Surviving Q4 Holiday in Social Media: 5 Things You Should Really Consider

Ultimately, anyone’s Q4 can be a bang or bust in social. Keep the following points in mind as you plan ahead and before you know it, you’ll be breaking out the eggnog to toast an epically successful holiday season.

Okay. You know we’ve gotta talk about the G word.

What’s the client’s goal for Q4 this year? ROI? Fan acquisition? Engagement? Whatever it may be, know it by heart and plan around it. Once you’ve got that established, discuss and nail down some achievable objectives for the season. Each facet of your campaign will need to be planned in the shadow of this overarching goal; everything from planning that mega-blowout Catalina Wine Mixer event down to choosing the very last interest target on your smallest page post ad.

History 101: Learn from the past.

What did your client do last year? Try to remember and plan this year accordingly. If you have the luxury of backlogged data, go check last year’s campaigns and see which pieces rocked the Casbah. You may find some useful nuggets to prevent you from reinventing that ingenious wheel.

On the flip side, don’t forget the future – the realm of social media is an ever-changing space. Check Q4 projections within your industry and see where experts think things are headed for each platform. Listen closely to these crystal ball insights, but be confident in your own knowledge and remember to form your own opinions around them

There are no original ideas. Or are there?

We’ve all been there – your team grabs their doodle-covered notebooks and shuffles into an all-too-familiar conference room for some good ole holiday brainstormin’. And while you’re in there scribbling away on that dingy white board covered in unforgiving smudges of meetings past, the same thought crosses everyone’s mind. Is there really anything that hasn’t been done? If you have a little creativity, faith, and redbull, the answer can always be yes. Start with the obvious questions. What are your competitors doing? What have they done in the past? Find out and set yourself apart. But don’t fly blindly. If you want to do something totally out of the box, take baby steps. Try some small-scale testing in Q3 and see if your ideas are viable for the crucial season ahead.

One brand, one voice:

With social holiday planning, there can be a zillion different pieces of a campaign all happening at once. Through all the crazy, don’t lose focus of the message. Make sure all your cross-channel and cross-platform messaging is synchronized. Short and sweet.

Stay present and finish strong.

Your message on any social campaign is useless if it has no consistency. Plan your posting through the holiday season so that your social client has an ever-present voice. You don’t want to be too staccato and blast content only on major shopping days, but you also don’t want to scream at a 9.9 average frequency the whole way through. Plan ahead and spread your budget out into a seamless flight schedule, pushing on those majorly important days but not flat-lining on all the rest.