How To Create Your Own Social Media Holiday Calendar
Holidays are something that as a business, you may want to tap into to engage your audience. This is where a social media holiday calendar comes in. So that you can use creative posts to connect with your audience around the moments that matter most.
Increasingly, customers expect you to build a connection with them that goes above and beyond just a monetary transaction. Including holidays that you think will relate to your customers and wishing them well on those days will really help you build this connection. Add to that posting about fun or interesting observance days, and you will pique their interests too. So let’s take a look at how you can create a social media holiday calendar and figure out which special days to include!
What important days are coming up?
We’ve included a list of international observance days and holidays that are coming up for the remainder of this year, and the first half of next. This way you’ll have ideas to kickstart your planning. We’ve chosen a wide range of days that are recognized around the globe that you can consider for your social media holiday calendar. Some of these can have fun posts, others can have posts that create awareness. If you are a business that wants to take a social stand, some of these are great for that initiative too.
August 2020
- 7th – International Beer Day
- 12th – International Youth Day
- 19th – World Humanitarian Day
- 29th – International Bacon Day
September 2020
- 5th – International Day of Charity
- 8th – World Literacy Day
- 27th – World Tourism Day
- 29th – International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste
October 2020
- 1st – International Coffee Day
- 1st – World Vegetarian Day
- 5th – World Teachers’ Day
- 16th – World Food Day
- 31st – World Cities Day
November 2020
- 13th – World Kindness Day
- 14th – World Diabetes Day
- 16th – International Day for Tolerance
- 19th – World Toilet Day (this can be fun and be used to create awareness on sanitation)
- 20th – Universal Childrens’ Day
December 2020
- 5th – World Soil Day
- 10th – Human Rights Day
- 11th – International Mountain Day
- 15th International Tea Day
- 25th – Christmas Day
January 2021
- 1st – New Years’ Day
- 4th – World Braille Day
February 2021
- 4th – World Cancer Day
- 11th – International Day of Women and Girls in Science
- 14th – Valentines’ Day
- 20th – World Day of Social Justice
- 21st – International Mother Language Day
March 2021
- 3rd – World Wildlife Day
- 8th – International Womens’ Day
- 20th – International Day of Happiness
- 21st – World Poetry Day
- 22nd – World Water Day
April 2021
- 2nd – World Autism Awareness Day
- 7th – United Nations’ World Health Day
- 22nd – Earth Day
- 23rd – World Book and Copyright Day
- 28th – World Day for Safety and Health at Work
May 2021
- 2nd – World Tuna Day
- 15th – International Day of Families
- 22nd – International Day for Biological Diversity
June 2021
- 1st – Global Day of Parents
- 5th – World Environment Day
- 8th World Oceans Day
- 12th – World Day Against Child Labor
- 21st – International Day of Yoga
July 2021
- 11th – World Population Day
- 12th – Malala Day
- 15th – World Youth Skills Day
- 18th – Nelson Mandela International Day
- 30th – International Day of Friendship
How can you pick just the right days for your social media holiday calendar?
It is really important that you select the correct hashtags and the right holidays. This can get a bit confusing, which is why we are giving you an overview of how you can go about it.
Pick the correct hashtags
There is nothing uncommon about brands posting about holidays. But if you are posting these without relevance to your business, it can quickly become a bit of a mess. Take a step back and think about what makes you an engaging brand on social media. That would be your connection. You can post as much as you like, but if you have not maintained the connection, the value of what you are posting is immediately lost.
First up, research the days you’re considering for your social media holiday calendar and make sure that they have some relevance to your brand. Be sensitive to all groups of people in your audience regardless of culture, ethnicity and the likes. If you happen to be posting on social and political issues, make sure that your brand takes a well thought out stand.
Here’s some food for thought when you make your social media holiday calendar…
It has been found that the majority of consumers would unfollow a brand if they feel that the content they post is irrelevant. So make sure that when you share content you are also taking into consideration, the demographic of your brand and what they think applies to them.
Don’t go overboard
One of the main things that you should avoid doing is going overboard with the holiday posts. You should not post just to post. People will simply see your account as spam and unfollow you. Stick to posting holiday content maybe a few times a month only, and choose wisely. There really is no hard and fast rule for how you pick the right holidays. It all depends on the industry that you’re in.
Measure your hashtag performance
If you have all the content that you need planned out and your hashtags selected, how can you know whether what you have invested in has paid off? You need to be sure that you are not wasting your time with hashtags.
You can use hashtag analytics for this. If you can keep following the data that comes with your hashtags, you will be able to see how much of it is working and gaining the interaction that you needed to see. You can also benchmark your best holiday hashtags from the previous year, and then see how you can create new goals around that performance.
Share it on your story
After you have gone through the analytics and you have decided which hashtags you would like to include, you will need to create the posts to be scheduled. Now before you create the post, think about why this post that you are doing will relate to your audience. When you schedule your posts, it will help you not just save time, but will also help you to visualize the efforts that you have invested in your hashtags.
Keep Things Engaging
Consider the engagement value of each post. One of the stand out factors in the content that you post needs to be how engaging it is. If the posts that you are putting up are entertaining, chances are that your customers will read them more and engage or recommend you more.
Experiment with holiday posts
Look at holiday posts as fun and something to experiment with. You can try out different types of content and have fun with the holidays you post about. For example, if you think about #InternationalBaconDay, you can make this an opportunity to show your customers a behind the scenes look of your office. How did your team get in on the fun with tasty dishes that had bacon in them? If you run a food business – all the better! This will add fun to your calendar and will also help you create connections with your audience.
Now that you have an idea of the wide range of days you can use to create a social media holiday calendar, it’s time to get creative. Use this as an opportunity to explore your customers’ personas and what they’re interested in. Avoid posting irrelevant content. And last, but not least, check out how other brands are posting about the holidays most relevant to your audience, to pick up some ideas to experiment with. Most holidays and observance days have been around for quite a while, but this doesn’t mean you can’t put a creative spin on them with your social media posts.