Photo by Felipe Santana

Holiday posts are everywhere on social media, and often we ignore them. Meant as a way to bring us together outside of the usual grind, holiday messages can seem dull and generic in comparison to other posts. Yet, there is a way to enliven what we share and attract audiences in novel ways.

Use Your Story to Enrich Holiday Posts

First, and most importantly, you need to figure out what you want social media friends and followers to learn about you, your organization, and your brand. For those who may not be familiar with the meaning of “brand,” it’s the public’s perception of you as an individual or group. If your objective is to get more attention and funding for children with rare diseases, your holiday posts will look different than posts written for an organization that supports older adults. 

Whatever posts you choose to write about holidays or anything else, think about what action you want audiences to take after reading your post. Your organization or individual needs must determine what holidays you celebrate and what you want to share publicly about those holidays. 

Do you want readers to know your store is having a sale on holiday items, or invite diners to your restaurant on New Year’s Eve? Do you want to share a new Christmas song you or another artist wrote?

Before you write one word, determine your most important objective for sharing holiday messages. Everything you do has to revolve around amplifying your brand and achieving your goals. That doesn’t mean you have to be heavy-handed about what you want to achieve—especially since holidays are supposed to be fun.

What it does mean is taking the following steps:

• Write down three or four goals and add a few short thoughts about how you plan to get there. 
• Talk about your ideas with others in your organization to see if they agree with you. 
• Settle on your final goals. 
• Decide how celebrating the holidays is going to help achieve your objectives.

Celebrate Your Holidays

Once you know what you want to achieve, there are numerous ways to share interesting holiday posts with your audience.

My favorite is the photo essay. I like to share five to ten photos of family, clients, or employees at a specific organization. If it’s Halloween, for example, you can ask photo subjects to wear costumes. Follow them around as they go about the day, and chances are you’ll find fantastic photos.

Make sure to create captions for each photo that are related to your brand. Then, sit back and watch the comments come in. Don’t forget to engage with those who comment, before, during and after the holiday.

Faith-based Quotes

Do you work at a faith-based organization? There are numerous ideas for those who want to share religious or spiritual thoughts. You might begin by finding lesser-known quotes from people who play pivotal roles in your group’s particular faith. 

To find quotes, look for sayings by sages featured in scripture passages or current spiritual commentators on your favorite social media pages. I have heard many friends who are inspired by Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author, podcast host and Duke University professor. Look at her website and I believe you’ll find dozens of original quotes that will attract friends and followers.

You may also want to use a quote from a family member, and then explain the backstory behind it. That could mean a sibling who wrote a book about her spiritual journey and the obstacles she had to overcome to find what she was looking for. 

Once you locate a quote, it’s best if you can get written permission to use it, even if it comes from a close relative. If you find a quote you like that originated with a more public figure, I recommend choosing one that is already publicly displayed on a website. You should also credit the author— and it’s a good idea to consult with a copyright attorney if you’re unsure about what permissions you need.

Holiday Messages Without Spiritual Content

What if you’re looking for a holiday message that does not include faith-based content? Remember that social media is about sharing stories, and holidays are a great time to do that. Ask your co-workers and page visitors to share their favorite holiday tales (with pictures, if available). Provide a word-count so you won’t get overly long submissions. If no image is available, look for the most engaging one you can find.

On holidays centered around food, like Thanksgiving, try asking visitors to submit their favorite holiday recipe—and a story to go with it. Don’t forget to encourage humor—always welcome at holiday time.

When Holidays Aren’t Happy

Knowing not every holiday is a joyous one for many people, you might want to solicit or write a post about getting through a stressful holiday situation and add some tips about what you learned. You may be surprised at the number of likes you get—because most of us are eager to read about how others get through hard times when we’re going through our own.

National Observance Days

Have you thought about a national day of observance in honor of teachers or other professionals? Features that capture the heart of professionals’ experience are central to social media, and part of what keeps people returning to certain sites that honor their employees. If you can find someone you know with a compelling story and share a video or a post with plenty of images, you are likely to get a significant number of positive reactions. 

When a Holiday is Too Well Known

Al that’s fine, you say—but how do we make posts sound new when they’re about the best-known holidays? How do we freshen the most popular holidays when we know everything about them? The answer is that we don’t know everything about them. One way to liven up a Christmas post is to find a local scholar who can share information about Christmas customs in other countries and how they originated. 

We might also research how Hanukkah was observed in countries where the Jewish religion was forbidden. When posting about Ramadan, you could interview someone who is about to go on a sacred pilgrimage called a Hajj—and then talk with someone who is returning.

Final Ideas

If you think about it, holidays give us the chance to lift our lives out of the everyday and celebrate life itself, and what it means to us. If we can share that with each other, holiday posts will resonate throughout the year. Does your family pass down holiday traditions from year to year you’d like to share with others? Have you had to invent any new traditions? Starting a conversation about this on your page could bring in a range of stories from the people who are reading what you write.

These are just a few ideas to help you think more broadly about holiday posts for social media. If you have some of your own, I’d love to hear them! Feel free to comment here, so everyone else can see them, too.

 

Author: Jenna Zark

Jenna Zark, Principal at Zark Writing LLC, has worked in journalism, public relations, video script writing, philanthropy and communications positions. She is an award-winning playwright and published author whose most recent book Crooked Lines won six awards and honors in 2023, including first prize in the Overcoming Adversity Memoir Category from Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Please visit www.jennazark.com to learn more.