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Have you prepared your Facebook page for the holidays?
Are you looking for tips on how to use your Facebook page this holiday season?
If you haven't even started thinking about the holidays yet, it's time!
In this article, you'll find five ways to make your Facebook page festive for the holidays.
Why Customize For Holidays?
According to Mashable, 65% of shoppers tap social media looking for the perfect gift.
Any day now, your fans will start to look at your business's Facebook page for holiday offers, promotions, events and deal information.
To make the most of these page visits, it's important that your Facebook page is ready for the season.
Here's how:
#1: Holiday-themed Cover Photos
When visitors land on your Facebook page, the cover photo is the first thing they see. Use this 851 x 315 px banner-style image to get your visitors into the spirit of the season!
You should change the cover photo of your page on a regular basis, especially during holidays. Why? Because people are browsing more than usual, looking for special offers and gift ideas, and checking out friends' recommendations. Fresh cover photos motivate them to check your page often.
Your holiday cover photos should be representative of your brand, but reflective of the season as well. If you don't want to use a holiday-specific cover photo, try a general holiday message or feature fall and winter colors.
In the above image, you can see how Media Barista themed a seasonal cover photo for their fans.
Use your cover photo to direct fans to a custom holiday app, showcase your holiday products, promote exclusive holiday deals and even encourage interaction from your fans.
Think of your cover photo as a large billboard. What information do you want to promote during the holiday season? Create a number of cover photos to help you!
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Your profile photo is a major asset that can be used to complement your cover photo. Most brands don't change their profile photo very often, but you should use the holiday season to change things up and get creative with it!
Ask an employee to dress in fall or winter clothing—or if someone is willing, like an elf or Santa. Decorate your company mascot or simply feature a special holiday product.
If you prefer to keep your logo as your page's profile photo, add some holiday accents to your logo like DKS Systems did, below.
#3: Run Seasonal Social Campaigns
According to HubSpot, 81% of retailers use Facebook to alert shoppers about their in-store holiday deals.
Facebook recently updated their promotion guidelines, opening the door for more opportunities for promotions and giveaways. Businesses can now use the timeline in addition to custom Facebook apps to run promotions.
Here are three ideas you can implement this holiday season:
Reward Fans With a Holiday Giveaway
During this time of the year, the most popular kind of Facebook app to build is a giveaway app.
Build an app to offer Facebook-only coupons, host holiday-themed photo and video contests that award a prize or run a special Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Christmas giveaway.
Drive Online and In-store Sales With an App
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Fans appreciate free gifts and opportunities to win fun prizes and awards, but as a business you still need to drive online and in-store sales.
Use your Facebook page to showcase a popular product to customers. Once you have their attention, make it easy for them to find you with a store finder app to direct your fans to your brick-and-mortar location.
Everywhere Travel promotes travel deals on their Facebook page year-round.
Boost Engagement With a Giving App
Holidays are a time for giving, so charitable-giving apps are really effective during the holiday season. Consider running a campaign that benefits a local or national charity and ask your fans to get involved.
All of these ideas can be combined with timeline promotions, which allows you to capitalize on the engagement and reach the campaign generates. You can host your competition on the timeline and use a Facebook app to offer extra entries, share additional offers and collect information from your fans.
#4: Decorate Your App Thumbnails
App thumbnails continue to be one of the most neglected areas of a business page's timeline. Your app thumbnails are the 111 x 74 px images located underneath your cover photo on the bottom right side of your page. Edit your tab apps with custom images that are adjusted to fit your holiday branding.
Design your cover photo with an arrow that points to your app thumbnails and use the thumbnail space to create a call to action that encourages fans to learn more about your holiday offers.
In the image below, notice how Burt's Bees does a great job of drawing attention to their current campaigns and offers with their branded app thumbnails. They haven't updated their profile for the holiday season yet, but I bet they will soon!
#5: Schedule Holiday-related Facebook Ads
Most businesses on Facebook are using Facebook ads, at least on occasion. If you're still on the fence about Facebook ads, the holiday season is a perfect time to jump in.
If you're ready to experiment with Facebook ads, first set a budget. Then create a few different ads and implement some A/B testing. Andrea Vahl provided some great tips for seeing results with Facebook ads.
You can also experiment with promoted posts and sponsored stories. Promoted posts and sponsored stories are existing Facebook posts that you pay to promote, versus creating ads.
If you post a status update promoting a holiday deal or app, I recommend putting money behind your posts to reach a larger audience. If you need to catch up on Facebook's latest advertising offers, check out this eBook from Jon Loomer.
Over to You
To make sure that your Facebook page is ready for holiday traffic this year, take time now to plan your seasonal campaigns and prearrange your holiday ads.
Be creative with your seasonally themed cover images, profile photos and custom app thumbnail images. Most of all, be giving and remember to experiment with your social media activity.
What do you think? How do you plan on using Facebook in your holiday marketing efforts? What other tips for holiday readiness can you share? Leave your ideas and comments in the box below.
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