Preparing for the Holidays: How to Create Digital Content

Natalie Petersen — October 31, 2017

— October 31, 2017

darkmoon1968 / Pixabay

Can you believe October is almost over? We are heading fast into the holiday season; this likely means your business is extra busy while you and your staff plan vacations – which means you’ll be away from the office and potentially unplugged from your social media accounts. That being said, it is important to stay on top of your social marketing and blogging schedule. Do you need help getting organized with your content? Keep reading for advice to help you this holiday season.

Importance of Posting Content Regularly

Just because it’s the end of the year and there are a million work and home things to do, that doesn’t mean you should skip writing blog posts and social media content. Posting consistently on the same time and day of the week for blogging is incredibly valuable for achieving high SEO rankings. As Traffic Generation Café reports, “Increasing your pages by 50-100 can bring as high as double digit blog traffic growth.” Double digit blog traffic growth is an incredible amount of progress, which is why you need to keep blogging. While you may not be writing 50-100 blog posts during the months of November and December, anything you publish will contribute to the overall number of page views.

Along with blogging, keeping your social media channels active is important too. Did you know that social media pages are considered search engines as well? Social media users have shifted from looking up businesses and information on traditional search engines like Google and are now doing so on Facebook, Instagram and more.

In fact, Neil Patel notes in his article, Why Social is the New SEO that, “The higher our social following, the better our sites seemed to perform in the SERPs. Evidence suggests that the so-called ‘social signals’ were a helpful SEO feature,” and that marketers “…need to understand that search engine optimization includes the search that happens on social media search engines.” You don’t want to miss out on customers finding your brand and content because you decided to take Thanksgiving to News Years off, right?

Do you need help with a posting schedule? To keep your social media followers interested and engaged, here are suggestions from CoSchedule on how often your business should post on the different platforms:

• Facebook: One to two posts per day, one post is recommended.
• Twitter: One to 51 posts per day, 15 posts are recommended.
• Pinterest: Three to 30 posts (or pins) per day, 11 pins are recommended.
• LinkedIn: Zero to one per day, one post is recommended.
• Google+: Zero to three per day, two posts are recommended.
• Instagram: One to three per day, one to two posts are recommended.

Now that you know the importance of blogging and posting on social media regularly, keep reading for tips and strategies for planning and preparing your content for the busy holiday season ahead.

Planning Ahead with a Content Calendar

Don’t be afraid to write content early! It’s not odd to write a Happy Thanksgiving or Happy Holidays update in the first week of November and then schedule it out for later that month; in fact, planning ahead like this is practical! This strategy will make sure you have updates ready to post for the rest of the month.

One of the best ways to look ahead, plan and be organized for the holiday season is to put together a content calendar. Blogging and social media managers use editorial calendars to create a plan for their posts and updates. These calendars include notable events of the upcoming weeks and months that they want to include. Creating an editorial calendar is a great way stay organized and help you to not forget an important date.

For the end of the year specifically, look at your calendar and think of any notable upcoming dates and any business tie-ins you need to remember. Are you having a sale right before Thanksgiving? What about a Black Friday event? Any deals around Christmas? Instead of remembering to write an update the day before an event, making a note to write it early and schedule it (we’ll discuss scheduling below) will make sure you have relevant and important updates to share with your followers.

Are you unsure of what to think about when creating your holiday content calendar? Here are eight holiday content creation tips to get you started:

1. Plant the seed early. The beginning of November is the perfect time to start casually mentioning the approaching holiday season. Planting the seed early will start getting followers thinking about the next few months and how they can use your product or services for gifts.
2. Provide holiday survival tips. The holidays can be hectic; share how your product or service can help your target consumers survive through the upcoming months. Keep these updates light (you don’t want to scare anyone away) and have fun with what your product can do.
3. Create a holiday product or service. The holidays are a perfect time to introduce a limited-edition product or sale to drive traffic to your site. Being able to access an item for a specific, short term period time creates excitement and urgency for your customers.

4. Hold social media contests. There are countless ways to get into the holiday spirit here! Just about everyone loves free stuff and a good deal, so add a festive spin by asking your followers to share what they enjoy about your product or service this time of year for a chance to win something special. Or have them share pictures of themselves using your product along with a special holiday hashtag you create, and then pick a special winner for a prize. Here’s a simple guide to holding a social media contest:

• Set a goal.The core foundation of any good social media marketing strategy is knowing what the end result should be. By setting a goal the first time a promotion is held, a business can have a measurable strategy for future promotions.
• Know the rules.Every social media outlet has its own set of rules to abide by. Some of them, like the Facebook terms and conditions, can be really tricky. So, take your time to understand the rules of each platform; the last thing a business needs is to get their social media page shut down in the middle of an important business season.
• Think about consumer engagement.What about the promotion is going to make a fan or follower want to partake? The Social Media Examiner has a pyramid for consumer engagement. From basic sweepstakes to video contests, what will your business do?
• Keep it simple.While there is no doubt that there is a lot of preparation involved when getting a contest, promotion or sweepstake ready; the key to a successful social media contest is to keep it simple for the consumer. Fans are more likely to get involved if the promotion does not require them to fill out too much information.

5. Write holiday-themed blog posts.What advice can you offer for the holidays? Have your years in your industry given you any special insight? Share it on your blog! Make sure you promote the post on all your social media channels and in your newsletter.
6. Give your social media followers a sneak-peek of employees.If you have any holiday-related work events, take pictures of your team and share them with your customers! You can even post a few pictures of how your team decorated their offices for the fall and winter season. If your employees do any community service as a group, make sure you share the event with your followers too, with a special hashtag. Snapchat is a great way to have fun, be silly and share a behind-the-scenes look of your business.
7. Create Holiday Themed Images. Canva is an awesome tool for creating custom images! At Three Girls Media, we use this tool daily to create custom memes and images for ourselves, as well as our clients. With Canva, you can start with their design templates and customize it to fit your business’ branding. You can also design your company’s images to add to the design. They offer a number of free backgrounds, templates, icons, pictures and more so you can create beautiful holiday themed images for your social media accounts. This tool is even great when there isn’t a holiday; use it to create custom brand graphics, quote images and even collages.
8. Send holiday greetings to your clients.Let them know you appreciate them and their business by sending a card and/or gift. A simple, “We were thinking of you,” can go a long way when it comes to letting your customers know you care.

Scheduling Holiday Content

Now that you know how to plan ahead for the holiday season and how to write seasonal content, it’s time to schedule your work out. Just like you don’t want to write content during the busy season, you don’t want to be glued to your computer or phone scheduling updates.

One popular scheduling service is Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows businesses and social media managers to connect their social media accounts all together in one place, and enables users to post content, links, images and videos directly to their page. This can save time and is one way to ensure that you will be consistently posting and improving the SEO ranking of your business (like we mentioned above). This tool also allows account managers to pick what time of day you want your post to go live to ensure maximum visibility and interaction. You can also find social media analytics that tracks how many new followers, likes and interactions each of your account gets over a period of time.

Planning and Executing

Posting regularly, creating a content calendar, writing holiday updates and scheduling content can help you manage your business social media accounts through the busy holiday season.

While Three Girls Media may not be able to help you pick family up from the airport or assist with menu planning and other typical holiday drama, we can help you manage your blogging and social media content and accounts.

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