Wait… wasn’t it just Spring?! Where did all this holiday nonsense come from?!

Yes indeed, just like it does year after year, the holiday season has yet again snuck up on us. It seems like just yesterday I was pulling my shorts out of the closet and now they are going right back in in exchange for sweaters.

The holidays are an interesting and sometimes stressful time for business owners. Some businesses opt to pull their marketing way back and begin focusing on the upcoming 1st quarter. Other businesses either make or break their year during the holidays and have no choice but to go all out. But, whether you depend on the holidays or not there is no reason not to bring a little holiday spirit to your social media.

Social media is the perfect platform for both reinforcing your marketing strategy for the holidays as well as having some good old-fashioned fun with your audience. Here are four things you need to do to make sure your holiday social media is on point this year.

Decide What to Celebrate

There is a lot going on in November and December. You’ve got Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Small Business Saturday, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years Eve, and you might as well toss into the mix New Years Day. That’s not even counting the list of random “Social Media Holidays” that pop up each month.

Look, you only have so much bandwidth and it may not make sense for you to try to make a big deal of and incorporate each and every one of these events into your strategy. So don’t! It is better to do a couple things well than a bunch of things poorly. Pick the holidays that make the most sense for you to participate in.

For example, if you are a small business, participating, promoting, and talking about Small Business Saturday makes a lot of sense. If your company has connections or ties to any religious affiliation, you can plan your messaging around “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy Hanukkah,” or “Happy Kwanzaa.” If not, you may be better off not fixating on anything specific and keeping it as a nice “Happy Holidays.”

Get Your Graphics Ready

No matter what your social media objectives are for the holiday season, graphics are going to be a major component of your activity. Are you promoting a major holiday sale? You’ll need some graphics displaying the deals you have. Are you launching a new product or service? You’ll need some graphics showcasing the item or service. Are you just trying to spread a little holiday cheer? A “Happy Holidays” image needs to be in your timeline.

Have your design team create some social share graphics that will really jump out of your audience’s timeline and ensure the important messages you want to share during the season do not go unnoticed.

Themed Content

Graphics are a very important part of your strategy, but so is good old fashion content. During the holidays, blog posts and content with some seasonality attached to them are perfect. Hopefully, your blog roll is full of previously written blog posts with topics related to this time of year that your audience will be interested in and get some real value from. If not, there is no harm in sharing similar blogs from outside sources (as long as they aren’t a direct competitor). Sharing industry content like this is a great way to establish yourself as an information leader.

Home service companies, in particular, can really benefit from content like this. Sharing articles on topics like plumbing tips for winter to avoid freezing pipes, how to tell if your furnace is about to give out, or how to protect your hardwood floors from the harsh winter conditions are not necessarily holiday-themed, but the seasonality makes it just as relevant.

Have Some Fun

Look at the end of the day, the holidays are a fun time of year and social media is the best place to have a little bit of fun with your marketing strategy. Showing a bit more of your human side is a great way to engage with your audience, show your likability, and get in front of them. Specifically on Facebook, content that is “shareable” is going to get preference in people’s timelines. So a post that is likely to get comments, reactions, and shares will spread much more easily than a post that doesn’t get any engagement.

In the spirit of the season, update any cover images to match the season, take and share plenty of photos at your holiday parties, and even consider embracing the silliness of the season by popping a Santa hat on top of your avatar for fun.

Getting ready for the holidays? Check out this Holiday Planning Webinar to get your in the mood.