Are you preparing your business for the holidays? A virtual assistant will give you all the social media help you need for this busy season. Outsourcing Angel’s team of virtual assistants are professional and skilled in digital marketing and social media. Learn more about Outsourcing Angel and how a virtual angel can help you launch and manage creative social media Christmas campaigns this festive season. The countdown to Christmas Day has finally begun! But instead of lining up at store counters and scouring the shops for great deals, more shoppers are turning to their smartphones to do their holiday shopping.
According to a report by Awario, 74% of shoppers are influenced by social media for their purchasing decisions. In 2018, just in time for the holidays, Instagram has enabled users to purchase via tags in Stories. Pinterest has also included pricing information in their Pins. These new developments mean one thing to businesses: we need to be present in all these moments of discovery and influence that happen on social media.
Your best course of action is to develop creative social media Christmas campaigns that will capture your customers’ attention and signal Christmas shopping.
Campaign Goals
How will you come up with a creative social media campaign? Businesses need to have clear-cut goals that will help you define what your campaigns will be like. Here are some examples:
- Get people into the holiday spirit
- Increase social media engagement
- Increase holiday sales
We recommend that you organise a brainstorm session with your employees or team of virtual assistants. This way, you can discuss campaigns that go well with your holiday objectives, your budget and your timeframe.
If you haven’t come up with creative social media Christmas campaigns yet, we’re here to share with you some of the best practices our Outsourcing Angel virtual assistants do for their clients’ holiday social media campaigns.
Social Media Campaigns
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Festive profile and cover photos
Shoppers browse social media pages now more frequently than ever, so it’s best to change it with holiday-themed images to get them in the holiday spirit. But don’t forget that your profile image should still radiate your values as a brand.
Here are some creative ways to do this:
- If you’re using your business logo as your social media profile picture, you can have your virtual assistant redesign it to include a Santa hat, a mistletoe, a reindeer nose or any detail that inspires a holiday feel.
- If you have special holiday products you want to promote or an important announcement for the season, you can ask your virtual assistant or graphic designer to create a cover photo with a holiday-themed background and fonts.
- Cook up a holiday-inspired hashtag and put them under your logo. Think #ChristmasWishlist2019 or #SeasonsGreetingsfromBusinessName or #Merrier2019 Be creative!
Don’t forget to use your holiday profile images across all your social media accounts for consistency and to help your customers recognize your brand easily.
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Holiday visuals
Christmas is a very visual event. So this is the best time to create or curate festive images and decorations, like reds and greens, winter wonderland, Santa Claus and many others. Here are some recommendations:
- Use holiday-related images in your social media posts, like your office decorations or Christmas-themed pastries.
- Have your virtual assistant design a holiday-themed template and use this with all the content you’re posting over the holidays.
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Hard-to-miss Christmas offer
For small businesses, over 20-30% of sales come in during the holiday season. One of the best ways to take advantage of the buying season is to create a Christmas offer. This will attract buyers to your social media pages or your online store and motivate them to purchase.
These offers are a hit with our clients’ customers:
- Special discounts or holiday coupons customers can use upon checkout to avail of discounts
- One-day offer – offer some products for a discounted price for one day only
- Buy one, get one
- Cashback offers
- Free shipping day
The goal is to bring attention to your special offer so when creating graphics, place it over a background that is not too distracting. Highlight more important details, such as discount value, by giving it a bigger font size.
You can enlist the help of your virtual assistant in creating your holiday offer graphic. Online tools such as Canva and Crello can help you design stunning holiday-themed visuals with a lot of free social media templates to choose from.
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Contest or giveaway
Contests and giveaways are great ways to spark engagement in your social media pages and at the same time expand your audience base. Before creating your mechanics, make sure they are easy and won’t require too much from your audience. You can do a big giveaway or several small ones, depending on the budget. It can be something simple like a gift certificate or something grand like a free service or item.
These types of content perform better as paid promotions as these are sure-fire strategies to widen your reach, so we recommend our clients to set aside a small budget for your contest or giveaway posts.
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Sharing a touching story
Because Christmas is a season of joy, this is the perfect time to put your story-telling skills to good use. Share a heartwarming story that will get your audience into the holiday spirit, like a photo of family and friends, charity activities or a simple behind-the-scenes photo of your preparations for the holidays.
You can tell your story through a brief caption on Instagram, a blog or an interview video on Facebook.
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Hosting an event
One of the best ways to get noticed on social media is to host a holiday event. This can be an online sale, a Christmas party, new product release or a bazaar. Have your virtual assistant create attractive event invites to be shared across all your social media profiles or sent via email.
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Creating a Gift Guide
At this time of year, many holiday shoppers are on the lookout for gift ideas. Ease their burden by throwing together a sophisticated gift guide featuring your own products and services. You can create separate guides for families, friends, workmates, children or even pets. Compelling, well-designed gift guides are more likely to get shared on social media, so make your gift guide a highly useful one.
