With the holiday season fully upon us, we tend to reflect on our good fortune and are more giving towards others. With holiday gatherings, Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals lasting much longer than one day, it is the perfect time to take your business’s social media strategy to the next level with goodwill themed posts to promote you and your services while giving back to your community and those who have supported you. The following are tips for putting a holiday spin on your social media platforms over the next few months.

Acknowledge Your Supporters

Take the time to thank your supporters while also highlighting your good reviews. Share positive feedback your supporters have left for you while writing a heartfelt message about the impact their positivity has on you and your brand. By being open with your followers you are showing how your customers are more than that and how they impact not only your business, but you. 

By highlighting positive feedback left for you, you are sharing why you are trusted through real people’s stories. This is a reason to celebrate and thank those who have put their trust in you. It is also beneficial for those looking for your service and shows why you are their best option.

To elevate this task, create a slideshow of multiple reviews to really drive your appreciation home. Include branded intro and outro slides on these slideshows and add background music to really bring these posts to life and gain more attention.

Make a point of sharing these posts once a week. You can choose a day such as Thursday and tag each post with #ThankfulThursday to add a level of consistency and help users see your posts when searching for similar hashtags. Go beyond the one hashtag and find relevant tags that are often searched by the platform’s users to increase the likelihood of your posts being seen and gaining new followers.

Give Back to Your Community

Now is the perfect time to give back while also building your brand and business. While yearlong giving is wonderful, the holidays are the perfect time to go a step further and promote your business for a good cause. Create a contest for your business and target audience. A fun idea would be anytime someone tags your business in a post promoting your service or product, you will make a donation to a local charity of your choice. This not only helps boost your business, but engages your community in a thoughtful way.

Take it a step further and recruit other local businesses to take part in this challenge. By building a community event through social media, you are not only boosting your own online presence but helping other local businesses while giving back. 

Social media users like seeing businesses with real content. Stock photography and static posts can only go so far in building an audience and driving conversions. What better way to achieve these goals than with a steady stream of real photos with real customers highlighting your brand. To really engage viewers, create videos! By recording short video clips talking about the contest, progress being made, and goals being met, you have a stronger chance of hooking users and keeping them interested in your business. 

This type of marketing plan also has the ability to gain attention from bigger sources, such as news outlets or podcasts, which would help accelerate your online presence even more.

Offer Ideas to Others

Another way to give back this season is to share more of what you do and why you do it. In addition to sharing positive reviews left by your clients or customers, share tips on how your services work and how your followers can use these on their own. 

For example, if you own a photographer studio you can share tips on the best times during the day to capture the perfect photo. Not only does this provide your followers with useful advice on a service you offer, it showcases you as an expert in this field. 

By giving back to those who follow you, you are building trust in your community and confidence in you as a professional. If you’re able, make these posts videos. By sharing your tips through video, you are adding an extra layer of confidence and in turn building even more trust with your followers.

Similar to your weekling testimonial posts, choose a day to share your tips with your followers, for example these posts can be tagged as #WisdomWednesday. 

Regardless of how you choose to give this season, be sure your social media game is up to par. Keep your timelines active and relevant with current content to engage your followers. Optimize each post to ensure you are getting the best exposure possible through tagging, linking, and adding appropriate titles and descriptions. End each post with a call to action to give your followers something to act on. Don’t miss out on opportunities to turn a casual follower into a customer for life. 

Although this is a great time of the year to enhance your social media pages, it doesn’t and shouldn’t stop once the season passes. Make it one of your business goals to continue your active timelines indefinitely as social media is becoming a major search engine and these platforms are vital in marketing your business. Don’t fall behind on the times. Social media marketing isn’t going away and it’s time to embrace these platforms as a major player in the online presence game.

End this year with a social media bang and bring in next with a strong timeline and following to continue building your brand for years to come.