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13 Christmas Social Media Campaign Ideas that Rock

www.Newspapergrl.com



Newspapergrl.com


The holidays are the perfect time for marketing

your small business.

By Janet Thaeler Newspapergrl.com @Newspapergrl



Congratulations! Thank you for purchasing 13 Christmas Social Media Campaign Ideas that Rock!

You tookYou’ve taken the first step to creating social media cam-paigns your audience will love. You'll find my favorite case studies and tools to ignite your best marketing ideas. Even though Christmas and the holidays come just once a year, they are often when your best marketing happens. USE This product is for Personal Use Only. You may forward this ebook to whomever you choose. It just may not be copied or sold.

Note that there may be affiliate links in this book and using them to make anyyour purchases using them will result in leaving me a small tip for the low cost of this book. Thank you!



Table of Contents

Introduction 5

Chapter 1: Take the Offline, Online Spring offUsing popular traditions, from Elf on the Shelf to decorating contest. 6

Chapter 2: Run a Holiday Themed Facebook Photo or Selfie Contest Easy and popular ideas. 12

Chapter 3: Invite Local Influencers/Bloggers to a Live Event

Done right, live events can drive major online buzz. 13

Chapter 4: Promote a Cause Dear to Their Hearts

See how the pros get you involved in a cause. 15

Chapter 5: Create Gift Guides and Wish Lists

So popular, so many variations & possibilities. 16

Chapter 6: Countdown to Christmas Promotions Share something new each day as you count down to Christmas. 19

Chapter 7: Christmas Roundup or Lists Just like this book, aggregateAggregate and package your best ideas. 19

Chapter 8: Ask your Ffans to Sshare Holiday-themed Stories The holidays are a time for stories, and & marketers love stories. 20

Chapter 9: Find Ideas from HARO HelpAReporter emails are a treasure trove of trending topics and holiday ideas. 21

Chapter 10: Use a keyword or Spying Tool These tools make it easier to target direct your content to the right audience. 33



Chapter 11: Create Holiday-Themed Versions of your Products

These tools make it easier to target direct your content to the right audience. 33

Chapter 12: Share Holidays Trends or Data This can be a great PR play:, Iif you've got data, share it!

33

Chapter 13: Pin Those Products Pinterest is full of not justattracts lookers ands, but buyers.

Conclusion 36

Recommended Resources 37

About Janet Thaeler 37

Comment [DH1]: This is the same thing you said to describe chapter 10. You might want to come up with something to set the two chapters apart.



Introduction

Christmas is the happiest time of the year for social media marketers, and it seems you can never start planning too early. With Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holidays, people are in a buying mood. There are many opportunities to make sales and to deepen relationships and cre-ate memories with your followers.

Every October my stats show that marketers like you are coming to my blog to get inspiration for their holiday marketing campaigns. I saved some of my favorite ideas and finds that you can steal borrow to make sure you’re ready to go with marketing campaigns this year (and in fu-ture years). While this guide is focused on Christmas specifically, you can adapt it to fit any of these days or holidays like Hanukkah.

Q4 is one of the best times of the year to boost engagement, drive traffic to your site and get your fans get excited about fun, holiday-themed promotions. It’s also a chance to find inspiration by seeing what other brands are doing.

With that in mind, here are holiday-themed social media market-ing ideas to get higher engagement and get your customers in a holly- jolly mood.

Most of the case studies or examples are geared towards small businesses. I also reference larger budget marketing campaigns for inspiration. Overall, I hope these are low cost, relatively easy ways to reach your fans and followers during the holidays. TIP: Adapt the concepts in this book for other holidays or national days (such as National Chocolate Day).

Comment [DH2]: If I bought this book, I wouldn’t understand what you mean here. Quarter four? Your book may be intended to reach people with your lever of expertise, but why would they buy it? Your most likely audi-ence is people like me, a step or two below your level. Make sure the lingo is clear so we don’t feel as dumb as we secretly assume we are!



