The holidays are a fruitful time for businesses.

There are so many eager buyers for a multitude of different products and services – which means you’ve probably been pretty busy lately.

These social media hacks for the holidays will save you some time.

This article will help businesses of all sorts reach new fans and followers, engage current fanbases and help convert them to customers more efficiently.

1. Use less popular hashtags on Twitter

I know this sounds weird, but it works.

Now I’m not saying you should ditch the trending hashtags, but sometimes you want to hit a niche market with some less commonly used hashtags.

Most of the time I’ll get a lot more click-throughs on tweets with less commonly used hashtags than I do with the overused ones.

For example, the Christmas hashtag can get over 70,000 tweets in a week. That’s a lot!

And sure, a lot of people are probably searching for that hashtag, but it makes your chance of being seen also a lot lower because there are so many other tweets.

So I like to use a mixture of most popular hashtags and less popular hashtags.

Whereas if you search something more specific, like #xmasgifts, the tweets per week are much lower – at around 300 per week.

“#xmasgifts” would be a good hashtag for retailers or eCommerce shops to use over the holidays.

You don’t want the hashtags you use to be completely deserted, you just want them to have a niche following.

To search for the popularity of a hashtag you can use a tool like Talkerwalker.com.

Try to find some hashtags related to your business and the holidays that have a maximum of somewhere between 100-1000 tweets per week.

2. Re-schedule your top tweets with Buffer

This is one of my favorite features on Buffer – and it’s super easy to do. I scroll through my top tweets and find the most clicked. You can also search for the most retweeted, most liked, etc.

Here at Wishpond we recently ran a holiday promotion to get $50 off of our Basic Plan (it’s $69 per month on a month-to-month plan).

59 clicks on a tweet is actually really high for us – so this tweet would be a perfect candidate to re-buffer.

I actually find that sometimes my re-buffered tweets will get more than the original tweet – especially if I re-buffer them for a different time of day (7am Pacific Time is ideal for our tweets).

It’s super easy to figure out which of your tweets have been the most popular on Buffer – the thing is, the analytics are only shown for the tweets that you specifically used buffer to schedule.

All you have to do is click the Analytics tab at the top of the dashboard where you’ll automatically be directed to your posts. Then below your Twitter profile image, you’ll see “Most Popular” to the right of “Recent. Just hover over it and choose whichever option you find fitting.

3. Get a little silly with your Facebook posts

So, I’ve been crafting social media posts for a variety of businesses over the past few years.

When the holidays come around that’s when I get excited – I know that this is the time to let loose and have some Facebook Page fun.

So what can you do to spruce up your holiday marketing on Facebook?

There is a lot of different content you can use to jazz up your Facebook page. Here’s a brief list of some types of content you can post:

• Images
• Videos
• Jokes
• Vines
• Quotes
• Questions
• Polls

For example, take a look at one of Charmin’s Facebook posts:

They usually find endearing or hilarious ways to post about their product.

This Facebook post is great because it shows the necessity of their product, but also incorporates the holidays in an adorable way.

Next, take a look at this post by Skittles. They can have pretty obscure posts, but they always relate to their product.

Although this Facebook post may not be as effective for drawing customers into the store, these playful types of posts will help boost the reach of your content.

So, how can you add some hilarity to your own Facebook page? The easiest way is with images.

Thankfully your posts will already be based around a holiday so your posts will already have an extra advantage by being relevant to your fans.

I would start by taking a look at popular sites such as Pinterest or Buzzfeed to get your ideas for funny holiday photos rolling…

Facebook post tip: A lot of successful Christmas posts I’ve used in the past included animals or children… and possibly dad jokes.

4. Change the appearance of a Facebook post and post it again

Re-featuring a post on Facebook is perfect for when you are spreading the word about a certain product, service or promotion around the holidays.

Facebook allows you to customize a lot of how your Facebook posts appear – such as the share image, the headline and subheader and also the description.

This means that you can link to the same offer over and over (but I wouldn’t overdo it).

In this post below, you can see the four different parts of the post you can change:

• The post description
• The link image
• The link headline
• The link subheadline

Make sure you’re not posting the same offer multiple times a day, and make sure that you are providing some different information than the previous post. You don’t want to make your Facebook timeline appear spammy.

Here’s an example of how Sears used this tactic below:

5. Run a holiday promotion to get more Instagram followers

According to Forrester, the top brands on Instagram generate engagement rates 58 times higher than their Facebook posts and 120 times higher than their Twitter posts.

Instagram is the place for brands to be. If your Instagram is in need of more followers, now’s the time to act.

And contests are a great way to generate more followers.

One great thing about Instagram is that it allows you to “follow-gate” your contests, which means you can ask people to follow your brand on Instagram as a condition of entering your contest.

