3 Simple Video Content Ideas For The Holiday Season

Binge family time. Binge eating. Binge online shopping. Binge Netflixing.

Isn’t that what all holidays are all about? 😉

For brands and businesses with hunger to succeed, holidays are a lot more than that. They’re about acquiring new customers, making 10x more sales, getting better social reach, improving ROI, and hitting all the business goals they’ve set up.

“Retailers can acquire up to 59% more customers during the holiday season.”

Paige Gerber, Director of Content Experience, Uberflip

If you’d like to be one of those, then you need to take full advantage of the upcoming holiday season. U.S. shoppers will spend $119.99 billion with online retailers during the upcoming holiday season, which is a whopping 15.5% increase from last year. The more content you produce in this holiday season, the higher your reach will be. And since 85% users want to see more videos from brands in 2018, using video content this holiday season is an excellent way to amp up your sales and marketing goals.

So whether you’ve just realized how important holiday season is (only a couple of weeks away), or you’d like to add more video content pieces in your holiday marketing mix, read on. We’ve outlined quick and simple ways to make the most of this holiday season.

1. Instagram + Snapchat stories

The best way to get up close and personal with your audience digitally?

Instagram and Snapchat stories.

For brands and marketers, Instagram Stories, in particular, has a lot of potential. It reaches a gigantic audience, with over 400 million daily users. And brands are picking up on this. They’ve started investing more and more into creating interesting Stories content to engage and sell to their audience.

Since social media users use Stories and posts (almost) equally, you should also upload content on both frequently.

You can show your brand’s fun and playful side in the holiday season through Snapchat and Instagram stories. Add a link to it and lead them to a holiday special landing page to increase sales, as well.

The best part about using stories is that it’s super easy to create, with no extensive budget, time, or professional actors required. Just pick up your iPhone and start shooting.

• Show behind-the-scene footage of your team having fun in the holiday season, celebrating it.

Have a crazy office party? Last minute office chaos? Gifts distribution?

In the days following the holidays, keep your iphone with you and ask all your employees to keep the phones with them all the time. Make sure to capture any fun or weird BTS moment and put it up on your Stories and Snapchat. Involve everyone in the office so that you can capture the best possible moments.

“When we can share never-before-seen or behind-the-scenes views of the technology that makes the world go ’round, we see really great engagement. And we have fun with it using the tools the platform is known for.”

Sydney Williams, head of social media marketing at GE

• Involve employees, happy clients, the boss - EVERYONE who’s a part of your brand

Ask your employees to give out special messages this festive season, explain how they spend these holidays to give your brand a human touch.

You can also ask happy clients to takeover your Stories and Snapchat, and show their festive side.

• Help them choose the perfect holiday gift (and sneakily relate it to your brand)

If your brand deals with physical products, explain (quirkily) why your products make great holiday gifts. Give them tutorials to use your products (especially if you have any holiday specials), highlight people who’re using them (can also be your employees, hint hint).

• Shoppable Stories

“Social video allows us to do more storytelling in channels that our target consumers love and spend most of their time watching.”

Kiki Gregware, svp, global consumer engagement at Revlon

Shoppable videos on social media are every marketer’s dream come true. Brands using Shoppable videos to sell their products on Instagram Stories and Snapchat are seeing incredible results.

So use this holiday season to create tempting shoppable videos and see how your audience responds to it. Run special holiday promotions and limited time offers to tempt users even further. Also, add in free delivery as a holiday gift!

2. Short Social Media Videos

“We have seen that video content really boosts conversion at a higher rate across all channels, so we’ve been investing heavily in it.”

Lorelei Orfeo, senior manager of social and content at Birchbox

Even a simple video executed well shows great results on social media.

So don’t go for over complicated, OTT videos for social media. At this point, you might not even have time to attempt something like that. So stick to simpler videos that scream festive and relate to your brand. Use these holidays to not just sell but also build a lasting relationship with your audience.

Along with short and sweet videos, here are a few other things you can try.

• Viral-worthy gifs

According to The New York Times, “23 million GIFs are posted on Tumblr every day. Facebook gets more than 5 million daily. Slack sees more than 5 million GIFs each month.”

While not exactly video content, funny GIFs always have the potential to go viral. And combine it with some festive cheer and you’ve got a winner on your hands. Brands have been making great use of this content type.

• Use holiday themes

What pops into your mind instantly when I say ‘Grinch’? Or, ‘Merry Christmas, ya’ filthy animals?’

While creating videos, try to incorporate holiday themes that everyone can easily relate to. This adds emotional appeal to your videos. You don’t need to do anything drastic, but even something simple like a holiday movie playing in the background, holiday coloured lights or colours used in the videos, exchanging gifts, or even a simple large scale festive dinner. Something that hints at the holiday you’re celebrating.

The easiest way to get some content out in the busy holiday season without sending too much time creating bespoke holiday content. And in most cases, they also bring in better results than other kind of marketing campaigns.

The UK's favorite worldwide holiday company, Virgin Holidays, increased online bookings 260% by integrating UGC into campaigns. Also, according to Stackla, user-generated content is 20% more influential to Millennials in their choice of purchases than any other media.

So create a UGC campaign where you ask users to submit their holiday videos, or maybe holiday gifts videos, or if you sell physical products, then what’s their favorite way of using your products. Involve all employees, put your heads together, and come up with an irresistible UGC idea with a fun hashtag.

Office Depots’ ran an #ElfYourself UGC campaign, where they asked people to make silly videos, superimposing a photo of themselves on dancing elves. It helped this app reach an insane 92 million downloads.

3. Run video contests

Contests are all the rage in the social media world. After all, accounts that hold Instagram contests grow their followers 70 percent faster than accounts that don’t run contests. They also have a much higher engagement rate.

Combining video with a social media contest is a great way to cash in this holiday season.

Create a simple contest on social media and ask people to send in video submissions for a chance to get featured on your profile or to receive an irresistible gift. Use a contest themed hashtag to track all the entries and start using it a month/week before that so that it catches steam. Make it as holiday friendly, as possible.

Verve girl’s video contest got 1400 entries in only 2 weeks.

Similarly, BayWatch ran a #slomo video contest, where people went nuts participating in it and trying to create as many crazy slow motion videos as possible.

You could also do a Facebook Live, Snapchat, or Instagram Stories contest where you ask people to vote for a certain thing for a chance to win a gift. This is what AEG did. It asked users to vote for their favorite holiday pastries on their live video poll to enter the sweepstakes and win a prize.

What are you waiting for?

Use this year’s holiday fever to smash your marketing goals for 2018. Everyone’s creating fun holiday content to increase sales, reach out to a wider audience, build their social media community, generate trust in their audience, and reach their business goals.

So go for it!