Chapter 1: Take the Offline, Online There are so many traditions that people love around the holidays. There are certain songs we sing, foods we eat and things we doWe sing spe-cial songs, eat unique foods, and do specific things. Many of these tradi-tions happen offline. But consider Think of how your business can might take one of those traditions and put it online. That way you're taking something that is beloved and familiar and; making something beloved and familiar it relevant on social media. Here are some examples to help:

Elf on a Shelf your Business

The first few campaigns take advantage of offline traditions. What’s popular and classic in the offline world can be adapted to social media. Starting with Elf on a Shelf.

People love the idea of hiding and seek with this funny green elf. Buzzfeed recently featured some clever and fun ways to hide the little guy, and you could create a fun campaign around some funny poses at around the office. Can you get an elf that hides at your business, letting your social media fans help look for him? Turtle Back Zoo in New Jersey did this. They ran a highly successful Christmas digital marketing cam-paign on Facebook, called “Elf at the Zoo”.

They had zookeepers take photos of the elf popping up in different plac-es. A new photo was posted on their Facebook page at the same time, every day during December up until Christmas day. That way people knew when to look for them. They The zoo added fun, holiday-inspired sayings onto the images to make them more shareable, and publicized their campaign with a press release to the media.

Here’s an example of one of the pictures from the campaign:

Comment [DH3]: I would delete this para-graph. Just jump right in!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/genius-elf-on-the-shelf-ideas

http://news.cision.com/the-s3-agency/r/turtle-back-zoo-celebrates-the-holidays-with-a-special-visitor,c9504406



This campaign could also happen on Pinterest and/or Instagram; too perhapsand you could do a giveaway related to this promotion when people participate. You could even leave clues and have people guess where the elf will be next. It may seem like a simple idea but it's well well-executed and fun. The results show it was also effective at driving engagement and PR for the zoo.

Get more details and the link to all of the photos on my blog post at http://www.newspapergrl.com/christmas-facebook-marketing-campaign.

http://www.newspapergrl.com/christmas-facebook-marketing-campaign



Result: This Christmas campaign sprinkled magic on the staff and on their Facebook fans. It also really engaged the fans: 38,040 us-ers were engaged over 24 days! It also got attention from local bloggers, which was one of their goals. It won an award, and cap-tured people’s hearts. Fans came, they commented, they liked, and they shared posts. If you need help finding bloggers to pitch, I provide services such as ad buys, sponsored posts and other ways to pitch bloggers (especially mom and lifestyle type blogs).

Dress up your Pictures like a Christmas Window

Department stores have been dressing up their store windows for the holidays for decades. You could doWhy not do the same for your Face-book cover image?. You could even have fans submit images and fea-ture the winners. Your profile image could feature gift ideas or your most popular holiday-themed pins from Pinterest. It's amazing how changing out your photos on social media sites can drive engagement. Every Halloween I use PicMonkey to make a Hallow-een version of myself for my Facebook profile image. Sometimes I'm a zombie, other times I'm a vampire or something else related to the holi-day. People love it and it drives creates a lot of engagement.

I know this isn't a Christmas photo.

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=460974&u=157133&m=46133&urllink=&afftrack=



If you're a speaker or otherwise use your image in your marketing, be sure to recognize holidays with a new look.

PicMonkey always has overlays (both free and paid) around each holiday theme during the year. Using their tools, it's very easy to add a Santa hat, some reindeer ears to your photos, or backgrounds like snowflakes to your photos.

You can do the same with your products;, dress them up in a limited edi-tion holiday package.

Of course you can go all out and create an entire holiday section for your Facebook page, blog or website. It's another way to showcase your products or services in a festive way. One year, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts did an entire section on Facebook in honor of the holidays, using, with music, an interactive features, section and showing off highlights of their holiday-themed products:



When I started managing this Facebook page for a small business that sells dancewear I tried this. : I took an existing photo and made it into a Christmas photo. I added Santa (instant fun), put a candy striped border around the photo, "Merry Christmas," and some hats. They The compa-ny hadn't really seen a lot of engagement from fans; so most weren't seeing their content. This was one of the most more popular posts of the month.

Host a Virtual Gingerbread House Festival or Contest People love to go see gingerbread houses, often votinge on their favor-ites and generally spreading some holiday lovecheer. Take this tradition and make it yours by incorporating some sort ofan element from your business. For example, a home builder might have downloadable gin-gerbread house plans (PDF files) that you could download. using Make them into PDF files, using simplified versions of actual spec homes and include including instructions on how to make them into gingerbread houses. Have people submit photos of their creation and vote on the best ginger-bread house. Then be sure to share entries across your social media profiles.



