It’s that time of year and we all have one eye on the calendar and one on the clock. Social media post ideas aren’t the first thing you and your chamber staff have in mind. You all need a break and hopefully planning on spending quality time away from the office with family and friends.
And it’s well deserved.
But the holidays are also an excellent way to deepen relationships with your members and community through social media.
I know…
It’s the last thing you want to do, right? But it’s a great time to reach people.
In this article, we’ll explain why the holidays are the perfect time to be heard over the noise and how you can participate on social media without feeling like you have no work/life balance.
Christmas Myth: No One is on Social Media Over Christmas
People might tell you that you’re wasting your time to post at Christmas, but it’s really not true. How many unbearable social commitments have you been forced to attend over the holidays and what is the one way you can escape when you can’t get out of them physically?
That’s right…
Your handy, dandy phone.
Whether it’s conversations with Uncle Political Party you’re trying to avoid or spouse work functions with Boss McBoring, many of us turn to the instant entertainment of our phones.
At the same time, most businesses are running on skeleton crews and don’t do a lot of posting over the holidays. Many companies and organizations don’t post much more then a holiday greeting.
If you’re able to schedule a few engaging posts before you leave for the holidays, your message may be heard better at that time than when everybody is posting during a regular workday.
How to do Holiday Posting Right
While you do have a better chance to reach more people during the holidays because there are fewer businesses posting, the one thing you want to be careful about is what you post. This is not the time for a heavy-handed sales pitch. (Of course, there’s never a good time for that.) But you might be tempted to be a little salesy if you think more people are listening.
However as your audience is trying to enjoy the holidays, they won’t appreciate a lot of “come join us; buy a membership today” type of posts. Instead, use the kinds of posts in this article.
Easily Create Engaging Holiday Posts
Before we get into the types of posts that are most effective during the holidays, let’s talk about keeping your sanity.
We know you’re busy and you want to find some sort of work-life balance over the holidays. Maybe you’re even one of the fortunate chambers that closes between Christmas and New Year’s. Regardless of when your chamber is open you want to post consistently while you’re gone.
The easiest way to do this is to use a scheduler. There are some native schedulers on individual platforms but for the simplest way to populate all of your platforms use one like HootSuite, Buffer, Agoura Pulse, SproutSocial, PostPlanner, CoSchedule, MeetEdgar, or others.
You can select multiple days, times, repeat posts, and other valuable options. Many of the schedulers have also incorporated helpful tools like basic photo editing and links to free image banks. This saves you time of going back and forth between finding the right image and then uploading it to editing software. This works very well for basic photo editing like adding text to an image. For more advanced image creation and edits you’ll still want to use an editing tool like Canva.
Now let’s get into the kind of posts that are extremely effective this time of year.
Social Media Post Ideas for the Holidays
Holidays are a good time to get in front of your ideal audience but you don’t want to bore them with talk of joining the chamber.
There are a lot of people who are checked out from business talk right now. Instead, you want to entertain and inspire them. Sure, some people will also desire to learn something from your social media post ideas. But in general, it’s best to keep things light this time of year.
If you do decide you want to provide your audience with a few helpful tools or things to consider over the holiday break, make them simple like a checklist or quick ideas to start the new year.
Remember, most people will be scanning their phones right now. They won’t have hours to dedicate to anything you put in front of them. You are competing with a lot of other things that are going on in their lives. So it’s best that your content be easily digestible.
Here are a few engaging social media post ideas specifically good for the holidays:
- Ask questions. “This or that?” posts are quick engagers that someone can answer sitting at a traffic light (not that we advocate that in any way).
- Roundup posts. These best of posts are ideal for people looking for a little reading material. You could do your own “best of” chamber blog posts or focus on others such as “best video showcasing our town,” “best local commercials,” or “best use of social media.”
- Countdown posts. An easy one to do is a countdown to 2020. Each day leading up to the new year you can give your members a business tip. Entitle the countdown something like “7 Tips to Get More Customers in 2020.” Encourage people to select the option so that Facebook will show your content first so they don’t miss them.
- Share your favorites. Invite your audience to share their favorites around the holidays. This could be recipes, drinks, places to see lights in your town, favorite Christmas song, or anything that people would have an opinion about.
- Fall is the official kick-off. Think of social media posts for fall as a special combination of the feel of summer relaxation but the start of the holiday season. Embrace it and don’t skip straight to Christmas.
- Share the most overrated. Invite your audience to share the thing about the holidays that they think is most overrated. Again, this could be a drink, food, television show, movie, or anything else that might get a discussion going.
- Wardrobe posts. Ask your audience to share the best ugly sweater they’ve seen or what they’re wearing for New Year’s Eve.
- Pets and kids. Pets and kids are the subjects of some of the most adorable Christmas pictures out there. Invite your audience to share their favorites.
- Numbered image. If you want to open the doors to hilarity, invite your audience to share a picture in a specific order from their phone. For instance, you might post “please share the third image on your phone with no explanation.”
- “Caption this holiday style.” Whether you use scene in a Christmas movie or one you took, ask your audience to add the caption to your funny shot.
- Last-minute volunteer opportunities. There are many nonprofits that need help this time of year. If you have the time, you can put together a list of those that are looking for volunteers. If you don’t have that kind of time, post a call on Facebook for nonprofits looking for help. Invite them to share the details of what they need on your page as part of the post. That way if anyone is feeling in the Christmas spirit and wants to give something back, you’ve become a bridge between them and the organizations that need help this time of year.
- Pay it forward. Allow your viewers to brag a little about how they’re helping. Invite people to add what they’ve done to pay it forward on your post. Not only does this make the do-gooders feel good about their efforts, it also has an infectious way of enticing others to follow their cue.
- Share a favorite decoration. Regardless of the holiday that your members celebrate, there’s probably a decoration that they love. Create a post that encourages them to take a picture of their holiday treasure and share it in the comments. You’d be surprised how many decorations from childhood elicit comments from others who remember similar pieces. For example, remember that ceramic Christmas tree with the lights that we all seemed to have in the late 70s and early 80s? It’s synonymous with Christmas for a few generations but it’s also back on the shelves of many popular stores. These type of posts that are multi-generational give your audience an appreciation for everything old being new again.
How about a holiday bonus post?
Sure, it’s that time of year!
Have you seen the 10-day photo challenges to post a picture every day around a particular theme? There’s parent of an athlete, actor, teacher, etc. As a year-end celebration, you could invite members to the “10-day life of a business owner” challenge. The challenge would request that they post pictures of the truth behind owning your own business.
A Final “Must” for Social Media Post Ideas During the Holidays
There is nothing engaging about asking a question and walking away. In fact, if you did this in real life people would think you were pretty rude. Yet you see it on social media all the time. Businesses go to great lengths to come up with very engaging topics. When the audience rings in, there’s no one there sharing in the conversation.
It’s a missed opportunity.
While scheduling posts will bring some sanity to your holiday, you also need to make some time to interact with those who are commenting on your posts. Many traditionalists will argue that Christmas should be a time for family. They don’t want to be interacting on chamber social media.
However, if you think about your day, you can always find a time when interacting on social media will not be taking you away from your family. This may be for a few minutes while you cook dinner. It may be when you’re waiting in the car to pick up a loved one. You may have a few minutes waiting on a delivery or for someone to call you back. You don’t need hours to interact with people on social media, just a few stolen moments.
P.S. If you’re sitting in front of the television, you have time to interact with people who have given you some of their day. Just wait until the rest of the family falls asleep watching football!
Need social media post ideas for the fall? Or social media post ideas for the summer?