For example, tea supplier Mighty Leaf…

Below you can see that they’ve included it in their conditions:

Note: In Instagram contests like Wishpond’s, there’s an option you can select in the campaign editor so that your Instagram contest only includes entries that follow you.

6. Use Shops to convert Instagram followers to customers

If you already have an engaged following on Instagram, Instagram’s Shops feature is definitely worth a look – especially around the holidays.

Before Shops, Instagram users had no way to shop for the products found on Instagram without specialized tools such as Like2buy.

So how does it work?

Your followers can visit your shop from your Instagram profile or through the feed and Stories. Once they’re at the shop, they can browse products, explore collections, and purchase products.

This happens seamlessly through Instagram’s in-app browser and without leaving the app from shops with checkout.

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7. Schedule all of your holiday posts early so you can relax

Sure, the holidays are a great time for making the most out of your social efforts, but that doesn’t mean you have to be on social 24/7.

That’s why social media management tools are so important to your social routine. This may seem like an obvious hack, but it’s one of the most important for the holiday season.

We all need a bit of down time now and then, regardless of if you’re taking a tropical getaway or just spending time with family and friends.

So make sure to schedule your posts (whether that’s with buffer, hootsuite, latergramme, etc.) to take the fuss out of posting during the holidays.

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Source, https://blog.wishpond.com/post/115675436255/social-media-holiday-hacks?wpnd_cid=344afc6bb55f377b

If you want to make sales, you need to drive traffic to your website. And, as you might already know, Facebook advertising campaigns are one of the best ways to get potential customers to visit your online store. But Facebook ads are complex – there’s a lot to learn, and there’s always ways to optimize your campaigns. So, we’ve put together a checklist that you can use to troubleshoot common issues that entrepreneurs encounter when they’re running Facebook ads. Note: Before you try to optimize your Facebook ads you should always try to get at least 10,000 impressions from your ads. You want a decent amount data to work with before you start optimizing your ads.

What to do if your ‘Cost per click’ (CPC) is too high.

First off, check your click-through-rate (CTR). If you notice that your CTR is under 1% then it’s a good idea to review your ad creatives and the audiences that you’re targeting. Check if you’ve received any negative feedback for your ads, as that could be damaging their performance. Take a look at your Facebook ads ‘relevance score’. If you notice that it’s below 7, then you might need to rethink your ads. You can check this under the ‘Performance and Clicks’ standard report. Try to duplicate the ads that you’re running and test them with higher budgets. Don’t be afraid to test out new audiences if all else fails.

What to do if you have a low click-through rate (CTR).

Review your Facebook ad creatives. You might need to try completely new creatives if they’re hampering your CTR. Check the placements of your Facebook ads. If you’re using mobile ads, you could try running some desktop ones, or vice versa. Remember to test out your ads using different audiences. Try adding different steps into your ad funnels to try and warm up your audience to your brand.

Getting lots of clicks but few conversions?

Check your bounce rate – essentially, the number of clicks you receive vs the number of views your ads get. Check your traffic placements. Audience Network and Instant Article ads, for example, are notoriously bad for ‘top of the funnel’ campaigns. Check your website UX. It might actually be a problem with navigating your website that is causing the drop off. Go through the experience yourself and see if anything could be improved.

Still not converting? Try these tips.

Using custom audiences for your Facebook ads? Make sure that they’re populated correctly. Sometimes there are issues with this. Double check that you don’t have another Facebook ad account driving traffic to the same page. Take a look and see if you have any negative feedback on your ads. Pivot and focus any Facebook ads that are aimed at getting conversions to get more impressions instead. Then, you can try using retargeting ads. Try using higher budgets for your campaigns. You might have everything lined up to succeed, but you just haven’t hit the right people yet. If all else fails, switch your campaigns to use the ‘Post Engagement’ objective. LET US KNOW HOW YOUR FACEBOOK DOING

This six-step process will help you engage your organic search traffic on social media and expand your reach by using Facebook lookalike audiences.

When trying to grow a business online, organic search traffic can seem like one of the slowest games of all time – it can feel like it takes forever for search engines to bring another person to your website.

And most businesses are waiting on Google to hopefully bring another five people today or another 10 people tomorrow.

The problem arises when you have to wait for people to ask a question in the search engine and hope your content is good enough to rank in the top 10 search results on Google for that particular question.

It’s also pretty common that most businesses do not have the time to wait or the budget to grow their website to millions of visitors quickly.

But what if there were a way to fix that problem?

What if there were a better and faster way to engage your organic search traffic and your social media content all at the same time?

Luckily, there is a simple six-step process to engage your organic search traffic on social media and drastically expand your organic search reach by using Facebook lookalike audiences.

• Step 1: Perform keyword research.
• Step 2: Create a piece of content (for this example it will be a blog).
• Step 3: Get some organic traffic to that piece of content.
• Step 4: Set-up your social media pixel and pixel the people who read the article of content.
• Step 5: Create a Facebook lookalike audience.
• Step 6: Serve social media ads to that audience.

