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OrderDynamics Holiday Guide 2012 - Social Media for the Holidays

As retail approaches the busiest shopping period of the year, OrderDynamics shares key dates, notable trends, and tips and tricks for social media, email marketing, and promotions to ensure your holiday season is a profitable one!


Part III – Social Media for the Holidays

Social media is never more fun than during the holiday season. Users are abuzz with cheerful banter about pumpkin pie, turkey, Santa and wish lists. This is the perfect time for online retailers to reel consumers in by joining in the fun.

The basics here are to always keep your followers updated. That means updating Facebook statuses and blogs, and tweeting to reflect current sales and promotions, new collections and popular products. However, you also want to engage your followers in creative ways so that your brand stands out among the rest they are following, as well as attract new followers. Here are some great ways to join in the holiday cheer on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and your blog.


Recipe sharing

The highlight of Thanksgiving and the Christmas season is food! Pinterest is a great way for food retailers to share recipes, especially using ingredients found within their stores. Whole Foods has notably been the epitome of Pinterest excellence, and lives up to the reputation this season with pin boards like “Thankful Thanksgiving”, “Winter Entertainment”, and “Creative Christmas Projects”. While Whole Foods does not sell food online, customers can be inspired to place catering orders online based on spreads seen on their pin boards, as well as purchase gift cards with cheerful seasonal branding such as “Happy Hollandaise”.

Williams Sonoma’s blog, The Blender, shares recipes in a manner that also supports sales. The luxury housewares retailer recently posted a ‘Thanksgiving Recipe Remix’ set of gourmet mashed potatoes recipes, wherein they also listed related kitchen tools needed to prepare each recipe with links to their respective product pages on Williams Sonoma’s eCommerce site.

The Blender by Williams-Sonoma's Recipes & Product Information
Société Perrier uses Facebook to share drink recipes, all of which contain Perrier sparkling water. They share in three different ways: syndicating their Mixology blog posts on their Facebook Timeline, sharing links to drink recipes from their website, and sharing restaurants and bars where specialty cocktails made with Perrier sparkling water can be found. Most recently, Société Perrier posted a list of Halloween Drink Recipes.


Gift Ideas

As mentioned in Part II of the OrderDynamics Holiday Guide, Hubspot stated that shoppers respond well to being told what to buy via gift guides as stress builds during holiday shopping. Social media is an excellent way to share popular and new items and staff picks as gift ideas.

Pinterest introduced Secret Boards yesterday, just in time for the holidays. The tool allows users to create up to 3 private pinboards that they can share with specific users. Secret Boards can be used by shoppers to conference over gift ideas for a specific person without spoiling the surprise, making Pinterest a convenient tool for shoppers while creating their holiday gift lists. Clothing retailer Roots Canada has pinboards simply named “Favourites for Her”, and “Favourites for Him. By creating boards such as these, Roots Canada has offered their followers an efficient way to browse gift ideas with which they can utilize Secret Boards. All pinned items link directly to their product page on Roots Canada’s site so that they can be purchased.

Blogs enable retailers to share gift ideas, while also taking a little extra time to explain features and benefits to help shoppers choose more effectively. Cosmetics retailer Murale.ca has regularly used their MUSE blog to share staff picks for favourite gift items for all holidays including Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. These articles state favourite items from various staff members with an explanation as to why they feel these products are great gifts for the given occasion. This initiates a relationship between the shopper and the product, stimulates their imagination as to how the gift recipient may react when opening it on Christmas morning, and steers the shopper in the direction of the item’s product page so that it can be further researched. Murale.ca also leverages the MUSE blog to announce limited edition holiday collections and gift sets.

An interesting way to offer gift ideas is using YouTube videos. YouTube videos are very personal, and help build a rapport between the shopper and the brand. This can instill confidence in online shoppers as many are more open to buying high-priced items during the holidays. HockeyMonkey.com embeds video product descriptions and reviews from their YouTube channel directly on the product page to offer detailed information to customers who appreciate understanding the look, feel and performance of high-ticket items before purchasing.

HockeyMonkey.com's Video Product Reviews

Contests

Contests are typically used as a way to help shoppers treat themselves as budgets become tight while shopping for others.  Specialty footwear retailer and OrderDynamics client, Walking On A Cloud is currently hosting a Facebook contest in collaboration with Blondo Boots. The Blondo Boot Giveaway requires entrants to Like Walking On A Cloud’s Facebook page, along with writing an explanation in the contest page comments box as to why they want to win a pair of Blondo Boots. This initiative helps Walking On A Cloud build their fanbase, while also helping them and Blondo understand key comfort and style features that are important to their customers.

Town Shoes is supporting their multi-channel commerce strategy with their current Facebook/Instagram contest, #Snap2Win. Entry to the contest requires customers to visit a Town Shoes location, take a photo of themself trying on a pair of shoes they would like to own, stylizing the photo with Instragram, and then upload the photo with the Facebook entry form for a chance to win the pair of shoes in the photo. When the entry is posted on Town Shoes’ Facebook page, entrants can share it to earn an additional 5 entries for each of their friends that also enter the contest. The contest entices shoppers to visit their eCommerce site to research styles and locate the store at which they can find it, while also creating an opportunity for Town Shoes staff to upsell when contest entrants visit the store to snap their photo.

Town Shoes' #Snap2Win Contest
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Don't forget to read the other parts of the 2012 OrderDynamics Retail Holiday Guide:

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