What should I do with my social media feeds over the holidays?
The festive season has crept up on us again, which means it’s time to plan some Christmas content for your social feeds over the holidays. Having a social media strategy and posting regularly on all channels is important for any business all year round. It shouldn’t stop over the festive season, even if your business is closed for a period of time.
This year has been challenging for many businesses and social media has been a crucial tool in keeping connected to customers, clients and staff. Due to new Covid restrictions being introduced throughout the year, businesses have had to adapt their social media content accordingly to ensure their feeds reflect the most up-to-date rules. Social feeds can be adapted to incorporate, or work around, any type of holiday or special days throughout the year.
The best practice does depend, to an extent, on your type of business but in general we wouldn’t recommend turning off your social feeds completely.
Plan ahead
It’s important to plan ahead and scheduling content is always good practice– it’s more time effective and means you have regular content going out to your followers rather than posting when you get a chance, which can be few and far between when you’re running a business.
You can schedule content in advance on the Facebook and Twitter platforms or there’s a range of free scheduling tools available including Hootsuite, Later and Buffer as well as subscription platforms such as Sprout Social which make scheduling content quick and easy.
One of the main things you should include in your holiday schedule is information about when you will be closed or unavailable. Businesses operate differently over Christmas so you should let your followers and potential customers know when you will be around and when you will be away. It is often a good idea to use this as your pinned post, so people can instantly see when you’re open.
When you’re scheduling your content over the holidays, it’s important to keep a few things in mind.
- Your call to action. You don’t want to tell people to call you if your office is going to be closed and there won’t be anyone on the other end of the phone. Instead, signpost people to your website so they can find out more about your business, products and services.
- Be careful when planning posts in advance if you know no one will be around to edit them if needs be. For example, a post that seems harmless now could come across completely different if something occurs in the world that you couldn’t have predicted. It might be best to play it safe with your content and reduce the amount of scheduled posts over the Christmas period if you know no one will be around to make any adjustments.
Keeping an eye on social feeds
Monitoring comments and messages your social media can be difficult over the holidays if your team is off. While you might not be able to monitor every day like usual, if staff are working at any point over Christmas and New Year’s they should take a look at your notifications and reply to any outstanding messages. Staff should also keep an eye on what has been scheduled for your social feeds just in case circumstances have changed to ensure any planned posts don’t cause unintentional juxtaposition and potential reputational damage.
A great tool to use while the team is on holiday is automatic replies. Setting up automatic messages on your social channels can take the pressure off your team during the holidays and let customers know when to expect a response. On platforms like Facebook you can even set up automatic comments if someone comments on your posts.
Embrace the holiday season
Use the upcoming holiday season to your advantage and make it part of your social strategy. Whether it’s Christmas, Easter or Halloween, you can create creative organic and paid-for content which could really engage your audience.
For example, you could create a range of Christmas campaigns from the 12 days of Christmas to a festive countdown offering discounts and offers. Last year we helped our client Coodes Solicitors produce an advent calendar of legal quirks in the lead up to Christmas. Every day they posted a new odd or interesting legal fact on their social channels as a fun and unique way to count down to Christmas.
Coodes Christmas Advent Calendar
It could even be as simple as a series of posts encouraging people to make the most of seasonal offers. We’ve helped our client St Ives BID schedule a range of social posts letting people know about the late night shopping offer in the town and encouraging people to shop local this Christmas.
St Ives Christmas shopping social post
We’ve also put together a range of paid-for social ads for clients such as Sutton Harbour Group promoting their seasonal offers.
When you are creating festive content, ensure it is in-keeping with your brand and relevant to your customers. While it could be an opportunity to move away from your usual corporate style and perhaps present a more relaxed view of your brand, it is still important to protect your reputation.
Another way to embrace the holiday season is to decorate your social profiles – just like you would decorate your office. Create a festive theme by added a new Christmassy header image and incorporating something festive into your logo.
Coodes Solicitors’ festive logo
Raising brand awareness
Social media is a useful tool for generating traffic to websites, blogs and news pieces but it is also important for brand awareness. Keeping your content going over the holidays can benefit your brand awareness as more people are likely to be online while they’re off work.
It will vary from business to business of course. Some clients deliberately target content such as holiday or flight bookings especially around New Year when people might be looking to the year ahead. Other less consumer facing brands may expect fewer website hits and a dip in reach and engagement over the holiday period. But it can still be useful to be active on social media if it generates a positive reaction and boosts goodwill. Potential customers may not get in touch over the holidays but they might enquire in the New Year if they remember your content positively.
Get personal
You can use this time of year to reflect and thank your staff, customers and clients on social media. This could involve uploading team photos or a video montage or posting a heartfelt message. Creating positive feel-good content is great during the festive season, and is especially needed this year in particular. Tagging businesses and individuals will also encourage shares and retweets.
Personal content allows your followers and potential customers to see the people behind the business, creating a trustworthy and relatable business image.
At DCA we manage social media content for a variety of clients, from destinations to property developers. Our social media management includes daily monitoring as well as planning and scheduling content on a weekly or monthly basis all year round. We create a variety of creative content, both organic and paid-for, that fits with our clients’ objectives and is relevant to their target audience.
For more information on how DCA can help with your social media, contact us at admin@dca-pr.co.uk.