Now, to break this down even more.

Step 1: Perform Keyword Research

When starting with keyword research, you probably have a few keywords that you would like to rank for – apparent things like your products, services, or other topics your website addresses.

These seed topics are a great place to start for your keyword research, but that doesn’t mean you should stop there.

Why?

What you want to rank for, and what your audience is typing into the search engines, are often two completely different things.

That is one of the most pivotal reasons to perform keyword research in the first place.

If people aren’t searching for it, then why waste time creating it in the first place?

The smartest way to avoid this is to find the exact words and phrases that your ideal customers are currently searching for on Google and other major search engines.

It may sound not easy, but there are a handful of excellent keyword research tools that can help.

For example, we used Ahrefs to research the phrase, ‘“how to get 10k followers on instagram.”

You can see how many people are searching for this key phrase and any other relatable parent topics that people are also searching for.

When creating content for the search engines, it’s essential to create content that answers one question at a time.

For example, you could take these short-term and long-term keywords and create a blog post on each one of them only when it makes sense for your business.

People are searching for your question, but they are also searching for “how to get swipe up on instagram without 10k followers” and “how to get 10k followers on instagram in one day.”

If it doesn’t make sense to write a topic on each of those questions and the keywords are too relatable, then maybe it makes more sense to use this set of keywords as an H1 or H2 heading instead, which also plays a significant factor in search engine rankings.

Step 2: Create a Piece of Content

Now that you understand the importance of finding the right keywords to use in your content marketing strategy, it is time to create a blog post.

When writing a blog, it is essential to remember that the goal is to get new readers to your blog consistently, eventually leading to a sale.

It’s also to get readers and engagement on the blog, so signals are sent to social media and the search engines to help you get that first-page ranking on Google.

This is where keyword research comes into play.

When performing keyword research correctly, it takes no time to get top rankings in Google because you know what people are searching for and how frequently they are searching for it.

Once your blog post is published to your website, it is time to wait for some people to read and engage with it.

Step 3: Get Organic Traffic

The only thing you have to do in this step is to wait for some organic traffic, the goal is around 1,000 people.

Over time when the piece of content you created starts to get search results, you can then set up a pixel (this is the next step) and begin running social media ads to hack the process.

However, let me start by saying this may not be as simple as it sounds – this is the step where most businesses get stuck and don’t know how to grow reasonably.

Most companies understand how a simple marketing funnel works, but what they don’t understand is how to continuously get newly qualified people throughout every piece of the marketing funnel.

Even so, most businesses don’t understand how to successfully intertwine multiple platforms and use their social media to grow their organic search traffic or vice versa.

People have created all of these great pieces of content, but they don’t understand how to use that to take them to the next level.

And when you are using multiple platforms, that’s where this marketing strategy comes into play.

You have to understand how to track every person who touches your content, from the first touch to the last.

Studies have shown that it usually takes a person seven interactions with a business before making a purchase.

To know how many times a person interacts with your content, it is critical to have a pixel placed on your website for accurate data tracking, leading to the next step.

Step 4: Set Up Social Media Pixel

Once you have published your blog post and have a small amount of traffic engaging with your content, it is time to set up your social media pixel on your website.

If you are unfamiliar with a pixel, here is the definition.

A pixel is a few lines of code that you copy into the header section of your website.

It works by placing and triggering cookies to track users as they interact with your website and your Facebook ads.

The pixel serves two primary purposes:

• To remarket to someone who has visited one of your pages.
• To know which pages they have visited and to track and see if someone has completed the desired action, whatever that may be.

What the pixel does, in essence, is allow Facebook to track their audience on our platform, we are essentially giving Facebook access to our tracking.

If you are unsure how to create a Facebook pixel and add the Facebook Pixel to your website, follow this two-part process:

Part 1: Create a Facebook Pixel

• Go to Events Manager.
• Click Connect Data Sources and select Web.
• Select Facebook Pixel and click Connect.
• Add your Pixel Name.
• Enter your website URL to check for easy setup options.
• Click Continue.

Part 2: Add the Facebook Pixel to Your Website

Once you’ve created your pixel, you’re ready to put the Facebook pixel code on your website.

There are a few different options on how you can set this part up:

• You can manually add pixel code to a website.
• Use a partner integration.
• Use email instructions.

Once the tracking is in place and you fully understand your target audience’s patterns, you can begin to implement the R3MAT strategy, showing the right message to the right person at the right time with the right expectations.

Once you have your social media pixel set up, it’s time to move into the next step.

Step 5: Create a Lookalike Audience

Did you know that Facebook can predict if you are pregnant before you even know you’re pregnant?

And did you know that studies are proving Facebook can predict if people are cheating on their partner before they ever realize it?

