Nail Your 2015 Holiday Social Media Strategy

Zoe Waldron

Crafting a holiday marketing strategy across multiple social media platforms is a great way to increase product and brand awareness, followers, engagement and holiday sales. The first step? Name your holiday campaign as a whole and create a unique hashtag around that name. By creating a simple yet memorable multi-platform hashtag to represent your holiday campaign efforts, you’ll be able to spread awareness efficiently and collectively see participant engagement. The following tips outline ideas by platform for social campaigns to help you increase holiday awareness and sales.

Twitter
– Pick an official ‘holiday hashtag’ (if you haven’t already) and use it to spread the word about your brand and products during the holidays. Use it everywhere, including your website, social platforms (except Pinterest) and in-store. Make sure it’s unique and that no other brand is already using it. Retweet fan posts to boost awareness and to keep you top of mind.
– Aim to share 7-15 tweets per day. Add your new holiday hashtag to all relative tweets.
– Tweet out links to each platform where you’re sharing content, promotional deal information, exclusive first looks, etc…
~ Consider adding holiday keywords whenever possible: Black Friday, Christmas Gifts, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, Winter, etc…
~ Go off of trending hashtags when relative. For example, if ‘#XmasWishlist’ is trending, first research why it’s trending. If it’s just for users to share what they want as a gift, start tweeting out links to your shopping categories, new trending items, and articles with products that would make great gifts. Don’t forget to add your own hashtag after this trending one! Just don’t do more than 2 hashtags per tweet.

Pinterest

– Create a few holiday-related boards:
~ One that shares holiday inspiration (beautiful imagery mixed in with gift ideas) and another that is more promotional and product-focused (a holiday wish list).
~ Drag these boards to the first or second row of your account.
– Aim to pin around 15-25 pins a day, filling up these holiday boards as well as your pre-existing boards.
– Use searchable holiday keywords and phrases like ‘Holiday Inspiration’ or ‘Christmas Gift Idea.’ Aim for ~200 character descriptions. Skip adding hashtags on Pinterest.
– Promote your top-performing holiday gift pins. Stack products of the same category or extend product images down and you’ll get a lot more Pinterest “real estate” leading to better engagement.

Instagram
– A strong Instagram strategy can really increase awareness around peak shopping season. Start introducing the new campaign hashtag to followers on your posts around 1-2 weeks before the holiday campaign officially begins.
– Consider running a holiday Instagram contest (or a few) to boost awareness and followers. Tell fans you’re giving away products or a gift card to a lucky fan(s). All they have to do is make sure they’re following your brand account, ‘Like’ the Instagram post, and then comment with three of their friends tagged to enter and help spread the word.
– Holiday-themed influencer sponsored posts and Instagram account takeovers by celebs or top-followed influencers also are a great way to spread awareness and increase sales. Pick one or two items for the influencer to showcase to their followers per post. Have them tag your brand account and include your hashtag in their description to help your followers grow.
– Aim to share 1-3 Instagrams per day before and during the campaign using your unique hashtag to help increase awareness and engagement.

YouTube
– YouTube is an essential piece to video promotion online. You don’t have to make the video yourself though. Collaborating with top YouTube influencers to share tutorial videos, unboxing or gift haul videos, and lifestyle videos incorporating the product is a great way to spread awareness and increase sales.
– Share the video link on Twitter once every few days using your campaign hashtag, and upload the direct video on Facebook.
– According to a survey from Ipsos MediaCT for Google, in the US this year, YouTube users have totaled over 1 billion views of unboxing videos alone. “The survey found that around a quarter of shoppers (26%) say video is their “go-to source for gift ideas,” while almost a third (22%) said they plan to use online video more this year for holiday inspiration.” So is it worth adding video into your social strategy this year? We think so. The key? Have influencers keep their videos short and sweet and make sure they mention your product verbally and in the description. As a shopper, by seeing others open boxes of gifts they’re loving, you may become a bit jealous and need to get it for your friends and family (or yourself!) too.

Vine
– Is your brand on Vine yet? This is a platform your team can do itself or you can team up with experts and influencers on. First, try creating some cool or funny Vines around your products.
– If you’re interested in collaborating with a Vine influencer, it’s a great fit for becoming top of mind, gaining awareness and improving brand opinion.
– Play with stop motion using your products if you’re curious. It’s a lot of fun to watch and people love it! A great stop motion Viner is Andrew Jive.
– Keep the description short and add the hashtag to your Vines so if anyone Tweets it out, it will add to the mix of content.
– Tie the Vine into the holidays by making a creative storyline, like the gifts under the tree unwrap themselves during the night to party, then rewrap each other when morning comes. Have fun with it!

Periscope
– Periscope is the new live streaming video app. Share holiday promotions + deals, showcase holiday gift ideas for different markets, and do product demonstrations.
– Keep it fun and light. And make sure it’s interactive. Ask viewers to share where they’re from, their questions, favorite items, wish list, and more.
– Make sure to repeat who you are and what you’re Scoping every few minutes so new viewers get some context.
– Ask fans to share on Twitter and to invite their friends to view too. iPhone users can share with their friends while watching a Scope by swiping right. Android users swipe up to share.

Snapchat
– Working with Snapchat influencers is a great way to have the top followed accounts and personalities tell an interactive story around your product or brand for the holidays.
– The best market to reach with Snapchat ranges from early teens to mid-twenties. This is the market that’s more comfortable buying on mobile so Snapchat is a great platform to get them interested.
– Influencers showcase why your product is awesome in a fun, creative way that can tie into your holiday campaign idea.
– They can ask fans to create their own unique holiday Snaps around your product too, like the influencer draws a tree (with your hashtag or brand name drawn at the bottom) and asks viewers to screenshot and decorate the tree! They’ll later share the coolest ones with all their followers or give a prize to their favorites.
– A great way to gain Snapchat followers? Have them do half a video on their account and tell them to say, “See the rest of the video on ____’s account @_____” after they leave viewers with a cliffhanger.

Tumblr

– Once you’ve posted cool content across all these platforms, share all content here as a holiday content hub to each post on each platform. Scheduling posts to go to Tumblr is the easiest way to do this and works for most platforms. Include a mixture of Pinterest images, Instagram shots, Facebook photos, quotes or announcements from Twitter, videos, and links to products or holiday pages on your website.
~ Make sure everything is linked to its respective page, or at least somewhere that can lead to more information or a sale.
~ Add the holiday campaign hashtag along with 10+ other tagged highly-searchable keywords per post to boost reach.

Have you planned all of your holiday promotions yet? Are any of them involving influencers or newer platforms? 

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