Put Down the PSL: Five New Ideas for Fresh Fall Social Media Posts

After Labor Day, we become swept up in the idea of fall: Halloween, pumpkin spice everything, pumpkin patches, sweater weather…well, maybe not sweater weather here in Gainesville.

You’ll feel the itch to upgrade your social media strategy when the calendar changes. Don’t be tempted by going over the top when it comes to fall-themed posts. Instead, elevate your posts by making them meaningful, but also keeping them relevant to the season.

Pumpkin Spice Up Your Social Media Strategy

As tempting as a Pumpkin Spice Latte is to post about, we know that you can do better with your social media posts this fall. Don’t get us wrong, we love fall at PHOS, but there is more to this season than a delicious coffee. We’ve outlined five fresh ideas for your fall social posts.

Think About Holidays in a Different Way

Fall includes a lot of holidays. There are obvious ones such as Halloween and Thanksgiving, but you can also include lesser-known holidays such as International Coffee Day, National Taco Day, National Boss’s Day, etc. However, a common mistake of green social media marketers is framing social media strategy around specific holidays. In other words, they let the calendar drive the strategy. Think deeper about the holiday season.

This isn’t to say you can’t post your annual Halloween party or a Thanksgiving post. But, we challenge you to really think about your customers during this holiday season. Holidays mean traveling, the added stress of entertaining, cooking delicious meals and spending time with family. Shape your social media strategy around these activities, rather than just the holiday itself.

If you are a dentist, it would be great to post a reminder after Halloween to schedule a dental check-up for your kids after they go trick-or-treating. Or maybe you are a home service provider choosing to post helpful reminders on how to keep your guests comfortable while they visit your home without increasing your energy bills.

Providing value and helpful tips during this crazy season of life will be more meaningful to your followers than posting pictures in a pumpkin patch. It’s all about uncovering the deeper needs of your customers during autumn.

Focus on Family and Friends

One of the biggest highlights of fall is Thanksgiving and spending it surrounded by friends and family. This also means your audience will be more reflective and grateful during this time. You can use this opportunity to humanize your brand.

Examples of humanizing your brand could include posts introducing your team to your audience. Make your customers a part of your family with “Meet the Team” posts every week. At PHOS, we’ve had fun with Instagram stories by highlighting each of our team members’ favorite desk items. Capturing one thing they love and their reasoning behind it introduces them to our followers in a more personal way than simply stating their position and their job responsibilities. Speak to your audience as their helpful and reliable friend rather than an organization.

Highlight the Change in Weather

Here in Florida, we don’t have drastic changes in the weather, but we do experience less intense temperatures than summer. No matter where your organization is located, you can definitely highlight this shift in weather, especially if you are a home service provider.

Changes in weather and earlier evenings mean a shift in needs. Cooler weather could mean promoting different services if you are an HVAC provider. Or perhaps you own a lawn care service, and you have a series of posts on how to manage your landscaping with the shift in temperatures. Not every organization is going to be affected by the weather change, but it’s a great factor to consider in crafting your strategy.

Find Opportunities to Give Back

Thanksgiving happens every November, and it’s a time to reflect, give thanks, and oftentimes, give back to your community and your neighbors. You can take on this season of giving with your own community-centered posts. Partnering with another business in the community to host a giveaway on social media is a great idea. You could also utilize Instagram’s donation button on your Instagram stories to encourage your followers to donate to a cause that aligns with your core values.

Make sure these posts are authentic and have a genuine attitude behind them. People will buy into an organization that truly believes in bettering their community rather than using it as self-promotion. 

Step Into the Shoes of Your Followers

Finally, make sure you fully understand your customers. This is a time to look back on your buyer personas to uncover the content that your followers want. Fall introduces a lot of different things, such as back to school, football season, or maybe traveling to visit family. Think about the wants, needs, and motivations of your customers.

Followers are great, but you’ll want to create a loyal following of customers that will convert. A trendy photo may get a lot of likes, but you want to create a long-lasting relationship with your followers. Curating content that understands a problem and proposes a solution is worth more than one viral photo.

Recipe for the Perfect Fall Social Media Strategy: EAT

Fall includes a lot of good meals, more specifically, Thanksgiving dinner. But, there’s another way you can “eat” this fall. Use the acronym “EAT” to create an amazing social media strategy.

Engaging

The first ingredient to a successful strategy is to have engaging content. It makes your followers stop mid-scroll to “digest” your content. Engagement isn’t limited to the post itself. It can stem from your caption and your call-to-action. A great photo is only half of the equation. You have to have a compelling caption that drives your followers to take action whether it’s a comment, a visit to the link in your bio, or a follow request. Plus, the Instagram algorithm is biased towards posts with a higher level of engagement (likes and comments!)

Authentic

It’s easy to upload a photo to Instagram and add 30 hashtags to it. Creating authentic posts that reflect your mission, voice, and goals can prove more difficult. The post itself and the copy that follows should be reflective of your organization’s voice. No one wants to be spammed with photos and CTAs that scream #followforfollow. It’s better to spend the time perfecting one authentic and genuine post than to send out 10 posts just for the sake of showing up in someone’s newsfeed.

Timely

Last step of the EAT formula: timely. Your social posts and updates should be timely, especially nearing a big event or holiday. Don’t begin a “We’re thankful for…” campaign three days before Thanksgiving. Think out your strategy fully a month or two before a major event. Your posts won’t feel rushed, and they will appear at the perfect time for your customers to benefit from them.

Social Media Strategy With Our Team

Organizations can benefit from a strong social media strategy, especially during the fall season. Don’t be tempted by the overly fall trends. At PHOS, we use different social media channels to make your organization stand out in a sea of competition. Put down the PSL and contact us to start telling a different, more meaningful story on your social media accounts.