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Have you ever seen any Mothers’ Day posts on social media? Perhaps you have created a few yourself? Welcome to the “Social Media Holiday Followers” club.
Online and offline holidays can be communicated easily through social media calendars. Even so, it’s always worth finding the sweet spot. We decided to share with you today our curated calendar of social media holidays in 2021, filled with national, international, and global holidays.
The following social media holiday calendar 2021 will assist you with bringing some freshness to your annual marketing campaigns, while referencing the goals and image that your company wants to create.
This type of calendar will help you to plan several activities ahead, predict important moments, and plan posts in response to certain holidays, sales occasions, and other unusual holidays.
Additionally, it is a great tool for content planning.
Discover why you should consider including social media holidays in your social media content calendar for 2021 and which you should keep in mind.
Why should you care about social media holidays in your calendar? Benefits
#1 Being a trendsetter
You will often see companies that are famous for raising publicity will reference iconic events or current trends when they use social media effectively. Furthermore, they use original ideas to sell their products by referring, for instance, to an unusual social media holiday.
Don’t be left out – become one of them!
When you share social media holidays and somehow connect them to the offers or services you provide, you’re not only following trends but also setting them.
Finding a holiday that somehow connects to your products or services is all you need if you want to use unusual holidays in marketing communications. It does not have to be restricted just to those that have direct relevance to your brand, but naturally, they are the best ones.
#2 Refreshing your communication
Publishing numerous social media posts frequently simply isn’t enough if your content does not inspire interest and promote interaction. Social media is not exclusively about constantly expressing your opinions, but it is also about establishing relationships, listening and reacting to users’ statements, and responding to their actions. This is much more difficult than creating content.
In your role as a marketing professional, you probably face the pressure of constantly creating something new, generating interest, and influencing your followers positively. Nowadays, things aren’t as simple as they used to be. Although it might not seem so, social media managers have a great deal of responsibility. Many people think the job consists of just “scrolling Facebook”, but there is a lot more to it than that.
Brands speak through us.
Content is key to determining whether an audience likes and wants to interact with a brand and stay with it for longer. The way target groups read its content will influence the way the brand is perceived.
Social media holidays provide a lifeline when it is so hard to surprise audiences.
#3 Generating extra content ideas (lack of content gaps)
Let’s admit it: all of us have struggled to come up with social media post ideas at some point. It can take a considerable amount of time and effort to create some ideas from the ground up. It can get harder as time passes and you may come up with nothing but the same old ideas when running a particular social media profile.
But you might be able to reduce the amount of content gaps between posts by including social media holidays in your content calendars. With the help of our social media holiday calendar 2021, we give you some ammunition to plan your communication in advance. Some days will be taken up by celebrations and holidays, but there will be others on which you can utilize your creativity and come up with unique ideas.
Once you have accomplished that, you can confidently call yourself a master of social media content calendars who makes the most of every opportunity to post.
Tips, tricks, and good practices for leveraging social media holidays 2021
#1 Find niche holidays
Our Social Media Holiday Calendar 2021 can be both a weak and a powerful tool. Using it responsibly is the key! You will have the chance to stand out with your brand by celebrating non-traditional and niche social media holidays rather than just traditional holidays like Mother’s Day and Easter. To make this happen, you must plan your activities ahead of time, prepare your creatives well, and, in case of uncertainty about how to do it right, examine the communication of companies whose marketing campaigns you admire.
There are some holidays that are specifically associated with a certain industry, and if you work in that industry then you need to keep up with these trends. Only posting for Black Friday and Mother’s Day is no longer enough.
Those of you who run a clothing store might be interested to know when National Dress Day is (hint: it’s on March 6), for example. You may get inspired to create engaging and extremely relevant content by being armed with such knowledge.
#2 Don’t build your social media content calendar around social media holidays only
Social media holidays can serve as great patches for parts of your social media content calendar that are largely unfilled. However, don’t try to cover every single holiday in your social media content calendar; instead, find the golden mean.
If you add a pinch of salt to your soup then its flavor will be enhanced, but if you use a whole handful then the soup could become hard to swallow or even inedible. Social media holidays 2021 are really similar to this, so don’t overdo it.
It is considered very reasonable to add a few social media holidays every quarter to your content calendar. You will probably have a few national or global events to draw upon every couple of months. In terms of your brand’s reputation, keeping several social media holidays waiting in your pipeline is advisable and safe, but only when they can contribute to the context and offer of your company.
You are the one who should judge it, but you are also the one to be judged for these actions.
#3 Add trending hashtags
Let’s suppose you are seeking to leverage some social media holidays in your strategy this year. Good job! It might be a good idea to supplement them with hashtags at this point too.
In addition to boosting visibility, hashtags enable your posts to show up in trending sections and ultimately reach more people.
And that’s what we all want, isn’t it?
