People across the country go crazy for Halloween. According to the National Retail Federation, a record 170 million Americans say they’ll celebrate the holiday this year. (Note : Some may not be able to celebrate because of Sandy)
That means there’s a huge opportunity for your business to join the celebration with some clever Halloween social media marketing. Last year, we saw clever Facebook apps, promotions, contests and hashtagging. This year – who knows?
Here are six tips to get you started and a few examples from last Halloween to show you how it’s done.
1: #DoAHashtagContest
Setting up a hashtag can help your Halloween contest or promotion get seen by a wider audience. Even those who don’t participate could retweet it or mention it on Twitter getting you on more timelines and generating more buzz.
Example: Dunkin’ Donuts used #carveDD to promote its 2011 contest, which awarded $50 gift cards to the five winners of its pumpkin carving photo contest.
2: Crowdsource Halloween
A crowdsourced campaign can go viral quickly on social media because people like to share what they’re involved in. You can involve your fans and followers in your Halloween campaign by letting them judge your contest or enlisting their help in the design of your Halloween products.
Example:Target let its fans digitally create four costume options. Then, the mega-brand allowed those fans to poll their network to find out which one they should choose, buy and wear.
3: Hold a costume contest
A costume contest is a fun way to engage your fans and followers. It helps litter your timeline or Facebook page with multimedia, too, which can attract more attention to your business.
Example:PetSmart stayed on-brand last year with its costume contest, asking people to submit photos of their pets in cute costumes. The contest’s winning prize was an appearance in a TV commercial.
4: Do a tweet-vote
A tweet-vote can help you earn new followers and engage your current ones. For Halloween, you could have followers vote on the costume contest you held in your office, which has the added bonus of humanizing your brand. Or you could let fans vote on where you release your product, which leads us to…
Example:Paramount’s Paranormal Activity 3 ran a “Tweet To See It First!” campaign last year, giving fans the opportunity to decide what 20 cities the film would debut in.
5: Engage Facebook fans with images
Images are a proven tactic for attracting attention to your website, Twitter timeline or Facebook page. On Facebook specifically, with the new timeline for brands, images pop on your news feed and engage visitors, often earning more likes and comments than other posts.
Example:Nightmares Fear Factory, a haunted house in Canada, took images of frightened patrons and shared them on its Facebook page. The images resulted in a 10,000% increase in Web traffic.
6: Host a Halloween (social) event
Making your event social can help you not only generate buzz and attract attendees before it starts – it can also help you engage followers and fans during the party and after it’s over.
Example: KCRW, a radio station, hosted a Halloween masquerade last year. They set up a photo booth at the event and tweeted dozens of the photos attendees had taken.
You’ve got 7 days until Halloween to create your social marketing campaign – what are you waiting for?
Source: Vocus PR