Hurrah it's November which can mean only one thing.... Christmas is here! It's time once again to pimp up your feeds, boost the brands and push the festive content. But have you remembered all the important marketing angles and have you considered all the potential PR pitfalls? Pin this post to your workspace, or if you're old school print it out and hang it by the fax machine, and let's make November a social media month to remember!
Wednesday 1st: From now until Christmas it's not fun it's 'merry-making', it's not indoors it's 'cosy', it's not winter it's 'yuletide' and it's not a ticketed event it's 'festive cheer'. Thursday 2nd: Now that the Christmas lights on Oxford Street have been lit the Christmas season has begun in earnest! But never use photos you've taken yourself, they'll make it look like the display is bland, paltry and lacking any inspiration whatsoever. Instead only ever use the officially-supplied images, and remember to describe them as "the iconic ‘sky full of stars’ display" as if that's obviously what they are. Friday 3rd: Remember to always pre-check your tweets in case they cause unintentional offence to blinkered idiots, for example by showing a manger scene topped by a six-pointed blur that might be the Star of David or by depicting three paper hats in almost the same colours as the Palestinian flag. Saturday 4th: Don't link direct to the Immersive Bauble Experience, or whatever, always use an affiliate link so they'll pay you a cut when the punter you redirected pays up for full-price tickets. Sunday 5th: Forget Bonfire Night, nobody does fireworks any more. They're far too expensive to buy yourself and councils have essentially given up due to lack of funding, so these days the whole event's more associated with morons setting off bangers in the local park all night than cosy family gatherings with parkin and sparklers.
Monday 6th: With fewer than 50 shopping🎁 days to Christmas🎄, be sure to sprinkle❄️ all your tweets with festive emojis⛄️🎅🏼⭐️ for the next seven weeks. Tuesday 7th: Yes most Londoners are skint this Christmas but there are still plenty of families with surplus cash to spend on pointless experiential fripperies, and your job as a successful social marketing team is to separate them from as much of that disposable income as possible. Plug on! Wednesday 8th: It's obligatory to make a list of 'London's Best Christmas Markets', indeed anywhere that Cockney wideboys flog gingerbread and bratwurst from makeshift chalets, because hundreds of suburban families are going to Google that phrase over the next few weeks and you want your selection to appear as high up the rankings as possible. Thursday 9th: Don't bother trying to post anything viral today, it's John Lewis Christmas advert day and they'll totally wipe the floor with you. Steel yourself for a mawkish storyline and a heart-tugging guitar ballad, and no it may not be up with their finest efforts - the one with the small child was brilliant - but it's still streets ahead of anything you can come up with, so best not join the battle. Friday 10th: What the average divorced parent really needs right now is a list of all the places where overweight men dressed as Santa Claus will be dishing out so-called gifts and charging £20 for selfies over the next few weekends, ensuring they can plan ahead. Saturday 11th: Whatever you do don't schedule any important tweets for the two minutes from 11am to 11:02, because some people get incredibly cross if you do. Sunday 12th: Whatever you do don't schedule any important tweets for the two minutes from 11am to 11:02, because different people get incredibly cross if you do (and all the same people too).
