If you are in charge of managing social media with your company, Halloween should be a real treat for you. Regardless of how you feel about cutting holes in an old bed sheet and scaring your thirteen year old nephew out of his skin, there are plenty of ways that Halloween can help increase engagement with your campaigns – and we’re here to show you how.
Like any other holiday or national event, Halloween offers the social media marketer the opportunity to reinvent their digital marketing. Even the most conservative of brands will be able to present themselves as fun and friendly – a chance to show off their lighter side and ultimately increase their reach. Alongside the inevitable Halloween Tips & Tricks (and Treats!) tweets and posts, there are plenty of other things you can be doing.
As with any social media marketing effort engaging with Halloween gives you the chance to get noticed by more people. Every social media marketer worth their salt realises how important it is to stay away from constantly pushing sales and special offers – social networking is a conversation, and Halloween gives you the chance to get talking with your customers.
Promotions & deals
Halloween is a great opportunity to get the ball rolling with a promotional deal. Use graphics to increase the chance of people noticing your posts and tweets and start a hashtag to encourage engagement. As with any holiday, there is an exclusivity involved in the Halloween period so consumers are more likely to engage knowing that they might miss out if they wait too long.
Even if your company has nothing to do with Halloween, don’t feel you are scraping the barrel by using it as a reason for promotional offers – far from it. It is an opportunity to humanise your brand! And with “trick or treat” already a thing, finding a suitable pun for your tweet shouldn’t be too hard.
Competitions & hashtags
Want to see people using or interacting with your brand? Use the holiday as a chance to encourage user generated content from your consumers! Ask them to post pictures of themselves using your product with a spooky edge to it using a Halloween hashtag – and give them an incentive to do so such as a promotional discount. Why not start a competition where users have to share their costumes and offer prizes that are relevant to your brand? Competitions are ingrained in the spirit of Halloween anyway and people are used to dressing up anyway so it shouldn’t be difficult to find somebody willing to post a picture of their efforts.
A great idea for bars and restaurants is to offer promotions where people receive something if they come to your business in fancy dress – or why not hold a competition where they have to share a photo of themselves in fancy dress while they are there!? Bricks and mortar ideas like these are highly likely to be shared around by your followers and are a sure-fire way to convert digital traffic into foot traffic.
Have some fun in your office
If you like to make Halloween a thing in your workplace, make sure that this gets shared with your social following. It’s a great way to humanise your brand and show off your lighter side. And if you don’t? Well, maybe it’s time to consider it! In theory, it should also be fun for everybody in your office as well. Just make sure your costumes are tasteful – you don’t want to risk offending any of your customers.
