How to stand out on social media during the holidays

As the holiday season approaches, social media users and consumers are exposed to many more ads and messages than usual. This makes originality essential if you want to stand out from the pack and draw people’s attention with unique content that has high engagement potential.

Here are a few of our top tips for strategic social media use in the weeks leading up to the holidays.

Reaching the right people at the right time!

In 2018, 43% of shoppers said that they began their holiday shopping in November or even earlier![i] Since some consumers do their Christmas shopping in advance and others at the last minute, you should plan marketing activities all throughout the pre-Christmas period in order to reach both groups of shoppers. It’s the perfect time of year to target potential customers and convert engagement into buying intention.

After Friday, December 20, Canadian consumers can no longer shop online and still receive their purchases in time for Christmas Eve. Why not take advantage of this window of opportunity to draw last-minute shoppers into your brick and mortar locations?

Choose the right advertising objectives

Starting the week of Black Friday, social media users are exposed to an exponentially higher amount of ads and sponsored content, which significantly raises the value of ad auctions and causes cost per result to increase for advertisers. This is why it is essential for companies to create strategic campaigns and optimize their advertising budget.

Want your products to be seen by the greatest number of people, get the most interactions on your page or simply convert clicks into online purchases? During this festive season, establishing the proper objectives is the key to a successful campaign! Try creating split tests using Facebook’s Ads Manager in order to test different formats, audiences and ad buys, starting from the beginning of November.

 Take advantage of Pinterest traffic

Whether they’re looking for ideas for holiday menus, inspiration for Christmas decorations, tutorials for homemade gifts or even fun new ways to wrap presents, Pinterest users save more than 3 billion holiday-related Pins every year![ii] This creates a wonderful opportunity for companies to make and share eye-catching and original content on this growing platform.

Pinterest is the perfect place for companies to share creations,DIY projects, recipes or other tips to inspire people online. Anything goes when it comes to introducing your product to consumers, giving them new ideas, impressing them and making their lives easier! To learn more about Pinterest best practices, check out the platform’s resources and guides for businesses.

Customer service: communicate clearly and be responsive

These days, it’s easy for consumers to access brands in real time, which has significantly increased their expectations, and made them less patient than ever! This is why it is very important to reply to customers’ questions and requests on social media, and to make sure that your customer service is up to their expectations, especially as the holidays draw near. After‑sales service can have a real impact on customer loyalty once the holidays are over, which makes it essential to establish a returns and exchanges policy purpose-builtfor this time of year, and to clearly convey this policy to customers.

Make sure your customers are aware of your holiday schedule if it differs from your regular hours. Automatic Facebook Messenger replies are an excellent way to let people know if response times will vary if they private message you. If you want to prevent customer dissatisfaction, consider enabling this before you go on vacation.


[i] Facebook Global Holiday Study—A Facebook IQ commissioned online study by Ipsos, Jan 2019, 2. Facebook Internal Data, May 2019, 3. A Facebook IQ commissioned online study by Ipsos, Jan 2019, 4. eMarketer, “Holiday Shopping 2018”, October 2018.

[ii] Pinterest internal search and save data, US, 2018.[ii] Pinterest internal search and save data, US, 2018.