Christmas Shopping! Setting Up Your Store on Social Media

Christmas is a chaotic time, and that goes double for anyone with an online store. Thankfully, social media makes online Christmas sales and seasonal promotions much easier. You can get your store’s social media looking festive and Christmas-ready without spending a single cent on tinsel. 

But all of this does require some careful planning and consideration. 

Not sure how to make your feed look effortlessly Christmas-y, let alone link an Instagram post to your store’s product listing? Here’s everything you need to know (and do) to set up your store on social media in time for Christmas.

Sort Out Your Socials

It’s important that your social media is primed and ready for an influx of seasonal traffic. You want to provide a simple path to guide the customer from the point of being interested in a product or promotion to making the purchase.

Here’s a checklist of everything that needs to be sorted out, or at least considered:

  • Make sure your Facebook and Instagram pages are connected to a business account
  • Create a Facebook catalogue
  • Sign up for Facebook Shopping
  • Sign up for Instagram Shopping
  • Link any eCommerce platforms you use (such as Shopify)
  • Create product posts and tag all relevant products
  • Make sure your payment details, prices, and linked website addresses are all accurate
  • Create a bio link on your Instagram to drive traffic to the right external links (such as a landing page)
  • Create any required landing pages to be linked back to
  • Make sure your website hosting is sufficient to handle an influx of seasonal web traffic
  • Create a post to share your Christmas business and shipping hours

Need help setting these up? Our social media team can help with that.

Get Decorating

Now for the fun part. Switch up your colour scheme to something decidedly Christmas-y. Bust out the red and green. Get creative with editing, emojis, and filters. Not only do people appreciate the festive spirit, but the appearance of Christmas on a store’s social media account hints at the possibility of deals and sales. 

Draw them in with the Christmas theme, then hit them with unmissable deals.

Use Social Media as a Tool

Social media can seem like a burden (especially if you’re not taking advantage of a social media manager to do the work for you). But the key to getting the most out of social media is shifting your perspective from seeing it as a chore to utilising its enormous eCommerce value.

Let’s use Instagram as an example. Instagram is a highly visual and engaging social media platform. The tiled layout of the profile page means you can implement a countdown (for instance, the 12 Days of Christmas). 

Christmas is the chance to hit them with your most attractive promotions of the year, when they are in a buying mood.”

You can utilise stories to build excitement for your upcoming Christmas products or deals, or offer discount codes. Since stories disappear after 24 hours, users will learn to check your stories regularly for a chance to snag a code.

You could even run a competition to encourage more engagement and follows through a classic follow, like, tag entry.

And it goes without saying that you need to be attentive to your social media during this time since you’ll be receiving a higher amount of comments and messages.

These are just some of the ways social media can be used to draw in more followers, customers, and sales over the holidays. Are you using it to its full potential?

Kick Off a Campaign

There’s so much potential in organic social media, but that potential becomes unlimited when paired with social media advertising. After all, you want people to actually engage with your feed after putting in so much effort to get it ready for Christmas.

Launch a campaign to draw in new users and re-target those who’ve engaged with your brand in the past. This not only encourages more engagement and sales over the Christmas period, but helps to secure new customers long after the tinsel is taken down.

Users may have engaged with your brand throughout the year, and there could be all kinds of reasons why they haven’t purchased on your site. Christmas is the chance to hit them with your most attractive promotions of the year, when they are in a buying mood. You’d be silly to miss out on the opportunity.

Not sure how to go about this? That’s where we come in. Our team of digital marketing experts knows exactly how to get your store’s socials ready for Christmas, from carefully curated seasonal feeds to targeted advertising campaigns. Reach out today to get started in time for the festive season.

Up next: Top 5 Tips for the Biggest Return From Festive Marketing

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