With Halloween right around the corner, it only seemed right to talk about how you can use social media to your advantage during the holidays. No matter the product or services you provide, holidays represent a big opportunity. Now, just because the bigger holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, & Christmas are coming up does not mean you can count something as special as “National Chucky, the Notorious Killer Doll Day” out of the question (which just so happens to be October 25th for those wondering). Point being, there is always a way for a business to fit its marketing for the holiday season. 
Holiday posts can be some of the most valuable content that you can produce and with the right tools, it can be extremely easy. Some of these can include Adobe Spark or Canva to put out awesome looking posts without needing to hire a graphic designer. For starters, putting together a holiday calendar is crucial for your success to remind you of holidays. The key to these posts is keeping your audience in mind and this will bring the engagement that you are seeking.
Many studies show that people are happier than average on holidays (shocker) which leads us to the next point that holiday posts have a strong emotional appeal. People really tend to be the happiest on Christmas, with Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve not far behind. Halloween seems to really be the kick off of the holidays approaching with the temperatures starting to decline, and companies using it to their marketing advantage making “spooky” type posts. Just because these are the major national holidays does not mean people are not happy throughout the year while celebrating not as well known events such as “national love your mom day” or “national love your dad day” (wait that might be called Mothers & Fathers Day?) Anyway, you get my point, people seem to be happier and more joyful around these days. A well-crafted holiday post can make people feel a part of something bigger, a sense of community, letting them know what really is important during these times.
From a straight up marketing stand point, most people are out shopping during the holidays and when people are shopping whether it be for Halloween, or Christmas, a lot of people make impulse purchases based off emotion. When they see a holiday social media post that appeals to them in some sort of way, what was a promotion has now just turned into a future sale.
Now, of course there are plenty of benefits that come from the holidays, but what about the bad? Keeping up with current events and trends plays an important role for social media posting because people are not going to care anymore. Something that was a big hit around Thanksgiving last year and everyone was posting it or making a meme about it and you try to do the same thing the following year, that’s a big thumb’s down. People are not going to engage with that, they are going to keep on scrolling because they have already seen enough of it. Losing engagement is the last thing that you want to happen, especially during this time of year.
Use your social media to your advantage, not only the national holidays throughout the year, but the smaller scale ones as well. Halloween is the start of it all, as it is one of the most creative and fun times of the year. People want to be entertained, start ramping up your social media posts with holiday themed ideas and see your engagement increase!
~Nick Grimaldi
IMC Hawks Blog 