Four festive tips for social media marketing

The holiday season is a special time of year for businesses. So why let your social media efforts fall behind? Try these four tips to capitalise on the festive cheer.

The months leading up to Christmas create a great opportunity for all types of business opportunities, but they also provide large amounts of competition. So it’s important to communicate with your customers in the right way.

Social media might be the avenue you are looking for. In the holiday period, social networks are jam-packed full of posts about deals, presents bought and both positive and negative reviews of customer service. Businesses can now contact customers easier than ever before, allowing them to respond to any questions, praise and criticism they may have.

Try these four steps to capitalise on social media through the holiday season:

1. Promote local cheer

Try promoting seasonal cheer in your local area. Or if you have the geo-targeting tools, locate where the majority of your customer base resides and plan your messages for that. You can then create content that your customers can relate to with a personalised brand experience.

2. User-generated content

Make your customers the hero. You can drive a deeper connection with your fans if you leverage user-generated content correctly. Most people these days automatically ignore advertisements. So if you have fans who will create content that shows them using your product or praising your business, it will resonate with others on a far deeper level.

Audiences trust real people that use your service or product. This will also show what your customers like about your brand – it’s a win-win situation.

3. Decorate your website with social content

The best way to increase your viral lift is to stage all of your social media efforts in one place. The more observational your campaign is, the easier it is for your fans to engage.

Try creating a social hub on a microsite or on your homepage to capture your audience. This will make it easier for consumers to share their positive experiences.

4. Multiple social channels

Depending on your industry, you might focus on one channel as it gives you the best engagement. Try not to hold yourself back – the holiday cheer spreads across every platform. Your messages on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook can all carry the same message, but the content should be customised to resonate with each channel’s community.

Read and comment on the original Entrepreneur article.