How Holidays Can Increase Facebook Fan Engagement

A Facebook page can remain relevant to current and prospective fans by either staying consistent with their own branding, meeting fans’ current needs and offering feedback or by partaking in current holidays or events that directly affect your audience.

In an attempt to remain relevant, incorporating upcoming holidays in to your Facebook strategy is one of the easiest and statistically significant ways to increase engagement across the board.

On Christmas in 2009, Facebook was for the first time ever the most visited site in the United States, even exceeding traffic to Google. There are a lot of variables contributing to why this occurred on a popular holiday in the United States, but nevertheless, wouldn’t you want your brand to remain active during these spikes of unprecedented traffic?

Using Holidays for Social Good

Many brands tie together a donation or social activism campaign to help a worthwhile cause and increase their social media profile. By adding an approaching holiday into the campaign it can help increase relevancy due to its timely nature, therefore increasing engagement.

For example, Wendy’s is currently running a social good campaign called TreatItForward that’s tied to Father’s Day weekend. The food chain is donating 50 cents for every Frosty bought this weekend to children in foster care, but made sure to tie in a social aspect by also donating 50 cents for every time a user shares the offer by posting it on Facebook or sharing via other social media.

This promotion is exactly how you can tie in a holiday to spread awareness of your social profiles and keep it timely, while also donating to a good cause and increasing fan engagement.

Using Holidays Related To Your Brand

Each company on Facebook caters to a variety of audiences related to the different goods and services they offer. Utilizing upcoming holidays to further push your brand to existing fans and future consumers can help raise levels of fan interaction on your page.

Qdoba’s Facebook page made use of this technique this past month with the Cinco De Mayo holiday. Since Qdoba is a Mexican restaurant chain, announcing specials and highlighting food items on Facebook made sense during the approaching Mexican holiday also celebrated throughout the United States.

Qdoba had promotional photos about the holiday that they posted to their wall before and during the holiday reminding their fans to celebrate the beloved holiday with their food items.

Using Holidays To Promote Product Lines

For decades retailers have had sales and specials related to upcoming holidays that are widely celebrated by their shoppers. This sales tactic is no different in terms of Facebook marketing. Promoting key products for purchase on Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day or Black Friday have driven sales on ecommerce sites and now through Facebook promotion.

Walmart takes its Facebook efforts very seriously, promoting each holiday to its fullest potential for product sales and greater brand awareness. For this year’s Father’s Day the retailer developed a custom application promoting sales of gift cards for Dad’s. The app lets fans purchase gift cards of varying prices within the social network, without redirecting them to another website.

This application further highlights the increased adoption of Facebook commerce among Fortune 500 brands. This holiday related application can only be accessed if you’re a current Facebook fan, increasing their fan base for buyers interested in buying their father the perfect gift for the holiday.

The retailer has taken promotion of the holiday a bit further by consistently posting about the holiday throughout the month reminding users of the date and products they could buy for their fathers.

Another post showed a picture of a father and his son, prompting users to share their favorite activities they do with their kids. Again, this incorporates relevant events in a user’s life that encourages an element of engagement on Walmart’s Facebook wall.

With a better understanding of how your brand can incorporate holidays on Facebook, what’re your plans for the 4th of July on Facebook?

Guest writer Brian Honigman is a social media consultant.