12 Happy Holiday Season Tips For Social Media Engagement

As discussed previously in 12 Days of Christmas Content Strategies, engagement goes up by 21% during the holiday period. From now until the beginning of January, your social media pages are in a primal position to thrive, just so long as you follow these 12 happy holiday season tips!

1) Establish where your ideal client hangs out.

Before you make any holiday-related content decisions, you must first pinpoint where you're most likely to find your ideal client. Or better yet, where they are best going to find you.

Ultimately, your content will drive more traffic and engagement if it's promoted on a platform your community and those alike flock to.

If you're having trouble narrowing down your ideal client, this article can help. And if you need assistance on where they hang out, check this out instead.

And once you've decided on your social media of choice, the festive season can make its debut!

2) Do your research and be mindful.

We know we promised the beginning of the fun, but hear us out. Ahead of planning any holiday content, remember not everyone enjoys the holidays and you may find a lot of people aren't celebrating any in December.

We advise researching a little about the celebrations taking place throughout the month, Hannukah for example. This way, you can create posts about a variety of celebrations, creating inclusivity and in turn increasing your social media engagement.

Visit Later for more help with creating an inclusive holiday marketing strategy.

It's also worth making note of your follower demographic, again taking your ideal client into consideration. You may find that 60% of your followers don't celebrate Christmas, if this is the case, your content plan may have to be altered to suit your community.

Always remember to keep your community at the centre of what you're doing, if they can't relate to your posts or gain little from your content they won't hesitate to become a member of somewhere they feel seen and heard.

3) Decorate your profile for the holidays!

Now you're ready to make a start on your holiday content, you may as well look the part! You wouldn't leave your living room without a tree on Christmas morning, so don't leave your feed or story posts without a little pizzaz.

You can check out 16 Community Focused Holiday Templates (p.s. they're free).

Decorating your platforms will encourage your followers, or perhaps strangers, to browse your content. There's nothing the generation of social media loves more than a good trend, even one that's simply parading a few balloons on your Instagram story for the whole of December.

Let’s not forget when everyone and their pet cat was flipping bottles all over their social media feeds in the hopes it would land the right way up! Call it Instagram engagement 101, I guess.

4) Host small events for your community members

With the addition of Zoom in today's modern tech world, it's never been easier to organise and host small online events. So why not do just that?

These events can be holiday-themed, i.e. a celebrations quiz, including questions about celebrations around the year, all year round. Or they can be an informal meetup event to discuss the tribulations and success of 2021. Whatever you deem best suited to your community, host an online soirée for it and watch as your profile skyrockets in traffic.

In the case of organising such an event, it may help to create a "ticket" for it on Eventbrite as it will allow ease with keeping track of the number of people who sign up and provide them with the link once the event draws near.

Alternatively, if your community is based on Ugenie, you can create an event on uHubs and notify all your members immediately!

Click here to learn more about how Ugenie works.

5) Use holiday hashtags

Hashtags: a simple but effective way to promote your posts on explore pages and end up on more personal feeds.

The hashtags you decide to use should depend on both the type of content you're posting as well as the holiday you're posting in awe of.

As long as you refrain from #MerryChristmas on a Kwanza related post, you'll be great.

It may be useful to do some research on the best hashtags to use for different holidays to ensure engagement opportunities.

Or read The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Hashtags for 2021.

6) Create content that encourages discussion.

This may seem straightforward, as a community leader you want your content to spark conversation all year round. But the holiday conversation can be different, meaningful, personal and encouraging of others to share their experiences.

Discussion can come from something such as a post discussing the way different countries celebrate Christmas around the world. It's sure to spark a back and forth of communities of people on social media letting others in on their past with celebrations.

Exchanging stories and fond memories from partaking in celebrations will also strengthen the connection with your community, among members and with yourself. And there's always the chance of this bond lasting a lifetime, resulting in loyal members and ensured lifespan of support.

Read more about how social media can help form meaningful connections.

7) Be consistent.

I'm sure you've been managing communities and/or social media for a while, thus being consistent is probably second nature to you but when a month as hectic as December rolls around, it's important we remind ourselves to remain a dependable source of content that our community can always rely on.

If you don't already, now would be a perfect time to start using a social media scheduling tool such as Later. You'll be able to schedule Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and many more posts in advance, making your upload schedule one less thing to consistently remember.

And although being consistent doesn't result in immediate engagement, it will make the promise of follower involvement probable as people are wired to like consistency, click here to find out why.

8) Post useful content.

One weakness when it comes to holiday content is posting for the sake of posting. For example, if you run a crocheting membership community, it's probable your members have no interest in hearing about the latest console's exclusive Christmas Eve drop so don't tell them about it.

Instead post about the most popular crocheting patterns for December 2021. We all know which post would get more engagement, and I don't think it's the former.

At the bane of holiday engagement is being aware; be aware of your ideal client, their interests, your posts and how these things slot together nicely.

You should also ensure you Maintain Brand Consistency while posting for the festive season.

9) Avoid an overload of content.

This may sound contradictory, all we've been discussing is posting content thus far, after all. But you must bear in mind there's a difference between sharing content and overwhelming your followers and/or community members with too many things to think about in an already hectic month!

Planning content in advance will help to ensure you don't drown Instagram with all your wonderful insights in one go. Because though it would be lovely to hear everything you want to share, social media users are more likely to interact if they don't feel suffocated.

Consider learning How to Actively Mitigate Content Overload for a smoother content strategy.

And of course, posting less also gives communities the chance to process and interact with your content aptly, thus increasing engagement.

10) Remain active.

Even if you aren't actively posting new content, stay active on Instagram and Facebook stories so your members and followers know you're still there.

There's no harm in taking a break from social media ever, especially not during a period of celebrations but make sure to tell your followers if you'll be gone for a while as they might lose interest if you go MIA without an explanation.

Not everyone will have the patience to hope you come back with more content so try your best to warn your following, or if you can help it, stay active.

We recommend reading How Social Media Managers can Unplug Over the Holidays: 5 Tips From an Expert for a better insight.

11) Get personal with holiday cheer.

As previously mentioned in tip 6, it's important for community building that members feel they can share relevant experiences with yourself and others. One way you can attain this is by being the first to spark conversation. Letting your own voice be heard can be the most effective and powerful way to encourage engagement as it forms a sense of security and comfort.

Some ideas of what you can post are: your funniest Christmas memory, your worst holiday story, your cookie baking fail, your hot chocolate at 11 pm on a dreary Saturday, the prettiest wrapping paper you saw on your weekly Tesco trip, the list goes on!

And be mindful that as Christmas day approaches, the increase in festive engagement may drop again while families and friends are spending time together and having limited social media days.

That doesn't mean you should stop posting around this time, but perhaps consider mellowing your content out and creating posts that are easy for people to interact with while having a quick scroll while sitting on the toilet!

12) Show appreciation for your members this holiday season with the gift of giving.

Last but not least, appreciate your social media followers and community members. They support you, offer friendship and your life wouldn't be the same without them, we think you should let them know that. And just in case they don't believe you, throw in a little gift for them to really say thanks for the year.

A great gift would be a discounted month of your membership community, here are another 6 Holiday Sales Promotions That Work Well for Membership Sites.

January is always a bit rough after the heavy holiday spending and so this gesture would stick and increase the likelihood of visitors coming back to your page to engage in your content in the future.

So there you have it, 12 festive tips for social media engagement.

Ugenie wishes you happy holidays, from our community managers to yours.

P.S. Keep an eye out on our Instagram page @Ugenie.io, we have a festive treat up our sleeve, just for you.