a difficult year, to say the least, and the holiday period is the perfect opportunity to make up for it. 

For social media marketers, Christmas is a goldmine. With customers actively searching online for products, not making the most of the Christmas rush on social media is a deathwish. With that in mind here are some of the top tips for social media marketing at Christmas. 

Engage, engage, engage

It’s not a secret that social media is all about engagement, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, it’s called social media for a reason. For a social media marketing strategy to be successful, brands need to be engaging with their audience and Christmas provides the perfect opportunity to do this. 

If you are already engaging with your audience then this should be simple for your brand, all you need to do is throw a bit of Christmas spirit into the mix. A little bit of personalisation can go a long way and can often result in a more successful campaign. 

Engaging with your followers should already be part of your social media activity, so in theory, this should be a simple tweak. But, if you aren’t already engaging with your followers, it’s time to start!

Use unique campaign hashtags 

Following on from engaging with your audience, creating specific campaign-related hashtags is the best way to stay on top of everything. In addition to helping you find and engage with your followers, it also helps to track the results of the campaign. Lots of brands will use the holiday period as an opportunity to run a tailored campaign and having a unique hashtag is an extra element that will help boost the success of your campaign. 

Again, this is something that should be part of your social media strategy throughout the year, with Christmas just giving you the opportunity to get festive with your hashtags. Choose a fun and festive hashtag, however, make sure it reflects your brand and the campaign you are running. 

Test out paid platforms

Many brands have taken to running paid ads on social media to combat the drop in organic reach (we’re looking at your Facebook). However, for some, paid social media activity is still an underutilised area. This can range from creating full ads campaigns to simply boosting or promoting specific posts. 

Ultimately, paid options are another string in your bow and will ensure that your content has the biggest reach possible. For many brands, Twitter has become a go-to social media platform, however, it isn’t necessarily the ideal platform for finding new customers. This is where Twitter Ads come in. One of the most useful tools available is the ability to promote already successful tweets in order to boost engagement and reach.

Run a competition or giveaway

Running a social media competition or giveaway can be a really quick and easy way to boost your social media strategy. I won’t go into too much detail here as we have already covered how to run a social media competition and looked specifically at running a competition on Facebook on the Browser Media blog before. However, like with the previous tips, Christmas provides a golden opportunity to run a successful giveaway. 

Christmas is undoubtedly an expensive time of year, so give something back to your customers by giving them the opportunity to win something. Running a competition is a win-win, it will come at very little cost and will help to boost the reach of your brand, boost engagement, and in some cases provide you with loads of priceless user-generated content. 

Go big or go home

Christmas is a huge celebration, especially in such a rubbish year like 2020, so go big and embrace the holiday season in everything you do. Use this as an opportunity to do a bit of Spring Winter cleaning on your social media profiles and make sure that everything is up to scratch. Update your profile picture and header image to something a bit more festive, make sure that your bio is up to date with any changes in opening hours over the holidays, create loads of new festive assets to share on social media. These are all small changes to what should already be part of your social media strategy but they display to your customers that you are on the ball.

These tips are things that should be part of your social strategy throughout the year, but Christmas is a great excuse to try them out if you aren’t utilising them already. The main tip is simple, don’t be a grinch and embrace the festive season.