Monday 13th: Remember that a well-written Christmas article can be wheeled out every year with only a few minor tweaks, long after the minion who wrote it has been sacked to save money. Tuesday 14th: Today's a great day to refresh that ridiculous post you do every year on 'The Best Bus To See The Christmas Lights'. Check to see whether anything in 2022's version has changed - are Carnaby Street still doing anything, have fares gone up, have TfL diverted or even scrapped the route you claim to have the best vantage point? Don't worry that it's impractical balderdash, just press publish and consign well-meaning families to an hour of purgatory on a crowded upper deck behind steamed up windows. Wednesday 15th: Yes the Morrisons Christmas advert is barrel-scrapingly awful, and no the Tesco Christmas advert just isn't funny, and yes the Asda Christmas advert is plain baffling, and no the Waitrose Christmas advert is never going to tempt anyone to buy a chocolate covered cherry-filled panettone, but they're still going to be filling every ad break for the next five weeks so best grit your teeth and bear it. Thursday 16th: The Crown is back on Netflix to start its final season, so let the Christmas theme slide for 24 hours and just post photos of Princess Di looking dewy-eyed. Friday 17th: Hyde Park Winter Wonderland is now open so bring on all the related content! Remember that your article entitled 'Everything you need to know about Winter Wonderland' doesn't actually have to include everything you need to know, it just has to include a photo of a buxom wench dispensing glühwein in front of a rollercoaster. Saturday 18th: Today is technically the earliest day you can get away with buying a Christmas tree without looking like a complete idiot, so long as you don't mind needles all over the carpet before December starts, so encourage everyone to get down to the retail park and buy one off the dodgy geezer with the stunted conifers. Sunday 19th: If you're starting to run out of ideas for festive things to write about don't forget igloos, those barely-heated plastic domes outside restaurants whose novelty value allows the owners to charge double for all the food and drinks served inside.
Monday 20th: Make today the day you plug ice rinks! Everybody loves skating on a thin layer of ice in a public square powered by generators going full blast behind a row of replica penguins, especially if you can upsell them a Luxury QueueJump ticket with VIP priority. Bonus points if your summary includes the phrase "...and get your skates on!" Tuesday 21st: Remember that your job as social media impresarios is to gush over what Harrods and Coal Drops Yard are doing for Christmas, not to mention anything accessible and inexpensive happening in Harrow, Romford or Croydon. Wednesday 22nd: Introverts have disposable income too. Encourage them to leave the house by accusing them of hibernating and suggest events like film screenings and theatre shows where they can sit alone in the dark. Thursday 23rd: String together 'The Ultimate Christmas Day Out' by skimming through the press releases in your inbox and making an itinerary of it, for example spa pampering + afternoon tea + axe-throwing + West End show. Friday 24th: Black Friday has been an integral part of British Christmas for at least ten years, so don't forget to join the melee and promote all sorts of rubbishy goods that are now slightly cheaper than they were yesterday. Ideally you'll have been sending out relentless spam emails to gullible punters for at least a month, but make sure you rise to an orgasmic crescendo of activity today. Saturday 25th: As sunset slips before 4pm it's the ideal time to plug the Magic Lights Festival at your local park, ideally without ever mentioning it's just a 15 minute circuit past a few lightbulbs arranged to look like angels via a couple of tunnels made from flashing LEDs and chicken wire. Just promise it'll look brilliant on Instagram, and yes there will be vans selling hot chocolate and churros. Sunday 26th: By now it should be obvious which London suburb has attempted to oversell a few stalls on a patch of grass as a Once In A Lifetime German Market. Now is the time to delete that effusive article you wrote based solely on the press release and replace it with a mocking version comprised entirely of unhappy Tripadvisor reviews.
Monday 27th: Always use the right seasonal adjectives! Illuminations are always dazzling, markets are always marvellous, shopping is always last-minute, bars are always cosy, and if you can't think of anything else then festive will always do. Tuesday 28th: Don't contact the bar you're plugging to see if they sell eggnog, just say they do, and by the time punters turn up to discover the menu's full of £15 cocktails it'll be too late for them to back out. Wednesday 29th: Now is the ideal time to write 500 words on how scruffy the Trafalgar Square tree looks this year, because it usually does. And even if by some miracle the Norwegians send a decent one this year nobody cares, people always click faster on a fiasco than on facts. Thursday 30th: And that's Christmas over for another year! With December imminent it's time to turn your focus to the New Year sales, Valentine's Day, summer holidays and other pressing matters. Next year consider starting your festive media onslaught in October, maybe even September, because it's never too early to celebrate the true meaning of whatever Christmas is about.