Chapter 2 Run a Holiday Themed Facebook Photo or Selfie Contest This is a classic Facebook contest idea, to: Hhave a photo contest that relates to your brand. One year the Gap had a “12 Days of Joy” contest. Fans weare asked to “Submit a photo of your most fun, cool, sweet, or in any way interesting holiday tradition.” They picked 12 winners who got $500 Gap gift cards. There are endless variations of this theme, but it’s a particularly good great match for social media where visuals are more likely to get engagement.

Here are some more ideas:

Invite fans and customers to share photos of themselves with your product for the chance to win a gift certificate for your product.

Post exclusive holiday deals to Facebook, specifying that they are 1-day offers. Do it for several days so people come back each day to see what the latest deal is.

Ask fans to use specific hashtags on photos: –one a branded one and the other another popular one. For example, Banana Republic asked fans to snap photos of themselves (selfies) in their BR’s clothing and post them on Facebook and Instagram using thee hashtags #ThisIsGlam and #Selfie. They could post on Facebook and Instagram.

Be sureDon’t forget to repurpose the entries you get. Make a collage of your favorites into a Facebook cover image, or post and tag fans. Fea-ture the pictures on your other social media platforms, . Tlike tweet one picture a day (your pick of the day), or have an entry of the day or week on your Facebook page. Blog the entries or even start a blog just for thesese images, one that you can add to every year. Pin the best photos (or all of them) on a Pinterest board.



Chapter 3 Invite Local Influencers/Bloggers to a Live Event I've been a participant in many of these events, and I've hosted them, too. We have an active group of Utah bloggers, and Utah has many in-fluential bloggers in many different niches. We also have several YouTube influencers with views in the millions. Almost every year a local restaurant hosts a group of us for dinner. It's very important that you introduce the owner and , the people serving, and ask everyone to share stories. For some reason, many times the staff is often silent the whole night. I guess they don't want to disturb us. Bloggers are storytellers, so give them stories about your business, your products, your vision. Those are the kinds of things that will give blog-gers something to tweet about and put on all of their social media shares. It makes everything more memorable. Instagram is the preferred platform for many of my events now. When you have influencers come to your business for an event, be sure to en-gage with them where they post. Hand highlight and tag their posts (and tag them) on your social media profiles. Bloggers like to be together and network, so make the event exclusively for bloggers. If it's at a restaurant, seat them together or in groups. Al-ways, always have a hashtag and tell encourage them to use it on any posts. I prefer to give incentives for participation, such as hold by holding live contests during the event. To enter, the bloggers have to do things like take a photo and tag you, include the hashtag, and do other creative things (you decide). Prizes can be gift certificates for your product or other giveaways, like items from sponsors. I've even had other busi-nesses like Ikea and Whole Foods sponsor a live event because we had such huge influencers attend. Usually we give some sort of a swag bag for bloggers to take home.

Comment [DH4]: Who? The staff, or the bloggers?

Comment [DH5]: Whose business? The res-taurant’s, or the host of the event (like you)?

Formatted: Font: Italic



I use Eventbrite to invite bloggers, email them updates, and follow up af-ter the event. If you don't know bloggers, find someone (like me) who has a large network. Generally speaking, a blogger who has done events will know other bloggers to invite and can help you plan your event. They'll likely cost less and do a better job than a PR firm. I've seen so many PR firms put on events that provided very low value for the business. If this seems overwhelming to you, start small. don't host a blogging event or start small. Do your best to match the type of blogger with the event you're holding. In other words, if you're a local restaurant, invite food bloggers and oth-ers with a local readership. You can invite bloggers who aren't speaking to a local audience, but it's tough to see a return. Also, invite local influ-encers from Yelp, as they can drive a lot of business if they love your place. Ask bloggers to disclose that the meal or product was comped for them. There are cases when the FTC has clamped down on a business (Nordstrom Rack) for holding a blogger event that did not include disclo-sure that the product was provided free. Assign someone from your staff to take pictures and be sure to get one of the whole group. It's really easy to forget this but it's a great chance to tag each person and create an image that bloggers will post. My favorite is a spa products company that had wood signs made with their hashtag and @ name. Bloggers held them in photos and it was a bit of advertis-ing that was easy and fun.

