Winter is just around the corner! As the weather cools and individuals spend more time indoors with their family and friends, now is the perfect time to revamp your social media strategy. Tapping into your winter social media magic will help you increase brand awareness across various channels. When you take your time to strategically adjust your messaging and the content you use to align with the season, you can increase your engagement and grow your following. Just in time for the busy holiday season!
In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the power of seasonal content and how to use winter-inspired visuals and blogs to grow your social media presence.
The Power of Seasonal Content
If you’re constantly posting the same type of content throughout the year, your followers will grow bored. While sales posts, product launches, and company updates are vital parts of any effective social media strategy, mixing things up and testing out different content types never hurts.
When you add seasonal content into your strategy, you can build a stronger relationship with your target audience and drive conversions to your website. According to the National Retail Federation, roughly 61% of consumers begin holiday shopping in early November. This is a perfect time to readjust your social media content to align with your audience’s shopping habits and to look for innovative ways to stand out from your competitors on the feed.
Winter Social Media Trends
When crafting a winning social media strategy for the winter, you’ll want to meet your audience where they are and capitalize on platform-specific trends that deliver results.
Some of the most popular social media trends for 2023 to consider this winter include:
- Instagram Reels
- TikTok Challenges
- Instagram Stories
- LinkedIn Lives
- Facebook Stories
Incorporating these social media trends into your strategy will help you maintain your competitive edge throughout winter. Once you decide which platforms and trends make the most sense for your brand – you can add a winter flair to everything you do throughout the colder winter months.
Crafting Winter-Themed Visuals
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about winter? If we had to guess, It’s probably snow-covered mountains, flannel blankets, or cozy nights next to a warm fireplace.
Winter-themed visuals should be eye-catching, festive, cozy, and heartfelt. Consider how you can incorporate different winter elements into your visuals and use this content to build a stronger connection with your target audience.
Whether it’s a vibrant color scheme, winter graphic, or a playful font – while these small elements may be against the norm, they can be a fun way to get in the winter spirit and draw more attention to the posts you create.
Some of the most popular winter visual elements you can add to your social media strategy include:
- Holiday decorations
- Snowflakes, snow, and winter-themed images
- Blankets, flannels, and sweaters
- End-of-the-year celebrations, NYE, and holiday traditions
Engaging Winter Videos
Videos are arguably one of the most effective types of content you can use in your strategy. Studies suggest that nearly 72% of social media users prefer to consume video content over different types of content.
It’s best to keep your content authentic and organized when developing creative video content during the winter season. Content with an honest, organic feel is more likely to blend in with the timeline and get more views. Some creative winter video content to try to add to your strategy include:
- Meet the team
- Office holiday traditions
- Gift exchange, holiday parties, or team celebrations
- Behind-the-scenes content
- Tutorials and How-tos
- Day in the life of an employee
- Jump on TikTok trends and use trending sounds
Leveraging User-Generated Content
User-generated content has an organic look and feel. You can leverage it in your marketing strategy to help your target audience visualize their life with your products and services. Many brands use user-generated content in their strategy to build stronger connections with their target audience.
If you struggle to gain user-generated content, consider running a winter-centric marketing campaign.
- Run a social media contest.
- Give discounts and deals to anyone who shares photos online and tags your business.
- Encourage your customers to share content with a spec and hashtag.
- Focus the user-generated content around a fall or winter product launch.
Winter Blog Posts That Shine
Winter is also a great time to increase organic traffic to your website. With carefully crafted winter blogs, you can find innovative ways to reach your audience through search engines and repurpose the content for other channels.
Some innovative ways to repurpose blogs on social media include:
- Create an Instagram carousel
- Share a PDF to LinkedIn
- Instagram story features
- Create holiday gift guides
- Turn your blog content into a video for TikTok or Instagram Reels
Analytics and Measuring Success
Whether you plan a winter marketing campaign to get more user-generated content or decide to add more video content to your strategy – you must track and measure the success of your campaigns. You can use this data to better understand what type of content resonates with your audience and look for innovative ways to mimic it in the future.
To do so, you must decide which KPIs will be the most important to your campaign. Do you want to grow your social media following or increase website traffic? The best way to keep track of your success is to use the analytic dashboards built into the platform or invest in a tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
Revamp Your Winter Social Media Strategy
It doesn’t matter what industry you are in – you can find success by incorporating winter-themed content into your social media strategy. To succeed, you’ll want to put yourself into your customer’s shoes and make data-driven decisions that align with their interests. With the right content and strategy, you can slowly increase conversions and grow your following all winter.
If you’re ready to take your social media strategy to the next level – you’ve come to the right place. At Socialistics, we can help you fine-tune your approach to organic and paid social and help you develop a strategy that delivers results.
Contact us today to learn more about our social media services.
