Use social media to generate holiday buzz around your brand

The holidays are noisy, and not just in the bustling-city, crowded-shopping-mall sense of the word. Advertisements and sale signs hang in shop windows, brightly colored billboards and loud commercials scream at consumers to come buy gifts at this store, or that mall. Advertisements assault the senses, with visual ads plastered on almost every flat surface you can find, radio ads that play between songs, and even online ads on websites and in your inboxes. Retail is no joke during the holiday season, as different companies compete to get your attention, and end up drowning each other out with all the noise.

Billboards on Edsa HighwayImage from Rhouell Cariño, Flickr

So how can keep your company’s message from being lost in the holiday noise? By building personal, engaging and useful connections with consumers. You can do this with one of the most interactive marketing tools ever invented; social media.

Social media allows active conversation between a company and its audiences, something that traditional advertising lacked. Within a few minutes, a customer can tweet at a company, receive a response, and form a relationship with the brand. A negative review on Facebook can be commented on by a brand representative and the brand image could be saved. A social media brand manager can monitor what is being said about a company in real time, and respond!

It’s an exciting tool, and one that can be leveraged to make your company heard and felt during the busy holidays. Below are a few tips for using social media to generate holiday buzz about your company.

• Show your fun side: create a holiday graphic, tell a joke, make your audience smile. Have your copywriter and graphic designer invest some time in a series of image posts for the holidays.
• Have a competition: Getting fans engaged with a social media contest can earn your brand plenty of organic coverage. Ask your fans what their favorite thing about your brand is, and reward the answers with the most likes or shares.
• Giveaways: Use the Christmas countdown to reward your fans. Make wishes come true everyday for the 12 days of Christmas and capture the results on your social media sites.
• Share tips: Useful information is more welcome than hard sales. Make sure to time these tips well to give them the best chance of standing out. Check out the best times to post on different social media platforms.
• Hashtags: Create a custom hashtag for all your social media campaigns. This will make it easier to track the results and to gain more reach, since anyone can look up the hashtags for all replies.

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