Comment [DH6]: This might be a good time to either mention some new booklet (that you will, of course, write) that describes how to host an event from A to Z, or to put in a bullet-pointed tutorial. If you suspect your reader will be overwhelmed by this idea, you’re probably right. Take them through the steps, and let them decide later if they want to do the event.

http://www.eventbrite.com/r/newspapergrl



Photo from a Blogger Event I Held

Don't wait until mid-November to schedule your event. Blogger's’ calen-dars get fullfill up quickly. They, requiring the bloggers to will become choosier the closer it is to the holidays. So letLet them know in advance what you're planning and ask them to save the date. Since this is turning into a book of its own, lookLook for a future book with more tips and information about hosting a successful blogger event (any time of the year).

TIP: Print off handouts with your event hashtag, website, high-lights and links to the social media profiles where you're most active. Pass them out or leave them on the table.

TIP: Give bloggers a discount to share with their readers. If possible, track them to see who sends the most business. You can even hold a contest and reward the blogger who drives the most leads or sales in the next 30 days.

Comment [DH7]: Oops! You already figured this out! Smart lady.

Comment [DH8]: Wow, I sure would love to know the secret to doing this well. I bet I’m not alone.



Chapter 4 Promote a Cause Dear to Their Hearts Christmas is a time when people’s hearts open just a little bit wider and so it’s , making it a great time to promote a cause you support or believe in and get some social media love. Whether it’s a Sub for Santa project, helping families in your community or getting people involved in your cause, it’s a great time.

Popular mom blogger Jill Smokler of Scary Mommy learned some of her readers were struggling financially and couldn’t afford a Thanksgiving dinner. She rallied her readers to donate so she could give to those in need and; it’s now an annual tradition called The Scary Mommy Thanks-giving Project. She even created a charity to collect funds. The real gold is the stories of coming from those offering the helping and the families that benefited. Can Could you organize your followers for a good cause, such as helping other's in need , near Christmas?

MoveOn is queen of cause-related marketing and; they just kill it with their political statements and email marketing. One yearIn 2011 they hi-jacked another Christmas tradition –- sending Christmas cards. For their “Love Makes a Family,” campaign they asked their supporters to submit their family Christmas photos. They had a downloadable file that people printed off to make a sign. The signs said ‘Love Makes a Family,’ and ‘Equality for ALL Families in 2012.’ The images were posted them on a Tumblr blog. Then Then tthey made a video collage to showcase the photos. There are over 180,000 views on it. (this was in 2011).

Comment [DH9]: Negative connotations. Choose another word?

http://www.scarymommy.com/the-2014-thanksgiving-project/

http://www.scarymommy.com/the-2014-thanksgiving-project/

http://lovemakesafamily.tumblr.com/submit

http://lovemakesafamily.tumblr.com/submit

http://lovemakesafamily.tumblr.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Eixlo4lxE



If you have a cause, how can you get your fans to incorporate it into their family Christmas photos?

Tip: when something really works well for your audience, find ways to repurpose the campaign in different mediumsmedia. Can you make a video? A separate blog? Turn it into a book?

Comment [DH10]: This is the plural of medi-um. Unless you’re talking about a group of psy-chics. Then the word is “kooks.’



Chapter 5 Create Gift Guides and Wish Lists These are old hat for many marketers but the more laser precise or unique you can be or unique, the better. If I were making a gift guide, I'd create one just for bloggers. It would highlight the Wordpress plugins I use, web hosting offers, as well as blogging conferences I wanted to at-tend. For a social media list I'd include Facebook tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, classes on sites such as Udemy, press release distribution com-panies I plan to use, and other things a social media marketer might want. Of course, I would include your my products, services or affiliate links. What do your fans really want to buy from you this year? Ask them! Crowdsource wish lists! Then make that wish list into a competition where your fans could win their wish list.

