Using Social Media for Holiday Marketing Campaigns -The 5 ‘Must Dos’ in 2010
The holiday shopping season is heating up and social media will play an integral role in this year’s marketing campaigns. Recently, Conduit and the American Marketing Association (AMA) hosted a webinar, Using Social Media for Holiday Marketing Campaigns: The 5 “Must Dos” in 2010. Attendees received valuable advice from three social media experts: John Jantsch, Christine Perkett and Sally Falkow. Among the many tips shared were these five social media must-dos that will help your small business make an impact this holiday season.
1. Start early
Over-achievers and discount hungry consumers are shopping now. Don’t wait until December to start marketing your products and services. By beginning your social media push early you increase the likelihood that you’ll successfully create and engage an audience of interested consumers. Use this time to listen and learn and establish your presence. Respond to relevant questions on LinkedIn; share tips, facts, and news on Facebook; and poll your Twitter followers to learn what they’re looking for this holiday season.
2.Listen, Respond and Engage
Social media isn’t a one-way road. Social media masters know the key to success is a two-way dialogue. Those businesses use social media to share content, but also to monitor conversations about their brand, listen to their customers’ needs and engage them in a dialogue.
This may sound like a lot of work, but there are numerous social media tools available to help small businesses monitor, listen and engage with their audiences:
-TweetDeck, HootSuite and NutshellMail can all help you to easily manage your Twitter activity, search for key words, and schedule tweets in advance to save you time. You can even update your Facebook status and LinkedIn with one update.
-Wildfire helps your company easily build campaigns for your holiday promotions on Facebook and Twitter and has all the functionality that you need to promote, interact and measure your campaigns.
-Email marketing services such as MailChimp make developing and managing email newsletters and promotions a cinch. Most also integrate with social networks to support quick and easy content sharing.
3.Create great content
Great content is critically important for the success of a holiday campaign. This is even truer when using social media, which is all about participation. Whether you’re engaging with consumers on Twitter, sharing a promotion on Facebook, or offering advice on LinkedIn, the content you share is a reflection on your business and expertise. Great content should be:
-Relevant – If you’ve been listening to your audience, you know what they’re most interested in. Tailor your content to their needs and interests. Seek out social networks, groups and blogs that cater to your target audience and focus your content there.
-Valuable – Value means different things to different people. By engaging with your audience, you’ll understand what they consider valuable. A valuable offer could be a coupon or helpful tips for finding the perfect gift.
4.Try something new
For many small businesses, social media is still new and intimidating. The idea of trying something new now seems ludicrous. But, our experts offer some compelling reasons for trying something new this holiday season.
-QR (Quick Response) Codes – QR Codes are graphical images that contain unique codes that link to a hidden URL or a discount code for example. Jantsch recently wrote about QR Codes and shared several great tools and examples for how small businesses can put this fresh new tactic to work. For instance, consider embedding a holiday specific QR code in your print or email promotions.
-Location Based Services – FourSquare, LocationLabs and related tools give offline businesses an online presence and help build customer loyalty with location and user specific information. Consider offering a gift card or special promotion for the 100th person to check in at your location.
5.Give a little bit
Consumers like to feel good about their purchases. Tie your marketing efforts to charitable organizations and events. You can easily share a unique discount code with your social networks that they can share with their friends. Create and track a hashtag and donate money, food, clothing, etc., every time a customer purchases an item and tweets about it using that hashtag. There are countless ways to involve your social networks in your promotion and with this technique everyone wins.
These tips can benefit any business from retail products to personal or professional services, and can extend your marketing impact well beyond the holiday season. If there’s one last critical tip our experts would share it’s this: Don’t stop. You worked hard to engage your audience via social media; maintain those relationships with post-holiday content and special offers. Be loyal to your customers and they’ll be loyal to you long after the December shopping rush has passed. After all, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner.
Adam Boyden, president of Conduit
www.conduit.com
©2010 Author retains copyright ownership. All Rights Reserved.
