Summary

How targeted is your social media strategy for this holiday season? If you’re like most, you probably have some room for improvement when it comes to creating content that’s fully catered to your customers’ preferences.


By using in-depth consumer data and insights to determine the right social media platforms to use, as well as the best content to put out to capture consumer interest on your company’s social media outlets, you’ll have a big advantage when it comes to generating traffic for your store, website, or brand this holiday season. Here are a few strategies to help your business get social this holiday season and well into the new year:

Pick your guest list.

Identify your target audience through locational, contextual, transactional and behavioral data. This data will tell you what consumer segments are prone to activation via social media channels, so you can market to those consumers who count most toward your bottom line.

Gather the addresses.

Find out what social platforms your audience frequents and how to best access them. This might be on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, or a strategic combination of these social platforms.

Prepare for conversation.

Use consumer data sets to home in on what content your ideal audiences want to see on those platforms. This is the key to attracting an audience on social media, so that you aren’t just creating content blindly, but rather responding to subtle consumer demand for content based on your audience’s interests.

Send the invitations.

Deliver your finely-honed holiday message to your ideal audience across multiple platforms. This message may establish a rapport through content or be promotional in nature¬ – depending on the audience segment and their phase in the consumer lifecycle.

Close the deal.

Convert your social media followers into holiday customers through adding a call-to-action in your content. Remember, your social media efforts are only effective if they’re helping to bring customers in through your store or website.

Never underestimate the power of saying the right thing.

70 percent of your audience would rather learn about a brand through content than through traditional advertising. Considering this, you need a smart content strategy to recruit and activate the majority of consumers through the channel that they prefer the most. By combining consumer data, audience selection, and research, you can get the perfect blend of actionable data to ensure that you’re pushing the right content on social media. And utilizing this blend is key to capturing customer interest and to converting potential customers throughout the competitive retail holiday season.

Different demographics use different social media platforms for all different reasons. SproutSocial reports that while Millennials follow brands for information (42%) and entertainment value (38%), Gen X is more likely to follow a brand for contests (41%), as well as deals and promotions (58%). Baby Boomers fall somewhere in between the two, looking for a combination of deals and promotions (60%) and information (53%) when they interface with a brand on social media. Keeping this in mind, you really need to use that strategic data mix on the right platform to successfully access each segment of your customer base… each and every time.

 
Next: Surround Your Target Consumer with Holiday Cheer

Previous: Get the Missing Ingredient in Your Holiday Campaign Recipe