The trick-or-treating, mask-wearing, pumpkin-carving celebrations of 31st October are within touching distance.
Here are some simple digital marketing tips for getting into the spirit and winning over your online followers this weekend. No trick, all treat.
Dig out your broomsticks. Fetch the fake fangs. Halloween is just around the corner. Among the the jack-o’-lanterns, fancy dress and excitable kids trick or treating lies the opportunity to capture the imagination of your audience with your online activities. Here are some ideas:
Spookify your social media branding
Google doodles are so popular because they capture a moment in a playful, imaginative and evocative way. Think about what you can do to the visual appearance of your social media channels and emails to get into the spirit of Halloween. That could be as simple as changing the colour theme on your Twitter, finding a suitably spooky image for your background or adding some Halloween puns to your next newsletter.
Run a Halloween-themed competition
Halloween is nothing without pumpkins and fancy dress. Invite your followers to unleash their creative dark side with a competition to find the best jack-o’-lantern or the best costume theme. Your theme can be as poetic or prosaic as you like – go create! You can promote the competition across email and social media, with a well-chosen hashtag to enhance your reach. Boost engagement by whittling down the ten best entries and asking your followers to vote for their favourites.
Don’t forget about the power of visual content
Once you’ve gathered all of that visual content from your competition, put it to good use and create some images and collages to share on each of your channels. Visual content is a big deal on social media. Last year Socialbakers studied 30,000 brand pages on Facebook. Combing through the top 10 percent of each brand’s best performing posts, they found that 87% were photos. Posting a photo on Twitter, meanwhile, can bump retweets by 35 percent.
Over to you…
Exploring a topical theme is a great way to engage your visitors and can give you lots of opportunities to create fresh content.
The trick is to maximise the opportunity and play with Halloween in a way that intersects with your brand, products, services or brand values and that will help you stand out amongst your competitors this weekend!
Happy Halloween!
