Festive Content for Digital Campaigns

No matter how big or small your organisation may be or even the size of your online presence, it is still possible to take full advantage of social media marketing with some well-timed and well-produced, agile content. This type of planned content is a must when it comes to raising awareness and expanding your customer base.

Whilst social media marketing is a full-time 365-day year-round process, festive seasons are particularly great periods to take advantage of your social media platforms and create some stunning marketing campaigns. Events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Halloween, and the festive holiday periods provide you with great opportunities to maximise your impact.

One of the best times of year to produce wonderful, heartfelt, engaging content that your audience will love and share is….. Dare I say it? Christmas! Christmas is still one of the most popular holiday seasons, and the way for you to connect with audiences can be more playful and possibly more meaningful this time of year.

Without further ado, let us get started with our first idea.

5 Gold Rings

Ring #1: Create a festive video campaign

Ring #2: Keep it simple

Ring #3: Count down to Christmas

Ring #4: Collaborate with your audience

Ring #5: Share some festive recipes

Ring #1:  Create a Festive Video Campaign. Lean into what makes you or your organisation brilliant!

During a Christmas promotion, focus on what you or your organisation do best. For example, the Black Country Living Museum produced this wonderful short video that was shared on social media channels. The video showcases how the festive season has been celebrated at the museum through the years.

This is a great example of why you need to start thinking about the content creation process early. Having lots of people and lots of moving parts can be a logistical challenge, so consider stripping it back and having just one or two people describe their festive celebrations in their own way.

Share all of the journey!

If you can, share behind the scenes images or footage of the planning of your special event. This kind of extra content goes a long way to illustrating to potential visitors just how much hard work has gone into your event. As long as you’re creative, the possibilities are really endless.

Ring #2: Keep it simple. Rope in the office extrovert!

It does not have to be an elaborate film shot over several weeks, however, it may require convincing the office extrovert to dress up in a festive jumper and get in front of the camera. As creative and cultural individuals and organisations, there should be no end of performing talent on hand to star in your content.

There is evidence to suggest that audiences prefer live videos over reading blogs. With many preferring videos to a standard post, here’s an example that demonstrates this point really well.

Ring #3: Count down to Christmas. ‘On the second day of Christmas….’

With the festive season being the most-anticipated time of the year for many people, keep your social media followers up-to-date in a festive and fun way with content that maintains the look and feel of your organisation, and upholds your core values.

Instagram Live (IGTV) is a fantastic way to connect with audiences to increase trust and engagement. By showing a human side to your organisation, you will be able to build a better relationship with your followers, in real-time. During the festive season, as well as sharing behind-the-scenes content, you could also consider giving tutorials or even starting a daily or weekly festive show. This can be published as live content on IGTV, or in your stories as a series of posts throughout the day.

TOP TIP: Canva is a great piece of software that allows you to create festive videos or stills templates that complement your identity. There are similar tools available to download for free such as Snappa – quick and easy graphic design software, and Pixlr.com – a free online photo editor.

Ring #4: Collaborate with your audience

Over the years, influencer marketing is getting used more and more by brands around the world who want to establish their social media presence. The problem is that influencers have occasionally made a bad name for themselves by endorsing a wide variety of products, some of which you might not want associated with you or your brand.

Therefore, consider asking for the authentic real-world views of those who have actually engaged with you or your organisation to lend their voice. Here are a few ideas for how to encourage this:

• Run a competition to share experiences
• Use a dedicated hashtag
• Directly reach out and engage with those who take their time to post great things about you or your organisation

Remember, sharing is caring!

The most popular social platforms for engaging with loyal audiences have proven to be Facebook and Instagram

Setting up a festive photo competition is a great way to promote your festive period activities and can be a part of your user-generated content strategy as a way of moving forward. What this means is that you inform your followers about the photo contest and they have to come up with the best possible photos based on your guidelines. What the winner gets in return is entirely up to you.

Ring #5: Share Some Festive Recipes

As part of your festive social media campaign, you could try and gather the seasonal recipes you and your team love the most and repurpose them into different content formats. From Instagram posts and stories, to YouTube and TikTok videos, typically people love this type of social media content in the lead-up to the festive season. Recipes are quick and easy ideas to increase the output of your social content around the festive season.

Here’s an example from our friends at English Heritage.

How to Plan Your Festive Social Media Campaign

Planning a festive social media campaign is all about timing. The festive season is always the same time of year so it should not be a surprise to anyone. Meetings, strategies, and content calendars are just a few of the things you will need to have in place as early as possible. Let us have a look at a step-by-step process to help you set up a plan.

Step #1: Understand your audience

First, you need to understand who your audience is.

This mainly means two things:

• Looking at demographics i.e. age, location.
• Identifying what your followers want to see i.e. analysing existing posts to see what content has performed well in the past.

These are a few things to know before setting up your campaign to make sure it will appeal to your audience. You will also have to be aware of what type of content they like; images, videos, reels, and stories are just a few of the things you can test out. All in all, creating a campaign that is tailored to your audience and aligned with your brand, is key to any successful festive marketing idea.

Step #2: Define your goals and objectives

What is it you want to achieve by the end of your campaign? Is it to increase your visitors? Raise brand awareness? Or maybe just increase your follower numbers? Defining your goals and objectives early on and planning your actions with them in mind will help you in the long run.

Setting goals and objectives is really important as it helps you to understand whether your campaign was successful or not, once it is finished.

Step #3: Create your campaign

This is the moment you have been waiting for; it is time to create your campaign!

Whether it is a video for TikTok or a Story for Instagram, hopefully, this guide has given you some ideas to get started. Do not rule out good, old-fashioned photos on an Instagram carousel, it is still a great way to illustrate your festive plans. Once you’ve settled on an idea or two, it is time to get organised. What tools will you need? Who is going to be involved?

Step #4: Promote your campaign

Your campaign has been created and it is time to share it with the world.

Two important considerations during this step are:

• Which platforms are you going to use to ensure your campaign reaches the right people?
• When is the best time to publish the content to have the most impact?

Creating a content schedule is an essential part of the whole process and will help you stay on top of your marketing efforts. If your campaign is all about Christmas for example, will you upload your campaign before Christmas? During it? After New Year’s Day? Whatever your timeframe, make sure to communicate it to your team and stick to it for optimum results. Tools like Hootsuite are brilliant for scheduling content as you can prepare everything in advance.

What’s next?

The Digital Culture Network is here to support you or your organisation. Our Tech Champions can provide free 1-2-1 support to all creative and cultural individuals and organisations who are in receipt of, or eligible for, Arts Council England funding. If you need help or would like to chat with us about any of the advice we have covered above, please get in touch. Sign up to our newsletter below and follow us on Twitter @ace_dcn and LinkedIn for the latest updates.