When planning out your brand’s social media strategy, it will quickly become apparent that there are a lot of holidays on the calendar.
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Christmas
Talk Like a Pirate Day
Should you make a post or a campaign for all of them? Should you not mention any of them? What do you even post for “Talk Like a Pirate Day”?
Every year, brands spend billions of dollars crafting intricate holiday campaigns. While creating fun, engaging social media posts for the holidays can be an excellent way for brands to interact with their audience, one does not have to look far to find examples of holiday branding blunders. Here are a few benefits, and a few pitfalls, to consider when planning out your brand’s seasonal social media strategy.
Timeliness
One of the biggest benefits a holiday social media post can provide for your brand is a sense of timeliness. Holidays, by their very nature, bring immediacy to any post and are a great way to connect with a topic that may already be top-of-mind for the consumer. By combining these trending topics with the proper hashtags, a good holiday post has the potential to bring your brand to an entirely new audience.
Of course, the concept of timeliness for a holiday social media post cuts both ways. Since holiday posts are inherently tied to a short period of time, there is a strong chance your audience will be seeing similar posts with the same themes from many different brands, making burnout a very real possibility. In addition, while a Christmas or Hanukkah post will perform well in December, it will rapidly lose its luster once the first few weeks of January roll around. So, when considering your brand’s plan for a holiday post, it’s important to determine both how to make your post stand out and how to be ready for the inevitable drop-off in engagement once the holiday is done.
Community
Along with a sense of timeliness, another key benefit a holiday post brings to your brand is a sense of community. Holidays are meant to bring people together and celebrate, and they can provide a way for brands to let their hair down and engage with audiences. Whether your brand creates a lighthearted post for New Year’s or a heartwarming tribute to your team for Thanksgiving, holiday posts have the potential to show off your personality and highlight what is most important to your brand.
Conversely, this sense of celebrating what is important to your brand also creates the single biggest risk of a holiday post: relevance. Even if your brand taps into a holiday trend, it won’t matter in the slightest if your brand doesn’t have anything authentic to say or if the connection is solely based around the idea of making a sale. For example, a brand that works heavily with military causes may be well-served by a respectful post recognizing the importance of Memorial Day on their social platforms, whereas a post cheerfully advertising a “Happy Memorial Day” sale from an entirely unrelated brand can easily come across as hollow or undermining the meaning of the day.
Inclusivity
This worry of performative holiday posting is especially true in cases of holidays with significant religious or identity-based themes, which brings up another concern with holiday posts: inclusivity. If your brand makes a post for Christmas, but not for Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Eid al-Fitr, that can potentially be seen as exclusionary by the audience. Similarly, a hastily thrown-together or poorly researched post for a culturally significant holiday can be detrimental to a brand’s image. While a general “Happy Holidays” post can suffice for the end-of-year holiday season, an even better solution is to carefully research and collaborate with a diverse team to ensure that holidays from every culture are handled respectfully by your brand.
So, is it worth it for your brand to create a post for the closest upcoming holiday? Ultimately, the answer will depend on your brand’s unique voice, identity and audience. Ideally, your brand and team will be able to create content that is authentic, relevant and inclusive for all variety of holidays, ensuring that every celebration is a positive way for consumers to connect with your brand. However, if you’re looking for long-term engagement, aren’t sure how to tie your brand to a particular holiday or if you’re worried that your content may come across as inauthentic or tone-deaf, then it may be best to sit this one out and focus on evergreen content that your followers already love.
For more ways to incorporate seasonal messaging into your social media presence, please reach out to Barbara Wray at barbara@wickmarketing.com or (512) 564-4289.