Gift guides are popular ways to showcase your products. You can go basic just by publishing a simple blog post, or create a PDF file or mini web site full of gift ideas. One year Etsy created Gift Ideas for Facebook Friends. It culled through your Facebook friends, looked at their profiles and made recommendations of gifts you could buy for them on Etsy, based on their tastes. Brilliant! Unfortunately it's not online now but it still makes the point that the more personalized the list, the more valuable it is. I really see no reason that Eevery business shouldn't publish some sort of a wish list.

7-11 always has ideas for holidays and theirincluding gift guides with presents you can buy at the last minute. Coming from a convenience store known for coffee and doughnuts, this is so creative. If you have a lot of products, showcase the bestselling ones. Amazon has a list of their top 100 bestselling gifts, which theythat is updated every day, all year round, at http://www.amazon.com/gp/most-gifted.

My friend Mariel from OneSheTwoShe blog has amassed a huge list of gift guides for just about anyone you could ever want to buy or make a gift for. Rather than just one gift guide or occasional blog posts, she


Comment [DH11]: Who is “it”? Etsy? Face-book?

http://corp.7-eleven.com/news/12-17-2013-7-eleven-gifts-for-the-millennial-from-toys-to-tech

http://www.amazon.com/gp/most-gifted

http://oneshetwoshe.com/2011/12/gift-idea-central-bookmark-this-page.html

http://oneshetwoshe.com/2011/12/gift-idea-central-bookmark-this-page.html



created a page with links to all of them in one place. She puts up an ad in her sidebar for her guides, including holiday-specific guides. DatingDivas is another blog that uses Pinterest to promote their gift guide. Their Ultimate Gift Guide for Him has over 100 likes. Note how the image really sells what’s inside the guide. Be sure the image for your gift guide is attractive and pinnable. Tip: Include your URL on your image, so your web address doeswon’t get sepa-rated from the original pin. Image size for this is 550x887 pixels.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/7318418118446339/



Tech blog Engadget creates gift guides in many categories, such as one for the geek on your list.

http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=%22holiday+gift+guide+2013%22



Tip: Even if you don’t make your own gift guide, use HARO or join the PR & Marketing Czars Facebook group and get your product featured in someone else’s gift guide.

Chapter 6 Countdown to Christmas Promotions You can do a countdown to Christmas with daily gifts on each day that your fans could win by liking, /commenting on, or sharing a the gift idea. These can be 12 days long, 25 days long, or however long you deter-mine. If your business doesn’t have physical products, you can share a tip a day.

It may seem easier to promote consumer products, but you can get into the holidays even if your customers are business-related. Red Rock Me-dia did a great job on this with their 12 tips of Christmas. Each day is a new tip is added toon their blog. I could give 12 tips of Christmas, and each day adding a daily new PR, or social media marketing, or blogging tip to a blog post.

http://www.redrocketmedia.co.uk/blog/12-tips-of-christmas/



If you are a design firm you could do 12 days of Christmas designs in which you showcase latest trends and showing examples of work you’ve done. I know someone who is a letterpress printer who could share a Christmas card he’s working on in the shop each day. Since his work is customized, (and with permission) he could (with his clients’ permission) use these images to inspire new customers to get have their Christmas cards printed by his press.

Photographers can share tips and examples of the perfect Christmas photograph or family picture. These kinds of campaigns can be ever-green and bring you traffic year after year as you add new ideas and link to or reference past year’s’ tips or examples.

Chapter 7 Christmas Roundup or Lists People love lists, and you can create lists around holiday-themes that resonate with your audience. Popular food bloggers Six Sisters Stuff created a list of 25 Delicious Christmas Cookie Recipes. There are some from their blog and as well as links to recipes from other food blogs. When you get enough of your own you can combine all 25 recipes into an ebook and either charge for it or give it away for email signups or promotions (in exchange for likes/comments/shares). Even though people can click on each link to get recipes (free), some people want to buy your product for a gift. Or, they like having all the content on one page. They are willing to pay a few dollars for the con-venience, and producing it is low cost for you. Essentially, you can copy and paste the posts, put an image on it and put it on eJunkie or another service to handle the transaction and product delivery.

http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2013/12/25-delicious-christmas-cookie-recipes.html

http://www.e-junkie.com/?r=73147



Chapter 8

Ask your fans Fans Questions The holidays are about memories, both creating and remembering them. As marketers, anything that draws evokes positive emotions can be an effective way to connect. Ask your fans to share their traditions and sto-ries with you. AllFacebook has examples of how brands interacted around Halloween and; this could easily be adapted to any holiday, in-cluding Christmas.

