Blog Article

Planning your social media at Christmas can be a little daunting so I have put together some top tips on how to prepare.

Christmas content / Photoshoot

You are going to need a library of festive imagery over the Christmas period therefore planning a photoshoot ahead of time will save you some time in the long run.

A photoshoot doesn’t have to be elaborate, a simple set up at home or at work is perfect. Whether you are taking product images, personal branding images or filming for a reel, introduce some festive props. Remember to keep these props on brand! For example, if your company logo is magenta then think about adding some magenta baubles or different shades of pink wrapping paper.

Start by brainstorming a few ideas and ask yourself a few questions:

• What would your followers like to see from you over the Christmas period?
• What imagery are your competitors using?
• How can you make your photos stand out?
• What is currently trending in your field?
• Share something personal. This is a great way to build a relationship with your followers, people love being nosey!

Scheduling

You don’t want to be sat on your phone on Christmas morning trying to get the perfect shot or thinking of what to write in your caption, so It’s important to plan ahead.

Once you have your ideas together, it’s time to start scheduling! There are lots of different platforms and tools that you can use to schedule your social content such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Later. Instagram also recently announced that you can now schedule your posts within the app if you have a professional account.

So, what’s next?

Before you start posting there are a few important factors that you need to consider:

• What times will your followers be most active online? (This will help to improve engagement so as many people see your posts as possible)
• What days are they most active?
• What content performs better? (Static images, videos, animations etc.)

Don’t worry if you don’t know the answers to these questions. You can run reports on your social accounts and view your analytics which will give you the answers to the above. For example, on Instagram, if you click the ‘Insights’ tab found in the menu, you will be able to view the top locations of your followers, the age range and their most active times.

You can experiment with posting times in advance and see which days and times work best for your followers.

So now you know what time to post, but what will you be posting?

Take an image from your recent photoshoot and tell your audience about your product or service and try to make it personal. How can your product or service help your target customer? Does it solve a problem? Could it be a stocking filler?

Remember, people have a noticeably short attention span therefore you need to catch their attention within the first few seconds. Start with something that they can’t scroll past and encourages them to read on.

Hashtags

So now you have your image or video and your caption so it’s time to add your hashtags!

Hashtags vary depending on what social platform you are using, but they are really important when growing your audience on Instagram and TikTok for example. Your hashtags should be your keywords, what would people search to find you? For example, if you are posting a video about eco-friendly ways to wrap your presents, use hashtags such as #ecofriendly #giftwrapping #giftwrappingideas #ecogiftwrap.

On Instagram you can use a maximum of 30 hashtags but let’s divide this up a little. Hashtags are ranked as low, medium and high. An example of a highest ranked hashtag would be #christmas which has 189 million posts whereas #ecofriendlygiftwrappingideas has fewer than 100 posts. However, this shouldn’t mean you stop using them. Pick 10 of each so that you can reach out to wide audience.

Posted!

So you’ve created your content, scheduled your post and now it’s been posted.

Don’t relax just yet…

It is easy to let the scheduling tool run on its own in the background when you have a never ending to do list. However, you can’t put in all that work and then not follow up on comments or messages. Once each post goes out, take 5 minutes to check how it’s performing and respond to any comments. Not only does this help with building relationships, but it also improves your engagement.

Top tips

1. Try to think outside of the box when it comes to creating your content, you don’t want it to become ‘samey’ as this will stop your followers from engaging.
2. Reels and videos are getting the highest engagement rates at the minute so it is worth exploring a short Christmas advert to advertise your business.
3. Spend 15-30 minutes a day scrolling through socials. This will help you to stay up to date with current trends.
4. Interact with your followers. This is a really important part that often gets overlooked. You can combine this with tip 3 by commenting on your followers posts, liking a recent video they have created or sending them a private message. People like to get to know the person behind the account.

This may seem like a lot of information to take in but start off simple and slowly it will become part of your routine.

If you need help with creating content for social media, get in touch to find out more about our social media management packages and training.