Christmas signals a clear change in tone and visuals for a brand’s social media. Whilst arguably it is easier to brainstorm creative ideas, with themes such as gift ideas and ‘giving back’, this time really emphasises how your USPs need to shine, and stand out from the crowd.
COVID-19 makes this period even more difficult than normal, as physical events and spaces are not available to further promote brand messaging. That’s why organic and paid social media advertising is crucial to reaching engaged audiences.
We’ve taken a look back at some of our favourite past Christmas social media campaigns, to break through the tinsel and glitter and analyse the real brand ROI secured through social media SEO and follower growth and engagement.
NOMO – Daily Competitions
December is a time for thinking about others, but it is easy to forget to treat yourself! For vegan choc brand NOMO, we ran a ’12 days of NOMO’ campaign, where users had the chance to win different flavours of their favourite chocolate, by following different entry mechanics, such as tagging a ‘Christmas-obsessed friend’, and commenting their favourite free-from festive treat! This is a great way to supercharge follower numbers, ready for new products and campaigns launching in the new year when audiences are more captive to trying new ideas.
Having 12 days of competitions also encourages your existing audience to return to your page each day, repeatedly seeing your key messages, meaning your future content will rank more highly in their feeds.
Smile Train – Online Events
Without a specific product or physical space, charities can use social media is an opportunity continually interest their target audiences, ensuring repeated donations. Children’s charity Smile Train traditionally runs an annual Christmas carol concert in London, and our team uses Instagram’s Story tool to make sure everyone feels the festive spirit at home. During the pandemic, Smile Train moving the concert fully online, using Facebook’s Premiere tool to instead run a ‘live’ stream of their pre-recorded, socially-distanced concert.
These unclear times have signalled for the future, pandemic or otherwise, that all events are uncertain. Get in touch with our team to understand how your cancelled 2021 events, could return digitally!
Seasalt Cornwall – Visual Identity
Outside of our own clients, we love to keep an eye on what other brands are doing on social media. We’re particularly drawn to those with a cohesive visual identity. Even though each post on a feed conveys an individual message, planning each one as visually part of a theme overall, is crucial for brand recall.
Whilst fashion brand Seasalt Cornwall normally has mustard and sea blues as their core palate, having a shift to greens and darker blues signalled a change in direction for winter, and that they are a destination for festive gifts! They have even provided the instructions to create Christmas crafts based on some of the designs in their collection, meaning you can bring their colour palette into your home! To take this a step further, Seasalt could create an Instagram Highlight to house the great step-by-step content on their website, which would help with shareability.
We think they should create a new Instagram Highlight to house the great step-by-step content on their website, to help with shareability.
Celebrations – Community Engagement
Goodnight Twitter x pic.twitter.com/ROkWuiOQfn
— Celebrations (@UKCelebrations) December 4, 2020
Bounty – are you a lover or a hater? Celebrations know about this polarisation all too well. Last year, they made Bounty the first number in their advent calendar! This year they’ve gone even further with more Bounty’s included throughout, and the use of bespoke memes on Twitter saying loud and clear that this was no accident.
By boosting these memes with a paid spend, they not only helped with discoverability for their brand which is only active for one month in the year, but also encouraged users to purchase the advent calendar next year, to see what stunt they will pull next!
From competitions to unique opportunities to engage, social media should be seen as an exciting and important aspect of your wider marketing campaign. Contact the social team today for us to help you activate your online presence for next Christmas and beyond.