Asking a question that is simple to answer is an easy way to engage. I follow Meritage Homes, one of the nation's top homebuilders, on Face-book. They ask, "this or that" questions. The idea can easily be adapted to the holidays.

http://allfacebook.com/facebook-engagment-holiday_b70726

https://www.facebook.com/meritagehomes



Examples of ‘this or that’ questions:

Do you prefer white lights or colored?

Do you have a real tree or a fake one? (Sshow pictures of a fake tree and one at a Christmas tree lotstand.)?

Rudolph or tThe Grinch Who Stole Christmas?

Do you shop ahead and have all your presents already or are you a last minute shopper?

At your house, do you open a few presents Christmas Eve or do you open them all on Christmas morning?

Eggnog or hot chocolate?

You can of course ask open ended questions, such as, “Wwhat is your traditional Christmas Eve dinner?”

People have such strong opinions and like to share them. So remember to ask.

Chapter 9

Find Ideas from HARO

Each year I skim HARO emails using keywords like holiday, Santa, Christmas, etc. to see what journalists are writing about. This helps me see trends and get ideas for holiday campaigns or blog posts. Sign up at www.HelpaReporter.com

This journalist wanted to figure out the true cost of Christmas and it’s a fun angle many types of businesses could use. An airline could compare the cost of getting Santa to the Nnorth Ppole if leaving from various places in the world and depending on what day of the week he he bought hishis ticket, how much it would cost to check the sleigh, etc.

Comment [DH12]: Revise this sentence. It starts out like a story, but doesn’t go anywhere. If it isn’t a story, go ahead and skip to the tips.

http://www.helpareporter.com/





I used this HARO example in my a webinar I did with PRWeb/Vocus about creating buzz for the holidays and it's . It’s still a favorite today:

I'm writing an article for a financial news site and need credit ana-lysts, etc., to weigh in on the following: 1) If Santa Claus were to give every child in the U.S. one gift (an average of $25), how much would he spend? 2) If he put all those gifts on a credit card, what would his monthly payment be? 3) What kinds of rewards could he get? 4) How much would he have to pay each month to pay it off by next Christmas? 5) How much might he pay in interest? 6) What would it cost him to travel, pay 11 months of unemploy-ment for elves, and feed nine reindeer for one year?

Chapter 10

Use a keyword Keyword or Spying Tool

Why try to guess what kinds of content your audience might respond to. when there are Sure, every audience is different but these tools give you a head start?.

This is an unconventional tip, but why nottry usinge a tool like my favor-ite keyword tool to see what people are searching for in search engines?

Try combinations such as “gift guide”, “holiday idea”, “holiday recipe” and terms relating to your target market and the holidays. It helped me find out what other social media holiday themed posts I could write that have high search volume and low competition.

The results you find are ideal for using in blog post titles that you then share across social media sites. If you have a Wordpress blog, I recom-mend CoSchedule to schedule the posts immediately after published, and then drip them out with slightly different titles/angles a week later, and then leading continuing up to Christmas. Then schedule them to go live again next year, starting in October. It’s all done within Wordpress.

http://buildit.sitesell.com/Janet128.html


http://coschedule.com/r/8345



One more tool that you can use is called Social Lead Freak. You log in with your Facebook credentials and you can search groups, pages and other Facebook places by keyword. Then you can sort by posts with the most comments/likes or shares. It's the best way to create groups of people to target for Facebook ads.

TIP: Facebook ads are so targeted that they can be an effective way to drive the right traffic to your offer. If you need a referral and have a budget of at least $5k, I can point you to someone I know who is truly an expert and can drive traffic and sales.

