Creating Seasonal Social Media Campaigns

Coming up with fresh and relevant content on a regular basis can be challenging when you’re not in the business of writing or making videos. If your budget doesn’t accommodate hiring a social media specialist, using the right tools - such as social media dashboards - then learning the "tricks of the trade" can help you handle the tasks.

Creating a social media calendar to plan out your content is a tried-and-true tactic for managing social media marketing. Coming up with monthly or weekly themes for that calendar can help you zero in on content that is timely and of interest to your customers and prospects.

Here are some overarching themes that can provide some inspiration as you develop social media content.

Seasons - Any company knows that the ebb and flow of sales can be seasonal, including literally based around the seasons when selling products such as clothes, flowers, sports equipment, or offering services such as house painting and landscaping. When thinking of seasonal content, think beyond winter, spring, summer, and fall and include fruitful times of the year that are particular to your industry such as tax time for accountants and popular wedding months for wedding planners.

Holidays - Retailers usually benefit from traditional and federally-recognized holidays and not just during Christmas but also other holidays including Valentine’s, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. Develop and publish holiday-related content at least a month in advance and promote any holiday-specific discounts and special offers you might be running during that time period.

Awareness Days and Months - Consider creating content around awareness days. Awareness days are unofficial holidays that are developed by companies and organizations that have been more widely adopted, such as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) started through a partnership between the American Cancer Society and the pharmaceutical division of Imperial Chemical Industries or National Walking Day (first Wednesday in April) sponsored by the American Heart Association.

Do a search on a search engine for "popular awareness days" or "calendar of awareness holidays" and identify the ones that are a fit for your company. National Financial Awareness Month, for example, can be relevant to banks and credit unions, financial advisors, and accountants. It doesn’t always make sense for every business to post about a particular awareness day, but if you can find an angle that is relevant to what you do, it could provide you with fresh content.

Appreciation Days and Months - There seems to be a "holiday" for practically anything. If you’re a restaurant that serves alcohol or a bar, there are many cocktail and alcohol-related holidays such as National Bloody Mary Day (January 1), National Margarita Day (February 22), (World Cocktail Day (May 13), National Vodka Day (Oct 4), Zinfandel Day (November 17), and National Champagne Day (December 31). There are also countless food holidays such as New England Clam Chowder Day (January 21), National Ravioli Day (March 20), Eat All Your Veggies Day (June 17), and Meatloaf Appreciation Day (October 18).

When developing seasonal content or identifying an awareness or appreciation day or month to guide your social media content, read up on its history to find out who created it and what it represents. Make sure it aligns with your company’s brand and values.

If you want to develop content around breast cancer awareness in October and you sell women’s clothing, think of how you can make it relevant. You could put up signs at your retail store reminding women to get a mammogram and then offer a discount to women who bring in proof that they had their annual mammogram. Publish content about this in social media to promote both your special offer as well as the importance of mammograms. If you sell men’s clothing, you could take a similar approach by encouraging men to remind the women in their lives to get mammograms.

While you will want to publish breast cancer awareness messages as early as September leading up to October, this kind of valuable content does not have to be exclusively published during the fall and could be repurposed several times a year, particularly if you are committed to the cause. Keep in mind that content based around awareness or appreciation days will have shorter life spans and will only come around once a year.

Publishing content to social networks based on popular seasonal themes can boost engagement on your posts, particularly if the message is universally appealing and is shared widely. As with any trending topic in social media, only participate if it is a match for your company, your customers, and your prospects.