Don’t underestimate the power of national holidays and hashtags, to get your business discovered and build engagement on social networks.
At the end of 2022, there are now 4.55 billion active social media users (source).
Yes, you read that right; 4.55 billion!
That’s over half of the world’s population.
Are you reaching out to any of them on social media?
For small and medium sized businesses, it can be all too easy to overlook social media. Perhaps you don’t think you’ve got anything important to say? or you’re just too busy to come up with a posting schedule?
Octima to the rescue.
Download our Social Media Calendar Dates PDF now to instantly elevate your social media game in 2023.
Social media ‘holidays’ are a great way to connect with new and existing followers, join a conversation – and get discovered.
These ‘national days’ offer a great chance to promote your company to a relevant audience, in a relevant way. They present a great opportunity for you to join a conversation with members of your target audience.
There are literally hundreds (if not thousands!) of these observance days, allowing you to create an easy calendar of content relevant to your industry, to help you generate awareness.
If you don’t acknowledge them, you might just see your favourite brands doing it instead!
It seems simple because it is.
Download our Social Media Calendar Dates PDF now to instantly elevate your social media game in 2023.
Keeping up with national and international holidays
Whether it’s a light-hearted holiday (such as National Sandwich Day on 3rd November), an important day of recognition (such as International Women’s Day on 8th March), or a holiday that specifically relates to your business (for us, it could be Social Media Day on 30th June), there is usually a day to celebrate on your social media pages.
The way in which you interact with these holidays may vary, it could be as simple as posting an image on your Instagram story of you and your team enjoying some pizza on national pizza day (12th November), or you could create a whole campaign based around a holiday. For example, you could create a campaign that promotes mental health awareness during Mental Health Awareness month, in March.
Joining in with social media holidays generates awareness for your business, but it also helps to humanise the people behind the brand.
Stay one step ahead of your competition. Download our Social Media Content Calendar now. It’ll give you access to over 100 awareness days, without having to do any more research.
A Note of Caution.
We suggest avoiding posting about national holidays just for the sake of it. Make them relevant to your brand, your people, or your ethos. Join in conversations that matter to you and put your brand amongst others that are talking about the same thing.
Combine your national holidays with hashtagging (#)
When it comes to generating views, likes, and shares of your social posts hashtags are still a key tool to get discovered on social media.
Initially popularised on Twitter, hashtags are commonly now used across all social media platforms. By using hashtags in your posts, you’re allowing them the opportunity to be discovered by a huge audience of interested users, who are looking specifically for the content you’re posting.
Now, everyone on social media knows what hashtags are and what they do. But as a business, do you use them appropriately?
The hashtag often appears mid-copy (for example, ‘#Didyouknow that penguins can’t fly?’) or they’re most times added to the end of a post (for example, ‘Did you know that penguins can’t fly? #didyouknow’).
A good way to check if a hashtag is popularly used is to type it into the search bar on the social platform you’re posting to and see how many other people have posted with this hashtag. Similarly, there are websites that can assist with hashtag generation.
It’s all about the engagement
People join social media because they’re looking for connections, from people and brands. Simply posting isn’t enough.
This may seem like an obvious tip, but it’s one that many businesses overlook (or don’t want to invest in).
If a work team is small, it can be easy to forget to put real time and effort into liking, commenting, and sharing other people’s content. Usually, larger brands have dedicated social media marketers who will spend hours a day doing exactly that.
We say: engage, engage, engage. Set aside 20 minutes of your day to scroll through social media platforms and engage with other businesses. It could make a vast amount of difference to the engagement that you receive in return and how well your content performs. In fact, Facebook’s algorithm uses ‘meaningful engagement’, meaning Facebook monitors user activity and posts their content based on that.
Engage with other profiles by:
- Liking and favouriting
- Commenting
- Direct messaging
- Replying to comments
- Sharing and retweeting
- Saving
- Mentioning others
For more Octima tips on social media, have a read of our blog post ‘Social Media Publishing Theories’: https://octima.co.uk/social-media-publishing-theories-a-guide-%EF%BF%BC/
Download our Content Calendar PDF now to get started on transforming your social media content: [link], or contact us today to tap into our extensive knowledge on all things marketing.