Chapter 11

Create Holiday-Themed Versions of your Products

If you can addAdding some a Christmas touch or even a holiday version of your product. It can be as simple as new packaging or throwing in something else cheery such as a handful of candy into the your shipping box you ship. I always still remember an ink company that included fla-vored Tootsie Rolls in the box, it. It felt like a gift every time we got a shipment from them. The Packaging Diva on Pinterest has an entire board of Christmas packaging ideas.

Again, I like the idea of getting your customers involved in the product creation on social media. They’ll be more invested in the outcome (and more likely to buy something they helped design). Send out a press re-lease, and when that media attention comes, be sure to share the news with your fans.

Games for Motion makes board games. They created a Christmas ver-sion of Chutes and Ladders with game pieces made of out belgian Bel-gian chocolate. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Games-Motion-Chocolate-Christmas-Game/dp/B009F0VL7C

Comment [DH13]: Saying what, exactly?


http://jvz4.com/c/16457/38941

http://www.pinterest.com/packagingdiva/christmas/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Games-Motion-Chocolate-Christmas-Game/dp/B009F0VL7C

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Games-Motion-Chocolate-Christmas-Game/dp/B009F0VL7C



Chapter 12 Share Holidays Trends or Data One of my favorite reads each year comes from Offerpop emails and re-ports. They share stats every holiday season specifically for social media marketers. They have an infographic and various ways to share the da-ta, all in one place. Here’s an example of data showing how marketers plan to spend: https://www.offerpop.com/holiday-marketing-365/

Adobe does the same thing by analyzing massive data and releasing their predictions for marketers. If you can provide insights into your in-dustry during the holidays, it can help you become a thought leader. As a PR play (press release), their Adobe’s report was in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes and many numerous other major publica-tions. If you create and share unique insights or significant data relating to the holidays, you could score some huge exposure.

Chapter 13 Pin Those Products Pinterest’s own data shows that “in the months leading up to the holi-days, we see a 25 percent increase in boards related to gifts and wish lists. “‘Christmas gifts” ’ is already in our top 25 search terms.”

Pinterest is the ideal social network to reach women who like to shop online. “Nearly 2 million people save Product Pins to one of their boards every single day. And they don’t just dream about the things they want—they go out and get them. 93% of Pinners shopped online in the last 6 months, according to Nielsen data. Comscore also found that women on Pinterest are 30% more likely to shop or buy online than the average woman.”

Product pins and rich pins give you the most visibility. Product pins get your pins featured in the gifts section and include details like price and

Comment [DH14]: If you’re worried about sections that could use more information, chap-ter 12 might qualify. There is a lot of language here that may not be familiar to new SMMs. Even press releases might require a bit of tutor-ing.

Comment [DH15]: Define?

https://www.offerpop.com/holiday-marketing-365/

http://www.cmo.com/content/dam/CMO_Other/ADI/ADI_2014_Holiday_Prediction/2014_Holiday_Shopping_Prediction.pdf

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20141105006923/en/Adobe-Data-Shows-Holiday-Deals-Black-Friday#.VHRvFvnF_ng

https://business.pinterest.com/en/blog/7-ways-reach-holiday-shoppers-pinterest

https://business.pinterest.com/en/blog/project-holiday-reach-people-looking-buy-special-something



availability. These details automatically appear and update on your Pins once you’re approved and set up. Both give you more visibility in the newsfeed and more branding than a regular pin.

Rich pins brought so much more traffic to Target (70% more!) that they made it the center of their marketing. More at http://www.fastcocreate.com/3020887/target-pins-its-hopes-on-pinterest-this-holiday-season

Target decided to invest more into Pinterest marketing after a study by Curalate that was commissioned by Social@Ogilvy showed they were the most shared brand on Pinterest for December 2013. While you might not have that kind of pull, you can still learn from their plan and see how you can incorporate Pinterest into your campaign, using analytics to see your most pinned pins.

Based on what they learned, Target plans to - Create shoppable, holiday, catalog-style Pinterest boards - Showcase top-pinned items from Pinterest in stores and on Target.com - Create an Elf on the Shelf-themed board with parents’ tips on creative places to hide the elf.

What are do your Pinterest analytics showing ithat's really working for you, and how can you expand the theme in different ways?