That seems pretty scary, right?

But, here is where that becomes super powerful.

Facebook has an option where you can create a lookalike audience based on its tracking abilities to reach new people who are most likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to your best existing customers.

You can create a group of people who have similar likes, interests, and demographics to people who are already interacting with your website.

Here is how to create a Facebook Lookalike Audience:

• Go to your Audiences.
• Click the Create Audience dropdown and choose Lookalike Audience.
• Choose your source notes:
  • A source can be a customer audience not created with your pixel data, mobile app data or fans of your page.
  • Consider using 1,000 to 50,000 of your best customers based on lifetime value, transaction value, total order size, or engagement.
• Choose the country/countries where you’d like to find a similar set of people.
• Choose your desired audience size with the slider.
• Click Create Audience.

Creating this audience gives any business the ability to create a small subset of people you can talk to any way you choose.

You can now show this audience relevant ads, move them through the sales funnel, build your relationship with them, build your reach and frequency.

All of this is possible because Facebook is watching so many little data points all of the time.

Facebook is continuously collecting information about the things you buy and the websites you visit.

Plus thousands of other bits of personal information gathered from public records and your social media activity.

Step 6: Serve Audience the Social Media Ads

The final step is to show relevant ads to your new lookalike audience that you just created.

To keep this process going, make sure you are consistently showing your lookalike audience(s) new relevant content that meets them at each point in the buyers’ journey.

When you complete this six-step process, you are officially taking your organic search and lighting it on fire.

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Source: text and images, Gari Handerson, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/engage-organic-search-traffic-on-social-media/376524/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=daily-newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter&mc_cid=cb31d7e2e1&mc_eid=919e43ffe5#close

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, and it’s a goldmine for marketers,
businesses, and entrepreneurs alike.

In fact, around 1 billion people use Instagram every single month, and 80 percent of Instagram users follow one or more businesses.

Plenty of people want to follow brands on Instagram, but getting attention on Instagram isn’t always easy.

Likes, comments, followers… they’re the things that everybody is craving.

So, how do you get more eyeballs onto your Instagram content and improve your engagement rates?
Well, your focus when you’re posting on Instagram should always be to produce the highest quality content for your brand.

But there are proven tactics that you can use to broaden the reach of your brand and increase your engagement rates.

Timing is everything.

To have the best chance at getting high engagement from your Instagram posts, you need to get your posts in front of the
largest number of people possible.

And the timing of your posts is key. You need to know two things; when to post, and how often to post.

Our research shows that the best time to post on Instagram if you want to receive high engagement is midday from Monday to Friday.

This is because most users browse Instagram on their phones, and they’ll likely be unable to check the app while they’re working.
So hit them with some content during their lunch hours and you’ll increase your chances of them seeing and engaging with it.

If you’re only going to post once a week, Wednesday is the best day to post, and Sunday is the day with the lowest engagement rates.

But, we don’t recommend posting just once per week. If you can, try to post at least once per day – a steady stream of content will really
help you to build your engagement rates.

Don’t forget your hashtags.

Instagram hashtags can help you to get more likes, more followers, and reach a broader audience.

That is, if you find the right hashtags to add to your Instagram posts. And finding the right hashtags requires research.

Find what your audience, competitors, and influencers in your space are posting, and check which hashtags they’re using.

If, for example, you were selling sunglasses – your first task would be to use Instagram’s explore function and check out #sunglasses.

You can then take a look through the recent top posts, and check which hashtags are being used to generate posts with high engagement.

And remember, while you can use up to 30 hashtags per Instagram post, you don’t always need to fill your Instagram captions to the brim with hashtags. Stick to highly relevant ones, because sometimes less is more.

Take advantage of Instagram Stories.

Every day more than 500 million people use Instagram Stories.

That’s a huge number, and it’s evidence that Instagram Stories are a must-have when it comes to running your brand’s account.

Instagram Stories are great because they can help you to retain the attention of your existing followers, even if they’re not
always engaging with the more permanent content that you’re posting, and if a user is engaging with your stories, they’ll be more likely to see the content that you post, which can help you to increase
your engagement rates.

Also, it’s important to remember that Instagram Stories can help new followers to signal to the Instagram algorithm that they’re
interested in your content, which will create a snowball effect and help them to see more of the content you post.

Hold contests and giveaways.

If there’s one thing in life I can say with total confidence, it’s this: people love free stuff.

Running contests or giveaways from your Instagram account will allow you to generate a ton of engagement and allow your
audience to tap into that joyous feeling of winning something.

Think about it – if you’ve already garnered an audience which is engaged with your content then all you need to do next is find a
prize that they’re interested in, and promote it to them in exchange for Instagram engagement.

Common tactics that brands use include asking people to like their post, tag their friends, or follow their account to enter.
And all of these are going to work wonders for your Instagram engagement rates.

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