Social Media Marketing for the Holidays
As a business owner, you’ve likely been using the internet to market to customers and social media fans throughout the year. With the holidays approaching though, it’s time to kick your strategies into high gear.  There will be more shoppers out on the web than ever this year, which is why that’s where a lot of your marketing should be as well. To make the most of this holiday season, be sure you’ve covered each of the following five steps.
Stock Up on Social Media Fans
First and foremost, you have to get your fan counts to an all-time high. Encourage current fans to share your content in order to get a boost in exposure and offer website visitors more content to Like and Follow. If you’re really hurting for fans, try investing in a fan package from a social media fan service. With a package like this, you can get thousands of targeted fans delivered right to your social media pages. With such a huge increase in fans, you’re sure to expand your marketing potential for the holidays.Â
 If you can’t afford to give each of your profiles a fan package, prioritize them for the biggest effect. Focus on the social media sites you update most regularly first. This list is often prioritized as such:
 1. Twitter: Go for a big package here, as these followers check their feeds regularly and so will have a high rate of exposure to your marketing.
 2. Facebook: Your next priority should be Facebook because of the high number of people sharing content and connecting. There is a good possibility that new fans from a package will connect you to even more branches of potential fans. Also, it’s a great place to share multimedia content- which is great for showing off products for sale.
 3. Pinterest: If your pictures make your products look tempting or interesting, then a Pinterest follower package may work for your company.
 4. YouTube: If you put out videos now and then, it might be a good idea to get a few more fans to see your company’s Christmas message or holiday charity project. Use it to make viewers want to share in your holiday spirit.
 Get Your Products on Recommended Gift Lists
There are a lot of news sites, blogs, and e-zines out there recommending products for the holidays. If you sell a product, you’ll want to make sure it gets on a few of them. Submit your product for review at the e-zine sites and blogs and send the news sites a press release. You can also create your own recommendations list on your company blog. It might also be a good idea to recommend a product each day leading up to the holidays on your social media pages.
 Create Holiday Shopping Related Content
Speaking of blogs and articles; make sure you have your own up and running. In fact, during the holiday season, you should be optimizing for your site’s searchable keywords like crazy. Add content to your site that talks about products and gets those words to come up for your company in the search engines. Try tying your topic into the holidays somehow. You can suggest gifts, explain practical winter tips, or get inspired by some other aspect, like religion. This can give you lots of ideas for new articles, blogs, and videos that people will be out searching for. Keep an eye on your Google ranking in particular, since that’s where most of your traffic will come from (in terms of search engines). Also, don’t forget some mobile-friendly content. With more people shopping online, and more people shopping from mobile devices, you’ll want to accommodate the trend with a long, narrow page design and lots of big, touchable buttons.
 Increase Ads
Even if you have a lot of fans, there are still plenty of other people who aren’t one of your fans and who may not come across your social media page or website on their own. You probably already have ads up in a few places, but you might want to consider increasing your ad budget for the holidays. Of course, you’ll want to get your order in as soon as possible, as holiday ad space may become limited quickly. If you have the money for it, get your ad on all the popular shopping sites, like Amazon, Ebay, and Google. You may also want to increase your investment in backlinks in the form of contextual links in articles, blogs, presentations, and/or videos posted around the web- preferably on high PR sites.
 Get Coupons/Discounts Out to Fans
Once you have your name out there and have informed your social media fans and the rest of the web about your great products, it’s time to give them a tempting invitation. Get coupons and other discount details into regular profile updates. This way, for fans who were considering a purchase, they now have that added push that makes them click to your site. Once there, hopefully your site design will be engaging enough to keep them there and lead them to a purchase. You could even give fans discounts for getting a friend to click your link or share your content. This way, not only are you instigating a purchase but also a cheap and highly effective marketing boost.
Hopefully, you’re already getting busy for the holidays, but if not, put these steps into action soon. If you’re not sure you can afford them, think about your usual holiday traffic. If you consider your normal winter boost and multiply it with the effects of more social media marketing, wouldn’t it most likely increase your profits? Not only that, but for every fan you pick up this season, they are likely to be there throughout the next year, and maybe even stick around long enough for the next holiday boost. Get fans for the holiday season now, to help your business for years to come.