Link to your Holiday Pinterest Boards on your Site and Promotions Nashville Wraps carries packaging and gift/party supplies. On their Val-entine’s Day section they have a text link for ideas that takes you directly to their Pinterest board with pins showing ways to use their products. I’m not sure why they don’t do it on their Christmas page, but instead of just a general link to follow them on Pinterest, they can could share links to specific holiday-related boards or pins. I’d even highlight some of the top-pinned items from Pinterest here.


Comment [DH16]: Link?

Comment [DH17]: Where? I don’t know what this means.

http://www.fastcocreate.com/3020887/target-pins-its-hopes-on-pinterest-this-holiday-season

http://www.fastcocreate.com/3020887/target-pins-its-hopes-on-pinterest-this-holiday-season



Conclusion If you're a small business, either direct to consumer or B2B, the holidays are full of opportunity. Take note of what other businesses are doing that seems to be working. Modify Then modify and adapt ideas to fit your brand's style.

If your holiday social media marketing campaign rocks, I'd love to hear about it. Please email me at [email protected]

Where do we go from here?

I hope you're feeling inspired with ways that you can market your small business during the holidays. Be sure to capture them in a file that you update all year. Make a plan and then start scheduling it on a calendar. It seems like every year Christmas marketing (along with Black Friday) starts a bit earlier. Watch for my next books, How to Host a Successful Blogger Event and How to Host a Successful Blog Campaign. These will give youI’ll share the secrets I have learned from working with bloggers for over 8 eight years. A recent event I hosted went from an intimate group of 30 to an exciting 130. We had a waiting list that I capped at 25 that we never even got to. It keeps giving me and my client new opportunities and is still being talked about. I'll break it down for you. Go to Newspapergrl.com/ChristmasSpecial to enter your email so you can be updated when my next product is ready!

Comment [DH18]: Meaning what? People wanted to participate and couldn’t? Wanted information they didn’t get? I’d clarify this a bit.



Resources and Affiliate Links

PicMonkey This is the image editing tool I use to add holiday icons and fea-tures to my photos. EventBrite I use this tool to organize and manage my events, both free and paid. It's an easy way to email a group, get reports and it even has an easy way to give discount codes or create affiliates for your events. When I went to San Francisco last summer, I stopped for a moment out-side their door to pay homeage. SEO Keyword Tool - Brainstorm It! Brainstorm It! is the most intuitive keyword tool I've ever used. They have a live online chat to help if you get stuck. Enter a simple phrase, do a vertical search, choose singular and plural to see what keywords to use. I click to see their most competitive phrase sugges-tions. Then download everything into a spreadsheet. Google has a free keyword tool but it just tells you what advertisers are willing to pay. It's not as effective for content and idea generation. CoSchedule If you have a Wordpress site then this tool is your best friend. Easi-ly drag and drop content into an editorial calendar. Schedule your social media updates even years out. See what performs the best and drip up-dates so you spend less time creating new content and more time pro-moting the content you already have. Social Lead Freak This tool is great for Facebook marketers who want to use Face-book groups to create custom audiences to run ads to. My friend uses this tool to drive prospects to webinars and convert them into customers.

OfferPop They make running Facebook contests easier.

http://www.eventbrite.com/r/newspapergrl


http://coschedule.com/r/8345

http://jvz4.com/c/16457/38941

http://www.offerpop.com/



Ejunkie Ejunkie handles all the details of accepting money and delivering your digital product. You can even set up affiliates. Many bloggers use ejunkie for their ebook marketing. Very inexpensive and no cheesy landing pages needed.

About Me Everything you need to know is summed up in this infographic from Avalaunch Media http://www.AvalaunchMedia.com Please tell them I

sent you if you need an infographic for your Christmas or other marketing cam-paign! Quick recap:

Author of, "I Need a Killer Press Re-lease, Now What??"

Blog marketing and PR pro who helps small businesses grow online.

Past pro blogger for Small Business Trends, American Express OPEN forum and Marketing Pilgrim.

Featured several times on Forbes.com and in webinars from PRWeb/Vocus, Bulldog Report-er, Marketing Experiments and more.

Utah Business Q Magazine named Janet Thaeler one of the top 3 business people on Twitter (in Utah).

http://www.e-junkie.com/?r=73147

http://www.avalaunchmedia.com/

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