How to Adapt Social Media Content During Special Events
In the dynamic world of social media, special events and holidays offer a unique opportunity for brands to connect with their audiences. We’ve gathered insights from Heads of Marketing and technology editors, among other experts, to share their experiences in tailoring content for these occasions. From engaging users with festive social media interaction to building anticipation with countdown posts, discover the diverse strategies used by fifteen professionals to resonate with their followers during these special times.
How to Adapt Social Media Content During Special Events
Tip 1
Festive Social Media Engagement Increases Sales
Faizan Khan, Public Relation and Content Marketing Specialist, Ubuy Australia
The company’s cheerful posts, great deals, and friendly chats made the season extra special. They created unique posts with pictures and videos that looked happy and festive. They used popular hashtags to get more people to see their posts.
If your company provides any special deals and offers, remember to share a post about deals for the holiday season. They made sure to reply to comments. This helps to engage more people to like, share, and talk to the company on social media. The company sold more items during the holiday season, and more people visited their website. This showed that the company was successful in connecting with people online during this special time.
In the lead-up to Black Friday, we know that many marketing managers (our target audience) have a lot of preparation to do and want to ensure they get the best performance from their PPC campaigns. We, therefore, customized our content approach during this time to be centered around “preparing for Black Friday.”
This featured specially created posts containing tips and guides, as well as a live webinar on the subject. All the content was made to specifically address the concerns that arise in the lead-up to the event and specifically concerns our target audience has.
Displaying specialist knowledge on a timely and very widely discussed topic allowed us to provide real value to our audience. Value that was intrinsically linked to a service we can provide them—PPC management. So this allowed the work to benefit us from both a lead generation and brand-building perspective simultaneously. It also meant that the reach of our output was increased, as it was a widely discussed subject.
But the crucial thing is, it resonated well as it is a special event that our brand is naturally linked to and that we actually have expertise in. I think this was key to the social media content’s success—we weren’t just attaching our brand to an event for exposure. It was a subject we could actually offer something on, and provide value to people.
Tip 3
Tech Product Launch Excites With Interactive Content
Bobby Lawson, Technology Editor/Publisher, Earth Web
From my experience in business and technology, I’d like to tell you about a company that made event social media material more interesting for the people they wanted to reach.
We used more than just commercials on social media to sell a cutting-edge tech product. Since people were excited about the event, we wanted to keep them excited while also giving them useful information.
We put up countdown teasers a few weeks before the product launch. Today’s tech quiz questions showed what the next product would have. This kept our viewers guessing and interested, which fit with their interest in new technologies.
We thought that interactive demos were the best way to show off our goods. Live feeds and questions that could be answered let everyone take part in the reveal. People voted on their favorite things, which made the event feel more personal and like a group effort.
To get our tech-savvy viewers interested, we started a user-generated content campaign. Using a word, followers could guess about the new product. At the launch event, we showcased and chose these entries to get people to work together.
The results with the customized method were truly amazing. Engagement data showed that people were much more interested and involved than during regular product launches. People talked more during the countdown teasers, and the engaging style of the revelations made everyone feel like they were a part of the show. The launch was exciting, and user-generated material gave us important feedback.
Tip 4
User-Generated Content Deepens Holiday Connections
Adrian Hall, Business Development Manager, Pharmacist Schools
A holiday season provides plenty of opportunities to connect or reconnect with audiences. We utilized UGC to make the most of the holiday season and to form a deeper connection with our audience. We encouraged audiences to share their holiday plans and what unique things they would do.
We also created mini social media contests to encourage more audience participation. Then, we shared their content on social media platforms through our brand’s official social media page or account. We used quirky captions and correlated the content to our brand’s values and objectives.
By establishing a connection with the content created by audiences, we were able to draw in our target customers. As a result, we gained new customers and retained the older ones.
