A social Xmas post or not… How to decide if it’s right for your brand?

By Timps on Monday, December 16, 2013 in Business, Social Media

There’s a big decision to be made and it only comes a few times a year… should your brand make a post about a national event/holiday.

We’ve got a small number of occasions that everyone tends to stand behind. Xmas, New years day, Easter, Australia Day, Anzac Day and over the years people have become more forgiving over Chinese New Year. So that brings us to the question racing across the lips of social media and community managers across the country, “Are we posting for Xmas, and if so, what?”

There’s two divisive schools of thought. As a brand you can participate in everything your staff and/or customers do. After all our brands are populated with people and they feel things and celebrate things. It’s a great way to connect with people, it can be humanising and engaging. If your community knows your names, if you post with an identity then some of your fans will want to wish the same to you. Some of them will want to hear from you. As people who share their lives in whole or part it’s a chance to connect in a different way than you normally can.

The upside can be likes, comments in reply and a boost to your engagement scores for the day.

But let’s not forget the other side of the coin.
Your brand will generally have a voice and a message. Posting in response to a national holiday will often be a generic message that slips away from that. It’s going to matter whether your Facebook/social presence has specific goals and targets or you’re just building engagement with the brand. Either strategy is fine (and we’ll touch on those at another time). Some brands have the room to flex their message and engage on a range of topics. And other brands like Apple stick very closely to their core messages and rarely interact in any other way.

There’s also risks to be considered around religious attachment to the holiday and consumers lashing out against commercialisation of it. You’ll need to be careful what you choose as imagery or symbolism to not alienate those choosing to celebrate the religious side of the event, or those who choose not to. Either way you run a little risk.

The final big risk comes from the mouth of a good friend of mine @TheChrisGross, and it’s one we all need to consider.To paraphrase slightly ‘If you’re not putting a unique spin on the message, you’re really just contributing to the wallpaper filling people’s feeds.’ And how many of us hope that our brand messages will ‘just blend in with everyone else for the day’ ?

The big take out is just to think about your posts on Xmas day. Just like any other day you’ve got to have a plan in mind.