Incorporate Holidays Into Your Content Strategy
In my online TikTok class I dive into content strategy and why it’s important to create content buckets tailored to your brand. With Valentine’s Day happening tomorrow and March just around the corner, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss why you NEED to include holidays into your content strategy. Most brands on social media post about the big holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.), but there are often many missed opportunities outside of these major holidays. You might think that February is one of the worst months for holidays, but you are mistaken. For example, besides the 14th being Valentine’s Day, it’s also National Organ Donor’s Day, followed by Singles Awareness Day on the 15th--There are multiple holidays on each day in the month of February.
In my 16 years working in social media I have worked with small and large companies across various industries and something I have always found is that creating content around holidays is always a win. Celebrating holidays on social media, regardless of the platform, often helps increase your social media’s reach and engagement. The great thing about holidays, especially for businesses looking to connect with a specific audience, is that there are so many holidays each year that you can always find several days each month where there is both major holidays and more specific or niche holidays to celebrate, like “National Cat Day” on October 29th. In fact, there are over 1,500 National Awareness days each year!
When I was working with a popular cat food brand we mapped out all holidays that were related to cats. So for example, we celebrated National Cat Day, which was originally created to raise public awareness of cat adoption. A few days later we celebrated Halloween with photos of some of the cutest and most creative cat costumes. The entire month of December is ‘National Cat Lover’s Month,’ so we would choose a few days throughout the month to highlight our follower’s cats. In the weeks leading up to December, we would ask the users to submit photos of their cats and then the social media team would select their favorites to feature on Instagram. Doing this ticked the user-generated content (UGC) box, which is always a popular type of content amongst a brand’s followers.
It’s important to remember that even if a holiday seems too niche (like National Ferris Wheel Day), there are always going to be a decent number of people observing and celebrating these days. My recommendation is that you identify all of the holidays that are aligned with your brand and place them in your content calendar so you can begin planning out content in advance. Additionally, don’t forget your hashtags! People who are interested in a particular holiday will be searching for content that is populated to that specific holiday’s hashtags. In fact, National Ferris Wheel Day has over 500+ posts on Instagram, 8,903 views on TikTok and the hashtag #ferriswheel has millions of posts and views across both platforms.
Here is a list of the many holidays taking place in March 2023.
