Between the turkey, the champagne and the apple pie, preparing for the holiday season is hard work!

Having a content calendar prepared now helps to ensure that you can sit back and relax this holiday season. Whether it’s Halloween, Black Friday or New Year’s Eve, every holiday presents an opportunity to stand out from your competitors on social media. We can help you get started! 

Step 1: Look At The Data!

Spend some time looking at the data from your social media networks. Which posts get the best engagement on Facebook? Which posts are driving followers and shares on Instagram? Are there hashtags that are working for you on Twitter? 

Sitting down and noting this information is a great way to get in the weeds before you step back to paint a  larger picture. 

Having trouble pulling trends from the data? Ask your audience! Use Instagram Stories question boxes to ask them, “what content would be valuable for you?” or “what would you like to engage with on this platform?”. Twitter is another great place to get feedback from the most important people – your followers! 

The list of questions is endless, the goal is to just understand what THEY want, so you can plan your content accordingly. 

digital media analytics

Step #2: Get Creative

Once you have some past holiday data on-hand, you can dive into the fun part of content creation. 

Think outside the box and brainstorm! Gather your team and activate a fun brainstorm session where nothing is off the table. Remember, the first rule of a brainstorm: there are NO bad ideas! 

Things to consider:

  • Which topics will grab our audience’s attention?
  • In what ways can we repurpose old content? 
  • Competitive content from the past

After the brainstorm session, go through your ideas and select the topics that:

  • Align with business goals and the needs of your audience
  • Make sense for your business
  • Are reasonable to execute

From here, build out your content calendar. Start plugging content for each channel into a comprehensive calendar document. Give us a call for a great content calendar starter template! 

#3: Make It Pretty

Once you have the words/themes and ideas ready to go, it’s time to think about the images. 

We know that images are the key to making social media content engaging. Of course, you can use stock photography, but we really recommend high-quality images of your business, products and services when possible. The holidays are full of feel-good smells, sights, and sounds. Tap into that holiday nostalgia by adding seasonal images to your content.

#4: Create a Content Promotion Strategy

You’ve created some great content, now you need to make sure people see it! We recommend the following methods to gain extra eyeballs on your social media content:

  • Promote via boosted posts to your existing audience
  • Promote to a wider audience via post engagement ads on Business Manager
  • Promote from emails, mention content on other social channels, etc. 

#5: Analyze The Results

After the season ends, it is easy to forget about all of the hard work and planning you put into creating your holiday content. Don’t forget the most important part, analyzing the results! Take time to review the data – what drove engagement? Awareness? Sales? These are the posts you want to document so you can continue to use them throughout the year and next holiday season too!

Creating content can be overwhelming, but it can also be VERY fun! Enjoy the process or give us a shout for help in creating some excellent holiday content for your social media channels.