We’ve all heard the jokes – there is a day for everything. And honestly, there really is. Today is National Cranberry Day, tomorrow is National Sardine’s Day, Monday we can celebrate National Parfait Day. You can see the full list here. Most content strategies will include a content bucket that celebrates trending days and holidays. In most cases this is a smart way to tie your brand to a popular conversation. However, just because there is a national day, doesn’t mean it’s always right for your brand. Here are 10 ways to use trending days and holidays for your brand.
1. Check in with your strategy
Everything should start with your strategy. A good strategy is built on specific business goals, research and insights, and industry best practices. When building out your content plan and specifically your monthly content themes, each piece of content should ladder up to your overarching strategy. If an upcoming day or holiday provides an opportunity for you to share something that drives your brand closer to a business goal, then go for it. If it’s off-strategy or a throw away piece of content, use your time and effort for another content piece.
2. Plan ahead
The most impactful content approach usually includes monthly or quarterly content planning sessions. Take time each month or quarter to plan out upcoming months. Identify the relevant trending days or holidays and start planning now how you could leverage them. This makes your content more valuable and will reduce your own stress levels. It also provides an opportunity to be more planful and consider giveaways, partnerships, longer form content, video production, content series. Most of our clients are already working on Q1 2020 content right now.
3. Tie the content back to your message
Creating content for a personal page and a business page require completely different approaches. Unless you’re trying to build a personal brand, which in that case your social channels are business, personal pages can be a random collection of content. When it comes to a business page, all content is telling the story of your brand. If you want to connect your brand to a trending day or holiday, do it in a relevant way that highlights your company. For example, if you are a bakery don’t just post Happy Halloween. Consider how you can use Halloween to feature your holiday treats, recipes for pumpkin seeds, or tips for using leftover Halloween candy.
4. Add value with your product or service
This ties into tip number three. Every interaction with your audience is an opportunity to add value to their lives. Look at the upcoming trending days and holidays and identify how your product or service could benefit your audience. Use the day to provide tips, tricks, hacks, or reminders. This is also a good opportunity to consider longer form content (i.e. PDF download) to collect emails and further provide resources to your audience. An example here would be for January 11 – National Vision Board Day. If you have a wellness business, create a downloadable workbook that provides prompts, tips, and strategies for creating a 2020 vision board. Post about the workbook on all channels driving audiences to your website to download it.
5. Use it as an opportunity to appreciate your audience
People like to feel appreciated and trending days or holidays are a good time to do this. Consider identifying a few days throughout the year to give back to your audience. One option is to find a holiday relevant to your brand and offer a discount on your product or service. This is a great way to show appreciation for your existing audience and potentially attract new customers. Another good option is identifying a day such as National Pizza Day and running a sweepstakes or contest to give away free pizza. This can be purely a customer appreciation post or a tool to collect user-generated content (if the day is relevant to your brand).
6. Showcase your company culture or personality
For most products and services, consumers have a lot of options to choose from. One way to set your brand apart is showcasing the people. Even though we use social media for marketing, it is still inherently a platform for people to connect with people. Build trust and relationships with your audience by using trending days and holidays to show a little personality. For the holiday season, maybe ask employees to share their favorite recipes and compile a mini e-book for your audience. Another option is to poll your employees (i.e. favorite ice cream topping) and use the feedback to create content that helps your audience get to know the people behind the brand.
7. Support a relevant charity or non-profit
Trending days and holiday are a great way to give back to a charity or non-profit. A good example of this is Sonic Drive-In. In 2018, they celebrated National Handwriting Day by donating $50K to 75 public school teacher projects that help develop handwriting skills. This was a smart way for them to utilize a trending day in a way that ties back to their commitment to responsibility – “This value is reflected in our focus on the communities around us and the many ways we work to give back.” If a financial donation isn’t in your budget, consider using the day to invite employees to volunteer or donate your product/service to a local charity.
8. Engage with others using the hashtags
If you identify a trending day or holiday relevant to your brand, chances are a lot of your target audience is using it or engaging with it. Don’t just post content using the hashtag, make an effort to engage with the other conversations happening around the day. Search through the hashtag to find people you want to connect with and like, comment on, or re-share their post. Engaging with audiences is an important part of a social media strategy because it should never be a one-way conversation. This is also a good opportunity to meet potential new customers.
9. Partner with influencers
Influencer marketing can mean a lot of different things. For some brands macro influencers make most sense. For others, micro influencers or even your own brand community might have the biggest impact. Whatever approach you take to influencer marketing, trending days and holidays can be a smart way to partner with a third-party. Identify people with similar values, audiences, and messaging as your brand, and partner with them to celebrate a day or week. Consider co-creating content, hosting giveaways, doing an Instagram takeover, or promoting each other’s product/service. Remember influencer marketing is monitored by the FTC Guidelines, which were recently updated.
10. Skip it
Sometimes the best strategy is to do nothing at all. Trending days can get exhausting if brands are using them as an excuse to post throw away content. If you aren’t able to find a smart, impactful way to tie your brand to a day, our recommendation is to skip it.
At Kate Rae Digital, one of our favorite things to do is content strategy. If you have questions about an upcoming piece of content or your overall strategy, contact us here!