You can catch the eye of your audience, the media, or both by jumping on a hashtag bandwagon. Having this kind of exposure could help your brand grow, and you might even grab the attention of your competition.
A hashtag does not trend without reason – it’s in the spotlight. Either ignore this opportunity or utilize it to your advantage, and we recommend the latter.
The Pedigree US brand tackled hashtags perfectly. They showcased themselves as a socially responsible company and have been acclaimed by its target group.
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In theory, the company could have created this clip even without an occasion, but by incorporating it into the wider context and using a popular hashtag (#FeedTheGood), the post reached even a broader audience and helped people associate this hashtag with Pedigree. Additionally, the clip was posted on a day that was very relevant to their brand. In this case, they may have published it a few days early with the intention of generating a lot of reach by April 30th.
In 2020, the NFL club Chicago Blackhawks announced their line up for their game on Popcorn Day.
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Popcorn and sport go hand in hand, so the #PopcornDay reference was more than natural.
#5 Schedule in advance
It is important not to confuse social media holidays with examples of real-time marketing. You can easily plan social media holidays in advance, giving yourself time to prepare creatives, improve your copy, and research hashtags.
With scheduled posts, you fill in the gaps in your content calendar in advance and don’t need to worry about this element of your social media strategy. Keeping up with community management, creating ads, and optimizing performance are still on your to-do-list, but by scheduling posts you can cross at least one task off.
Knowing when social media holidays 2021 coincide with your calendar is always helpful, even if you did not fill in the spots. In fact, they may be very useful when you need them the most, e.g. when an initially planned post can’t go through (because, for example, a particular feature hasn’t been released yet).
#6 It’s not only about days
Calendars contain not only days but also months. There are many occasions and celebrations on each day, but you can also see what celebrations are associated with a particular month. You can use this as an umbrella topic for all of the content you will post that month.
And while January is often regarded as a month for Resolutions, April is about Celebrating Diversity and Stress Awareness, while June is Pride Month.
October is World Breast Cancer Awareness month and November is Men’s Health Awareness month, which is often associated with the Movember movement.
And that’s just to name a few ideas that you may use as one-offs or as your topic throughout the entire month.
#7 Make sure it aligns with your social media strategy and brand
On your social media profiles, you should celebrate holidays that are relevant to the industry for which you create content. It should work in conjunction not only with the industry but also with your social media strategy.
Marketing activities should incorporate the use of holidays in the same manner as the rest of the strategy and not be a lockpick in times of creative impotence.
For example, you’ll find a lot of food-related events in our social media holiday calendar 2021. Does that mean they can only be used by brands related to food? No, although for them such days would be the most suitable. But even brands that are not directly linked to the industry can still post content relevant to a holiday.
Celebrating is less important than how you do it. An atmosphere is generated in social media by creating graphics and copy that are interesting, and by pacing activities appropriately. Having an interesting and aesthetic implementation following a great idea is the key to success that must be applied concurrently.
#8 Double-checking never hurts
Social media holidays can be difficult to plan since you must take into account your target audience and all of its segments. Various circumstances must also be considered,, and below are a couple of examples for you of what is meant by that.
The seasons change in every part of the World, but they don’t change alike. Seasonal posts can therefore be risky to publish if your audience is spread across the globe. What is the reason for that? The mystery is solved: hemispheres. It’s winter in South Africa and Australia when spring arrives in the US and Europe. This means that anywhere snow covers houses, trees, and cars, your flowery posts can be mocked. You may want to consider geotargeting your posts in order to prevent this kind of scenario. The same is true for some nation-specific holidays such as Mother’s Day. There are dozens of different days when it occurs around the World.
Plan out how you will handle controversial or religious posts and whether or not to add some holidays and celebrations to your social media holiday calendar 2021.
There are millions of fans of Liverpool FC around the globe and the club is among the biggest in the world. It is imperative that they adjust their communication and respect every follower, regardless of their origin or religion. That’s why LFC don’t miss occasions such as Christmas, Lunar New Year, or Hanukkah.
It is true that there will always be those who do not agree with the idea, but many people appreciate it when you remember about them and their important dates in the year. Do they become more loyal supporters as a result? Brand awareness cannot be measured, but such posts can surely only have a positive impact.
#9 Add very local holidays
Global and international days can be covered virtually anywhere in the world. National social media holidays 2021 are also usually covered by all of the social media outlets in a particular country.
But if you want to stand out from the crowd, identify some events that are important to your town or local area. There is always something to find!
What is the date of the founding of a particular city? When did it change its name? What is the date of the patronage celebrations? Do you know of any local, annual fairs that are worth writing about or promoting?
It’s your call. Referencing your locality has several benefits including showing your local ties and being appreciated by your local audiences. Of course, this is also an idea that can be added to your social media content calendar!
