5 top tips to make Facebook work for the festive season

First published on November 6, 2016
Last updated on May 23, 2023
The festive season is a great opportunity to showcase your business on Facebook, our top tips show you how.

Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform and is a popular marketing channel for tourism businesses, as it should be given size of the Facebook audience. Facebook has 1.6 billion active users worldwide and in Australia it is estimated that 11 million people use Facebook every day. In this article we’re suggested five tips to make Facebook work harder for your business in the festive holiday season, which is often the busiest time of year for tourism businesses.

Tip #1 – Update your cover photo

Don’t be shy about changing your cover photo (this is the long landscape photo), though keep your profile image (that’s the little one) consistent throughout the year and this is usually where you’d place your logo. You could place a shot that reflects the season in your destination or a festive themed image or create an image that includes a special Christmas offer.

Destination NSW Facebook
Destination NSW Facebook

Remember to add a description to the image including a link to your website and if the image is about a special offer link to a specific booking page on your website.

Tip #2 – Encourage sharing

Make it easy for your guests to share posts about the terrific experiences and services your business is providing.

You need to ensure you have set up a user friendly name for your Facebook business page and have it on display for your guests to know what it is. This means that your guests can tag your business easily when they are posting a great photo or video of them having fun at your business. For example, if you managed the Beach BnB and you’d set up a user name for your Facebook page that was ‘Beachbnb’ your guests would simply include @Beachbnb in their post and you would get a notification. If you’re unsure if you’ve done this, you haven’t if your Facebook business page URL is long and has numbers at the end of it, for example, https://www.facebook.com/Name-of-your-business/339832622722521/ and on a computer, under your business page profile image there will be a link “Create @username.

Tip: Choose carefully as you can only do this once.

Then what you can do is include a sentence in your Facebook About information to advise your Facebook community that if they tag @Beachbnb in their posts that you’ll take that as their permission to share their images and video. Then you’re adding to your gallery of images and video and sharing your guests memories with a broader audience.

Tip #3 – Run a Christmas campaign

If you’re not booked out, now is the right time to run a Facebook campaign to try to attract those last minute holiday bookers. We suggest creating a Facebook ad, rather than boosting a post as that only goes to your followers and their friends and you can get very targeted with a Facebook ad, narrowing your target market by geographic, gender, interests etc. No-one knows your customers better than you, so make sure you get targeted with the offer and the advertising to make the most of your investment.

Be sure to point your ad to a specific campaign page on your website as you want to make their online journey to booking with you as easy as possible.

Tip #4 – Get Charitable

A person making a Christmas Donation to a worthy cause ** Note: Shallow depth of field
Christmas Donation to a worthy cause

Christmas is a time of year when most people are happy to share and help people less fortunate than themselves. What is a charitable cause you like to support? Find their online presence and support them on your Facebook page. This helps your Facebook community to understand the people behind your business and their values.

Tip #5 – Have some fun

Show your Facebook community some behind the scenes fun or just something funny to make them laugh during this super busy time of year leading up to Christmas. Humour when communicated through a video or great image tends to get strong engagement on Facebook…give it a try, but remember to stay true to your brand personality and follow your gut about what is acceptable to your followers. If you get it really right…it might go viral!
Facebook needs a great deal of consistency and all of your efforts needs to be highly attuned to your target market and what they find interesting, so the above tips are just a taster of ideas of how to use Facebook for your business. They are some suggestions to get into the context of Christmas, because that is where most of your customers’ headspace is right now, so connect with your Facebook community by relating to what is important to them right now.

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