Are you neglecting your business social media accounts? I know, it can get tiring and hard to come up with new ideas for what to post to your various social media accounts. But, social media isn’t just an account to have, it’s an extension of you online presence. It allows you to engage with your target audience and share information as well.
Now that the holidays are quickly approaching, I have a list of different social media posts you could make on your platforms, but keep reading after these for some guidelines for these posts, and some resources to help make them better.
- Holiday Promotions: Share special discounts, promotions, or bundle deals for your products or services. Everyone loves a good deal, and even more, people love free stuff. Do you have something you could give away to get people into your store?
- Festive Product Showcase: Highlight specific products that make great holiday gifts and explain why. People often struggle to come up with gifts for people they love. Show them some great things they could get, from you or even from others, to make their gift giving easier.
- Behind-the-Scenes Festivities: Share glimpses of your team decorating the office or preparing for holiday events to humanize your brand. Are you putting up lights or wreaths? Having holiday parties? Volunteering at holiday events? Use all of these to create new social media posts to reach your audience.
- Customer Spotlights: Feature customer testimonials or showcase their experiences with your products or services. These can be testimonials or just showcases. What do people use your products for around the holidays? Why is someone such a special customer?
- DIY Ideas: Provide holiday-themed do-it-yourself (DIY) ideas related to your products or industry. This is a particularly good idea for TikTok, people LOVE a good TikTok DIY.
- Holiday Contests: Run a festive contest or giveaway to encourage engagement and participation. A fun one I see at my veterinarian’s office is to post holiday photos of your pets to win a free nail trim. Anything that gets people to comment or post photos is a great way to build engagement.
- Gratitude Posts: Express gratitude to your customers for their support throughout the year. Because truly, where would you be without your clients? Don’t assume they know you are thankful for them. Really give details and show you are. Never underestimate gratitude.
- Year in Review: Reflect on the highlights and achievements of your business over the past year. Have you had ups and downs? Have you had some highlights you want to showcase? A favorite project? A new product? A happy customer? All great ideas for sharing how your year has gone.
- Festive Team Introductions: Introduce your team members and share their favorite holiday traditions or memories.
- Charitable Initiatives: Showcase any charitable activities or partnerships your business is involved in during the holidays. Even if you aren’t involved in the charity, knowing you care about local community events and charitable engagements will leave your followers feeling warm and fuzzy. It helps build good will toward you for thinking and sharing these things, even if you aren’t involved. And if you are involved, all the better!
- Holiday-Themed Polls: Engage your audience with polls related to holiday preferences, traditions, or favorite products. People love taking short polls! People love taking polls that are built into Instagram stories.
- Gift Guides: Create and share gift guides featuring your products, helping customers with their holiday shopping.
- Interactive Content: Share interactive content like quizzes or games with a holiday twist.
- Countdowns and Reminders: Build anticipation with countdown posts for upcoming sales, events, or product launches.
- Limited Edition Products: Introduce special holiday-themed or limited-edition products. Got a special product that they can only get now? This is the place to make that product shine. Use great photos to really showcase the items.
- Local Holiday Events: Support local events or causes and share your involvement on social media.
- Holiday Recipes: Share festive recipes related to your products or services.
- Shareable Holiday Quotes: Create and share holiday-themed quotes that resonate with your brand values.
- Holiday Playlist: Share a curated holiday playlist that aligns with your brand’s vibe.
- Flashback Posts: Share throwback photos or memories from previous holiday seasons in your business.
Obviously, not everyone one of these ideas is going to fit with your business, so use the ones that do and skip the rest. You need to make sure to tailor these to fit your brand and engage with your audience authentically.
A few social media tips
- Don’t post the same post across all social media accounts. If I follow you on Facebook, and on Instagram, and on TikTok, I don’t want to see the exact same content every place I go. It’s repetitive and boring. Different platforms have different audiences and different ways to engage. Use that to your advantage. Different platform, different content.
- Don’t post at the same time every day. Mix it up. Test out different times to see which times get more engagement. And remember, different platforms may have different optimal times.
- Focus on quality over quantity. Having posts that are meaningful and engaging is better than having a bunch of posts that aren’t.
- Respond to comments. Always respond to the comments. I recommend you take 5 minutes, three times a day solely to respond to comments. That’s only 15 minutes! You have 15 minutes, right?
- You know social media platforms have analytics right? Check it out and see how many people are seeing you posts, sharing, liking, etc. Use that to craft more posts with better engagement.
- Don’t forget to link back to your website! Not in every post, but if there’s a relevant page or post to your content, add the link.
A few resources
If you want to create attention grabbing posts, you probably need some graphics to go along with them. Did you know that Canva has literally thousands of free holiday-themed templates for all different kinds of social media platforms? Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. You name it. Check out their social media holiday templates and start creating some for your holiday campaign.
Need some free stock photos for your posts? I like Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash. You can download a bunch of different stock photos that you can use for free. You don’t even have to credit the artist, although attribution is generally appreciated.
Tired of logging into multiple accounts several times a day to manage your social media? You can use something like Buffer, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social to manage your social accounts from one location. One account to rule them all! Buffer has a free level depending on how many accounts you want to add and how many posts you want to make.
Amy Masson
Amy is the co-owner, developer, and website strategist for Sumy Designs. She's been making websites with WordPress since 2006 and is passionate about making sure websites are as functional as they are beautiful.