Christmas marketing doesn’t have to just be for retailers, it’s a great time for any business to get on board and have fun with its social media. At this time of year people are starting to get into the festive spirit, so it makes sense to engage users when they are in a happy, Christmas mood. I’ve put together some tips on how any business can take part in Christmas themed social media marketing. This could be on any platform you use for your business: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any of the other social media platforms out there.
Christmas Countdowns
At this time of year, a Christmas countdown is a great way to get social media followers engaged. There are two countdowns that are popular to use:
- Advent / Countdown to Christmas – advent actually starts on the 3rd December this year, but for anyone that has had an advent calendar from the supermarket, you’ll know that they usually start the advent countdown on the 1st December. Most marketing campaigns for this Christmas countdown start on the 1st, then run to the 24th, culminating in something big happening on the last day
- 12 Days of Christmas – the popular song lends itself to a shorter marketing campaign of the 12 days leading up to Christmas, if you think an advent countdown is too long for you then the 12 days might be a little easier to manage
There are loads of different ways you can make use of these countdowns, for example, each day you could:
- Offer different discounts, ending with a really good discount Christmas eve
- Give a top tip – e.g. a gardener can give tips on maintaining your garden in the winter, or a handyman could give tips on simple household problems like making sure your water pipes don’t freeze in the cold (you could even make a video of the tip and post on YouTube)
- Showcase a product or a service with money off each day
- Fun photos and videos – for example, a vets practice could have a different cute pictures of animals they have seen each day, or you could have a different member of your team in a Christmas jumper (perhaps get your customers to vote for their favourite jumper)
- The big reveal – Chop up an image or graphic into 12 or 24 pieces, reveal one each day and get your audience to guess what’s in the picture – maybe give a prize for the first person to guess, or a discount to everyone that guesses. If you don’t have an image editing program use this online image splitter to cut your images up
If you don’t want to be tied to doing something every day, then there are lots of other social media marketing tips you can choose from over the festive period...
Stats and Facts
Find some interesting stats of facts, they can be from your own company or from an external source (as long as you reference them).
Infographics are a great way to display information, they allow you to display data so that it is easy to read and eye catching. There are some easy and free tools around to help you create them, just keep them simple and share them on social media. I like this Christmas Tree facts one by Coupon Refund. It’s just simple but really interesting stats about Christmas Trees. You can find some more Christmas ones for inspiration on Daily Infographic.
Stats and facts are also really great for business-to-business (B2B) companies, as you can make them a little more business-like if you prefer and tailor the information to something that will really interest your customers. As Christmas is nearly the end of the year you could look back at interesting business stats and facts for 2017 (e.g. how has Brexit affected the popullation) – or perhaps a Christmas related one such as how well retailers have done over the 2017 Christmas period, or how many boilers break down Christmas day! The Business section on Daily Infographic is good for inspiration.
Tips and Advice
Helpful advice is always useful to your audience, so look at how you can put a Christmas spin on your expertise. For example:
- A restaurant could get their chef to come up with some Christmas recipes to share
- A hair salon could give tips on getting that perfect Christmas hairdo
- An accountant could advise on sticking to a budget over the festive period
- An electrician could advise on keeping electricity costs down, or maybe look at the safest ways to use outdoor Christmas lights
- A jewellers could give an overview of the different shapes and sizes of diamonds, and discuss which are the best to give as Christmas presents
To come up with some top social media tips, look at your business offering and see how it could be related to the Christmas season. As you can see from my examples above, pretty much every business can give some interesting festive advice.
Christmas is Everywhere
You don’t have to think of a marketing campaign just for social media, you can create offline marketing activities and photograph/film them and post them up on social media channels.
I do love this Christmas themed house by electrician, Alex Goodhind, – he really showed his skills with over 200,000 Christmas lights set up. It’s a lot of work, it took him 5 weeks to complete – but is great content for social media seeing it go together piece by piece via photos and video, then sharing a video of the final switch on.
Of course, you don’t have to go to such great lengths to produce content, it’s easy to do something a bit more simple. For example, if you’re a nail salon why not just photograph all the lovely Christmas nails you create and showcase those on social media, or office workers could have a Christmas themed bake-off and photograph all the lovely cakes.
No matter what business you have, I’m sure you can come up with some festive ideas for your social media posts this Christmas. Have some fun and keep them lighthearted as, after all, this is the season to be jolly!
[bctt tweet=”Use Christmas themed content to engage social media users while they are in a happy, festive mood.”]