Tip 5
Nostalgia Campaign Strengthens Brand Loyalty
Eric Lam, Head of Business Strategy, Energy Credit Transfer
To celebrate our company’s anniversary, we ran a “Company Nostalgia Week” on social media. We posted a series of throwback pictures and stories from the company’s history, highlighting milestones and achievements.
We also invited our audience to share their memories and experiences with our brand over the years. This customization resonated deeply with our loyal customers, who felt a sense of pride in being part of our journey. The campaign generated a significant amount of user-generated content and fostered a strong sense of brand loyalty. Engagement levels soared as customers shared their nostalgia and stories, making our anniversary a memorable and emotional celebration.
As a business and technology expert who understands the internet, I’d like to discuss how a group altered social media content for an event to demonstrate the importance of tailoring content to each audience.
This year, our tech blog had a lot of fun on social media getting people into the holiday spirit and engaging with our fans. We modified our strategy to celebrate the holidays and delight our tech-savvy, loyal customers.
IT tips and tricks with holiday themes blended the festive spirit with useful information. We advised our fans on how to illuminate a holiday party with smart home technology and offered them ideas for tech gifts they might enjoy.
To pique interest, we organized Christmas events with a tech twist. We invited people to send pictures of their tech setups with a Christmas theme or to vote for the best tech-themed holiday decorations. This increased community involvement and showcased our fans’ creativity.
We shared photos from our tech company’s Christmas party with one another. Highlights included live-streaming tech-related Christmas experiments, showcasing our office’s tech decorations, and promoting our employees’ favorite holiday apps. People got to know us better as we made our content more personal.
Tip 7
Travel Content Diversifies Holiday Messaging
Aiden Higgins, Senior Editor and Writer, The Broke Backpacker
The holiday season is usually the most lucrative for a majority of businesses, and that is definitely the case for us in the travel industry. People are always looking to travel, but this is never more common than during the holidays. Because of this, we always make an extra push on our social media to really drive the seasonal events home.
There are two ways to do this that work. The first is the most obvious: focusing fully on Christmas. It’s what a lot of people expect, so going all in shows that you are joining in on the festive fun. For travel, we have some options here like winter lodges and Christmas-themed events, and images of these always get people into the Christmas spirit.
The alternative option is the opposite. Now, I’m not suggesting that you should become a social media Scrooge, but by going in a different direction, you will easily get people’s attention. If a lot of brands opt for the typical red, green, and white Christmas aesthetic, they will blend together for those quickly scrolling.
For us, we sometimes push for more summery content. People associate the holidays with colder weather and snow, but they forget that for half of the world, it’s not even winter. Having images of beaches and areas in hotter climates on someone’s feed will surely stand out during this season.
Well, our 25 Days of Christmas promotion was a hit! During the holiday shopping season, people are really into finding great deals, and our competitors are also offering discounts to attract customers. We needed to do something to bring people to our business too, so this is how we did it!
In my experience, running a 25-day Christmas promotion on social media worked really well. Each day, we offered our clients and potential customers different services and products at a discount. We made sure to vary the daily offerings to keep it interesting. We even added some limited-time surprise deals that only lasted a few hours as we got closer to Christmas. This kept people excited and checking our posts regularly.
The excellent results, engagement, and sales we got, and the feedback suggest that this approach really appealed to customers’ desire to save money and gave them a reason to visit our website and use our services multiple times.
While AI images aren’t that popular right now, there was a time when the whole internet was buzzing about them. Midjourney changed the way people created images, and when you added some fun social media content to the mix, things got more interesting.
Last year, we shared quotes from some famous historical figures that our audience could relate to. If it was Einstein’s birthday, then we posted his AI-generated image with his quote brought to life.
While some didn’t find it professional, that definitely brought the impression we intended and got people talking about it. After the first few shares, engagement was through the roof.
After all, try to get creative with your social media content during special events or holiday seasons. Mix it with humor, nostalgia, or a personal touch to make it stand out.
