From sunny summer, spooky Halloween and even the NBA finals—seasons, holidays and sporting events draw major excitement and even bigger audiences every year. Take advantage of these immense audiences by incorporating the holidays and seasons into your social strategy.

Seasonal content is a great way to tap into your customers’ key emotions. Share posts that appeal to similar interests, passions and frustrations to increase your likes, comments and shares.

Learn how you can give your franchise’s social channels a seasonal touch with these 3 tips.

 3 Ways to Share Seasonal Content on Social

Change Your Profile and Cover Images

Give your profile a new look and feel by changing your profile and cover pictures. Since it is recommended that you keep your profile image an easily recognizable logo, franchises don’t get many chances to change it. However, special events or holidays are the perfect opportunities to do so.

You can add a bow to the center or the top right corner of your logo for the holidays or simply change the colors of your logo to fit the season. For example, give your logo an orange background for the month of October to easily represent Halloween.

Franchises can also change their cover images to be synonymous with upcoming events or season. Cover images grab a high amount of attention and are an important focal point in a social profile. Since cover images don’t have to contain a business’ logo, franchises have more creative freedom when designing it. Use yours to shine a light on a product that would be useful or relevant within a season or holiday. Take a look at how McDonald’s redesigned theirs for summer 2017 below.

Changing your photos will help bring in likes, comments, and even shares. Customers will get excited about your new look and will start associating your brand with the holiday or event represented in your photos.

Show That You Cater to the Season

Different seasons call for different themes. When the right season arrives for your products or services, demonstrate to your target audience that you can provide what they need by sharing it on social media. This could vary for across franchises. Here are a few examples:

• Reaching Goals. It is no secret that many people set health goals around January 1st. Fitness franchises can show their support and ability to help by sharing exercise tips, special membership deals and more. This will help drive engagement since it is easily relatable and top of mind for many people.
• An Updated Menu. Many restaurants add special items to their menus for various holidays. Get your customers excited about this by promoting them on your social channels. Post a daily countdown to when the item will be back on the menu to ignite customer excitement and get them talking about it.
• The Perfect Gift. There are a handful of holidays throughout the year that call for the perfect gift, such as Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day. If you are offering a holiday-specific version of your product or service, inform your audience of that. Franchisees can even hold a contest on Facebook, calling users to tag a friend to each win one of these special edition gifts.
• Sporting Event Giveaways. Attract sports fans by hosting a free giveaway if a specific team wins. For instance, during the latest NBA finals, Taco Bell gave away free Doritos Loco Tacos when the Warriors won game 3. Announce your giveaway on your social channels and allow followers to spread the word by sharing.

Make Creating the Experience Easier

Holidays, events, and seasons are all about full, memory-evoking experiences. Show your audience that they can easily bring these experiences to life with the help of your products or services. Take Ace Hardware for example. As a hardware store, Ace knows that their products are essential for creating just about anything. They utilize this by sharing content showing their customers that they are a one-stop shop all their seasonal or event projects.

In this video, Ace shows customers just how easy it is for them to stop buying salsa, a summer essential, by growing it themselves! They know their audience likes to build and construct, therefore educational posts will encourage them to keep coming back for tips and tricks. These videos will garner shares since people like to share their interests and passions with others. Did we mention that social videos generate 1200% more shares than text and images combined?

While Ace could share this video independently of summer, tying it with the season creates a sense of urgency within shoppers. Including the time aspect prompts them to go out and make this happen as soon as possible. It will also inspire them to think of other summer projects to take on.

Are you an expert in seasonal content? Share your tips and tricks with us.