Holidays Are For Life, Not Just For Christmas

by Lily Bradic

Happy Manatee Appreciation Day, everyone! Yes, it’s a real thing — as much as anything online is a real thing, anyway. Fun holidays are excuses to celebrate the things we enjoy, and for social media marketers, they’re a valuable resource for reviving dull campaigns.

If you’re not a fan of manatees, it’s also Waffle Day — and Pecan Day. And Tolkien Reading Day, apparently. This might all sound crazy, but it’s the right kind of crazy — the kind that gets your brand noticed, not the kind that gets you institutionalized.

While holidays like “Check Your Batteries Day” (Sunday 8th March) might not be as exciting as Christmas, you can still use them to improve customer sentiment and increase brand awareness. Adding hashtags to your posts will help connect your posts about waffles with other waffle enthusiasts — so that’s instant exposure as well as content inspiration.

If you love holiday season for all its marketing potential, then why not make it holiday season more often?

Use the search function on Days of the Year to find holidays relevant to your brand. Then, open a spreadsheet (even if you hate them). For this example, we’re using cats, because this is the Internet:

Once you’ve gathered all the relevant holidays, see if you can repurpose any of your existing content. You may also want to create quick and easy content for announcing the holiday on social media (image macros, Vines, etc.) Bonus points for including a call to action! 

Silly things are often memorable, which is why crazy holidays can be so much fun to play with in your campaigns. You can use them as often as you like — as post inspiration on bad days, or as the basis of a new campaign entirely. Using a spreadsheet allows you to sort by date, add links to your existing content, and see what will need creating in order to use the holiday as part of your marketing campaign. You can also add fields for secondary content — from YouTube videos to friends' blog posts.

Readers: which holidays does your brand celebrate? Let us know in the comments!

photo credit: DSCF3203 via photopin (license)