Tip 10
Countdown Posts Build Anticipation For Launch
Martin Gasparian, Attorney and Owner, Maison Law
When we opened our law office, we used social media content optimally by creating countdown posts. As the owner of the law firm, I thought the countdown posts were a brilliant way to remind our prospective clients of our upcoming launch.
Our countdown posts were useful in highlighting the remaining days until the launch of our new office. I always met with friends and prospective clients who told me they had seen my event on Twitter and Instagram. The social media countdown was useful in creating a sense of urgency and driving excitement for people to attend.
To encourage people to attend, we offered a discount on legal fees to all attendees. To resonate with our target audience, all the social media posts featured our new logo and brief highlights of the events, giving our audience an idea of what to expect during the launch of our law firm.
Recognizing the importance of community in the digital environment, we launched a number of engagement activities to help our audience feel a sense of belonging. These events encouraged active engagement and dialogue, from conducting interactive Q&A session with industry experts to organizing user-generated content competitions.
Increased community participation not only strengthened our brand community but also increased our reach through organic amplification of user-generated content. This technique not only generated brand loyalty but also positioned our organization in the digital arena as an inclusive and engaged institution.
Tip 12
Witty Hashtags And Multi-Offers Attract Customers
Stefan Campbell, Owner, The Small Business Blog
While the holiday season itself does not need much publicizing, each year should be considered a blank canvas of sorts in terms of how a company presents itself to the marketplace to create an exciting (and profitable) impression on customers.
As a writer and editor at my organization, I have found marketing success, especially on social media, using pretty simple formulas to connect our readers and services during celebratory seasons. One way is to use relevant play-on-words for social media posts and hashtags. With humor and wit, a company can impress shopping Scrooges and lighten the mood for over-stimulated customers.
Another way to resonate with people on social media (no matter the season) is with multi-offer promotions. In these tough financial times, people are looking for enticing deals to help secure gifts for all the people on their shopping lists. I suggest coupling a specific percentage off a purchase or item and then throwing in a credit for a future purchase, or offering complimentary gift wrapping or reduced shipping fees.
I believe social media is the best way to connect with the public, so I recommend meeting your followers where they are, giving them a reason to seek what you have to offer. Then you can almost guarantee a built rapport after the holiday season is over.
During the holiday season, we saw an increase in the number of people who were sharing our high-resolution images. We knew that this was a great opportunity to show off our brand and share our expertise, so we created a series of posts that would highlight some of the most popular images from the year.
This is where we think social media really shines: It gives us an opportunity to connect with our audience in real time and tailor content specifically for them. We found that our audience really responded well to these posts because they got a sense of what made us unique—and they could see how much we care about making sure everyone has access to beautiful imagery, no matter what device they’re using.
Tip 14
Holiday Marketing Focuses On Health Discipline
John Frigo, Ecommerce Manager, Best Price Nutrition
We’re a supplement retailer, so while what we sell and our niche or industry isn’t directly related to a particular holiday—outside of maybe New Year’s Day and New Year’s resolutions—the holidays are a time when people are eating and drinking and short on time, i.e., less time to work out.
So, around these holidays, we’ll often craft our marketing—i.e., email, SMS, and social media—as well as our YouTube channel around how to stay disciplined through the holidays or some supplements that could help them out. We oftentimes will also do fun things like a holiday bake-off around Christmas, but the stuff we’re baking is like protein balls and functional foods as opposed to just cookies.
Tip 15
Industry Data Guides Seasonal Content Strategy
Tracey Beveridge, HR Director, Personnel Checks
My advice here is to focus on the advice that you know your audience wants to hear (and the questions they need answering), rather than what a third-party tool predicts in relation to an event or season.
It’s something we do regularly based on industry trends, and it’s much more effective to rely on your own internal industry data (and to provide content that is genuinely helpful) rather than what an external tool thinks your audience wants to see!
How to Adapt Social Media Content During Special Events
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