The Social Media Journal - The First Edition

Editorial: Not Every Holiday Needs A Social Media Post

Author

Riley Harden
November 27, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Welcome to the first edition of The Social Media Journal! Being in the field of social media management for nearly 10 years now, I’ve always found that there can be major information overload when it comes to keeping up with all the platforms. From platform updates to trends and best practices, you could spend several hours a week trying to read it all.

I’m trying to change that. Here’s how!

What Are You Getting Yourself Into?

With The Social Media Journal, I’m trying to provide you with a curated list of the major news and updates each week in a brief email. We’ll provide links to everything you need to know so that you can choose what articles you want to read more on. No more browsing through all the blogs from the different platforms. We’ve captured it all in one place for you.

In addition to the news/updates, I’ll spend some time talking about a specific topic related to social media platforms or the industry of social media management each week. These will be relevant to the time of year. For instance, if this wasn’t being published the week of Thanksgiving (when it’s too late to start thinking about Black Friday campaigns…) I’d talk about some of our favorite strategies from our experience at Harden Digital and Design or highlight an awesome campaign we saw elsewhere.

This first section of the newsletter is where that discussion will normally take place. This week is obviously a little different since it’s the first edition and this is more of an introduction.

At the end of each newsletter, I’ll also provide my unfiltered takes on a relevant social media topic. This won’t necessarily be tips, tricks, helpful information, but more of an editorial piece where I share my thoughts. Will the takes be controversial? Possibly at times. But it’ll be a true look inside the thought process of a social media manager and now CEO.

Have anything you want my take on? Reply to this newsletter and let me know!

So that’s a brief overview of what you’re getting yourself into with this newsletter. I hope you enjoy it!

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Alright let’s get into this week’s updates!

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This Week’s Social Media Meme

Who else still uses (formerly Twitter) when talking about X?

Editorial: Not Every Holiday Needs A Social Media Post

With Thanksgiving happening the day after this first newsletter is published, I figured I’d talk about social media posts for celebrating holidays. This one grinds my gears a bit.

Let me be blunt and start by saying that not every holiday needs a post from your company’s accounts. End of discussion!

Not really, because then this wouldn’t be an editorial lol.

I often see brand’s post on social media for literally every holiday. It’s simply not needed, and sometimes not welcomed. If the holiday doesn’t relate to your company in any way, it’s often best to avoid sharing out a half-hearted post.

Look, I’ve done this plenty of times before, so I’m not perfect. But I’ve adapted and try to avoid it now, except around the major holidays like Thanksgiving tomorrow for instance. Everyone is thankful, right??

If you’re like me, you can struggle with coming up with content sometimes, so holidays make “easy” post ideas. But if you don’t really relate to the holiday in anyway, people see right through them. Especially if they are Canva graphics that look exactly like every other company’s graphic…

Generic graphics tend to not do well in general on social media in today’s world. Go take a look for yourself. Scroll back through your profile and look your posts. I’m willing to bet the posts with Canva-esque graphics overwhelmingly preform worse than all the others. And the holiday posts aren’t an exception.

Now if you get photos of your team celebrating at the office party or something like that, those are great! Share away and disregard everything else I just said.

Just try to avoid the super generic, half-hearted “I’m posting this because I need content" posts.

Remember: value over quantity. If it’s not providing value to anyone other than you fulfilling your quota of posts, skip it. You and your company’s social presence will survive. I promise!

I’m not trying to be Scrooge here (that’s next month…), just trying to give you some perspective.

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