#10 Remember about changeable social media holidays
What stands behind this mysterious name? Well, not all social media holidays always happen on the same date every year. Some of them follow patterns such as the first or last day of a particular month, but there always can be exceptions.
Which changeable social media holidays are worth remembering?
- Oscars ceremony (also, if this applies to your brand, then the Grammys and Golden Globe Awards too, or even the Eurovision Song Contest)
- Sporting events (e.g. the SuperBowl, Olympic Games, Euros, World Cup)
- Black Friday/Cyber Monday
The only thing to remember though, is that you should not directly refer to these events unless you are their official partner. This could be taken as an act of ambush marketing and some legal action might be taken against it. There are some indirect references or workarounds that can be used, but direct references are discouraged at this point.
This also extends to athletes themselves, as they are also limited by Rule 40, which was introduced in 2016. You may want to read about these rules in more detail here, since the topic is not only extremely interesting but also a must-know for marketers.
The differences between global, international, and national social media holidays 2021
The differences can be difficult to define, as many people use the terms interchangeably. Here is a brief explanation so that you can use them correctly in your social media calendar:
- National: pertaining to a single country. Note: our social media holiday calendar 2021 refers mainly to national holidays in the United States.
- International: encompasses two or more countries.
- Global: its scope is much broader and includes the whole World.
Our social media holiday calendar 2021
Take a look at the calendar and find all of the important dates for your industry as well as general holidays. You could also write down not only holidays, but also cyclical days that are important from a marketing point of view.
You’ll probably spend many hours or maybe even days getting this done. The holidays must also be verified and checked to make sure they occur on the right dates, as well as whether or not they suit your strategy and brand.
Fortunately, we know a nice alternative to this tedious and time-consuming task. You can bookmark this post and return to our social media holiday 2021 list whenever you need inspiration. Make sure your colleagues know about it too!
Social Media Holiday Calendar 2021
To enhance your social media strategy, you can find a variety of national, international, and global holidays in our calendar. You can use them all, or only some. Keeping track of them is easy since they are broken down by month.
In the calendar, there are several categories: some of the social media holidays 2021 are industry-specific, while others are based on a particular industry or job role. Our social media holiday calendar 2021 is sure to delight!
How to make the most of a social media holiday?
Having learned the best practices for social media holidays 2021, you can now implement them. Furthermore, we provided you with a ready-to-use social media holiday calendar so that you can plan your activities.
However, how should they be planned? Do you know what to post? Is it possible to refer to a particular social media holiday in a way that is easily understandable and quite simply interesting to your target audience?
When referring to a given untypical holiday, it’s not about honking all over the place “Today is Hotdog Day!”. There will be little effort, no uniqueness, and no natural feeling. Essentially, a social media holiday serves as a pretext for creating original content, or as a hint or inspiration for your social media calendar.
Using social media holidays plainly and without creativity may produce the opposite results to what you expect, so get your brain working!
We believe actions speak louder than words, and use cases can speak louder than theory. To illustrate that point, below are some examples of how to communicate the aforementioned Hot dog day on your social media profile!
(Even if they don’t work with every brand and industry, you can get inspired by their form and approach,)
- Encourage your fans to share photos of the best hot dogs they’ve ever eaten. A sense of community at its finest!
- Create a competition for the best hot dog recipe, with the winner receiving a BBQ kit or a supply of products (especially if they go great with hot dogs!).
- Write a blog post on “5 original hot dog recipes” and link to it in a social media post. In addition, you can compile a short e-book with such recipes.
- Design an infographic that shows how to make a hot dog step by step (and what mistakes to avoid, if any!).
- Describe how the hot dog was invented and why it is so popular. It never hurts to know a few trivia facts!
- If you sell hot dogs, you could post a special offer (e.g. “buy one hot dog, get one free”) only valid on that particular day.
- Produce a short “step-by-step” video demonstration about how to make the perfect hot dog.
- Make an announcement about the biggest hot dog challenge and test your followers!
- Show a variety of hot dogs in a carousel ad on Facebook.
- Provide healthy hot dog ideas and discuss original ingredients.
- Using Instagram Stories and survey your followers to find out what ingredients they most often combine with hot dogs.
- Get your followers to participate in a quick hot dog quiz. You don’t have to ask many questions – just three or four will do. And creating a quiz online doesn’t have to be a daunting task if you use the right software for this purpose.
These are just 12 ideas you can include in your strategy, and we are sure you will come up with even more.
To sum up
Make the most of traditional and unusual holidays to breathe new life into your brand communications across various channels. Additionally, capitalize on the sales opportunity and tell your customers about new products, encourage them to purchase more, or take advantage of the latest deals. You can combine the best of both worlds by using many creative ideas and methods that will allow you to achieve the very best results.
It is easy to go overboard, though. While you should include some social media holidays 2021 in your social media calendar, don’t make every day a celebration. Create a space for brand awareness, product updates, and sales efforts.
You’ve got this!
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