The Christmas holidays are fast approaching and, if you’re like me, you must be very excited. Needless to say, the holiday season isn’t necessarily about Christmas carols, decorations, presents, parties and festive scents; it’s more about spending time with our loved ones. But for most businesses, the holidays mean so much more. After all, they provide the perfect opportunity to increase sales exponentially.

Social media marketing is one of the best promotional tools you can use to take advantage of “the most wonderful time of the year.” Now, let me ask you a question: Where do most people look for Christmas decorating, gift and party ideas? Just as you suspected: online. What does this mean for your business? In a nutshell, a bigger chance for increasing your company’s online visibility, getting more leads and customers, and boosting sales.

Unsurprisingly, many people combing the Internet for holiday-related ideas turn to social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and YouTube for help. Now, you know where you can find your potential customers during the busy shopping season. But that’s not all. You also need to come up with an effective holiday social media marketing campaign.

If you have nothing planned for the holiday – and I’m not talking about holiday plans per se – read on for some really simple but useful tips on how to optimize your social media marketing initiative for the holidays.

• Spread holiday cheer – Do you have a website? Then, you can easily brand your business with the holiday spirit by getting rid of your regular social media profile covers and replacing them with something more holiday-ish. Also, given that the holiday spirit revolves around honoring certain traditions, make sure you add a personal message to your business profiles during key holiday moments. Doing this will make your brand more relatable and enable you “to connect with [your] audience on a more human level,” says Ann Handley, co-author of “Content Rules.” And yes, it’s absolutely necessary to consider mobile optimization when posting your holiday messages.
• Offer a personalized shopping experience – Every entrepreneur is also a customer. As a customer, you probably hate feeling like you’re just another “number.” (I know I do!) Most people feel exactly the same way we do. But that’s never truer than during the holidays, when people really want to feel appreciated. What can you do? Well, instead of trying to meet the needs and wants of each customer, a much better strategy is to focus on the expectations of most of your customers. There are two ways to do this.
  1. Think about it: What would a customer expect from an online business during the holiday shopping season? It’s actually quite simple: useful Christmas gift ideas for everyone, gift wrapping ideas, pre-wrapped gifts, personalized gifts, etc. By simply complementing your social media marketing strategy with proofs that display your passion for helping your shoppers in their “quests”, you can make them feel valued. This, in turn, will bring you more customers than if you would market your best products.
  2. In addition to providing ingenious holiday-related ideas, you can show how much you appreciate your loyal customers by emailing them special offers tailored just to them.
• Don’t forget about self-gifting – Self-gifting is a reality: we all buy a “little” something for ourselves when shopping for Christmas gifts. How can you make the most of “impulse buying”? By using social media to remind your customers to treat themselves as well. Also, don’t forget about the last-minute shoppers. More than 50 percent of 21,511 respondents surveyed last year admitted they buy most of the gifts they need in December. You can easily target these last-minute shoppers by adding last-minute deals to your social media marketing strategy like free next day delivery when you spend “X” amount.

A final thought – If you take the time to create and implement the right social media marketing strategy during the holiday season, you can attract new shoppers and turn them into repeat customers, who will continue to purchase your products and services even in the slowest months.

But the best piece of advice I can give you for a truly successful social media marketing campaign is to start working on your ads, messages, content calendar and special offers as soon as possible. Having everything completed early will allow you to focus on your customers and offer them a wonderful experience instead of struggling to throw a marketing campaign together at the last minute.