It can be difficult thinking of ideas to market your business or brand all the time. If you’re a social media or marketing manager, there might be weeks when creating content for your social media channels feels like really scraping the barrel. But help is on hand, there is now a designated day for everything from cats, to cookies, to crochet.
You can churn out a random post related to the National Day of Whatever, get involved with the hash tagging and perhaps repost or retweet a couple of other random posts. But, is it a day that aligns in any way with your business, your products or services, or your values? If it isn’t, then you should think twice about getting involved.
Talking of designated days, there’s a big’un coming up this week. It’s a long-standing, over-hyped and over-marketed bandwagon of a day to jump on (not that we’re cynical or anything). Valentine’s Day.
Originating as a Christian feast day to honour St Valentinus, it has morphed into a commercial day of red roses, teddy bears and cards. Or, if you’re us, then M&S Dine In for 2 meal deals. Love it or loathe it, it’s a day in the calendar that will be used by every supermarket and many other brands to sell stuff to you. There will be plenty of noise about it on social media too.
Using Valentine’s Day to peddle a prosecco deal makes sense – the product fits the occasion. However, if you’re selling loft insulation, Valentines probably isn’t relevant, and attempting to shoehorn some brand messaging into a romantically themed post will probably sound a little ridiculous. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t have a bit of fun with particular days or festivals on your social media channels – just don’t jump on every micro holiday in the calendar. It won’t do anything for your brand.
Aligning your business with the wrong day might weaken its authority, confuse your customers, or even damage trust in your brand. Think carefully about whether it’s appropriate to participate in certain days and whether there is any potential to cause offence. If in doubt, it’s probably better to steer clear.
There are some helpful social media calendars you can use to see what’s coming up and to plan your engagement with certain special days. We like this one from Later. Given how many there are, there is bound to be plenty of days that you can get involved with, without having to engage with days that bear no relation to your business. So be selective and stay on-brand.
If you enjoy celebrating days like ‘National Sombrero Day’ or ‘Talk like a Pirate’ day, just make sure that your social media content calendar is balanced with original posts that communicate what your brand is about too. If this is something you struggle with, get in touch with us and we can help you create a content calendar that supports your business objectives and conveys what you need it to (whilst also celebrating major events like National Pet Day. 11th April if you were wondering).
