December update – social enterprise Christmas campaign ideas

 Hi there folks. Thank you for joining me. I wanted to really start with this December review. Let’s get into it.

This is a blog post script taken from this podcast & video. Please feel free to watch, listen or read this contnet. Its all the same.

If you have followed me previously, or you’ve seen some of my content, then you might have seen some of my shorts, which I’m going to get into. I have also done a number of YouTube videos. If this is your first review please do consider liking and subscribing and following up on previous bits of content.

Now it’s really important that you know, that this is not the first time I have done an overview or a review. What I tend to do is every month. I will look back at some of the things that I’ve touched on that I thought were important to what I’ve been up to as well as what other social enterprises have been talking about. What I want to do is go through some of my YouTube. What some social enterprises might be thinking and saying, versus some things that you should be doing for good practice. Probably end with a couple of things that have gone wrong for me.

So the first thing to mention is, I have failed on delivering some YouTube content instead of doing long-form bits of content. I have reverted to doing some short content.

Short content is really, really popular and trendy. It’s also where things will be in the future. With the rise of Vine, we have seen TikTok takeover and also seen Reels come into the forefront. Now, what we are seeing is YouTube and Google want a piece of that pie. And what they’re doing is delivering on that through monetization strategies and easier ways for people to video, edit and publish that short-form content.

Yes, you’ve probably guessed it. This comes in the form of shorts. Which is a good name, but really weird when I’m typing the message. I’m doing a short. ‘Because I always think of wearing shorts and that is strange.

Short seems to be working really well for me. In a short space of time, I’ve gone from something along the lines of 40 to 60 views, which I was really chuffed with. Then came shorts and delivered. A much bigger punch. What I found was I was creating. Content is around 15 seconds to 60 seconds. This meant that the short-form content I was creating was quite punchy.

What’s really fun. Is that so far I’m getting. Over a thousand views on all of my YouTube channel content.

The interesting thing here is that YouTube is actually counting my shorts into the overall view content for my entire channel. Creating a video is really important alongside podcasts. This is a good killer combo.

Merry Christmas

Here are a few things that social enterprises might be thinking especially at the start of December. As they moved towards campaigns is important that you meet objectives and sell yourself more and more through Christmas.

This is where it gets interesting where I actually sales needs to be sales, but at the same time, as authentic as possible. Why would suggest that you already have an idea of what you do and how you do it? And as a social enterprise, it is important that you remain socially impactful. What I mean is don’t go off and overkill on the sales. It’s important to be authentic and reasonable to your audience.

One of the biggest problems that a lot of social entrepreneurs have, is that you are all doing a wonderful job. You’re the sales person. You’re the shopkeeper. You have several different roles within what you do. One of those is digital marketing and social media. So, yes, this is tough and I get that.

This is why planning ahead is important and making sure that you’re looking at your content once a week at the start of the week and scheduling and planning for that week ahead is important. This week by week mentality is something that you probably want to adopt and we’ll do right now for Christmas. The hope is that you then get ahead of yourself and in January might be able to. Bunch together, two weeks of content at a time. If you haven’t bought into social media management tools then now might be a really good time and there are some really quick, easy wins out there.

The top social media management tools for you to use right now are Twitter. Facebook. Use the analytic and scheduling tools that they already have. These are native and based within their ecosystem and are really easy to use.

Alternatively, if you’ve got many different social media platforms. You could opt for Hootsuite suite. Hootsuite is completely free, but it does give you a trial period that leads to a paid version. Get to that point, they will not charge you. You will just get the free version.

I personally buy into ideas like Canva, which are really useful.

One of the best tools that I’ve seen in a while is actually Social Bee. You can get a free trial and that is something that you could do right now.

The reason why I mentioned the Social Bee is that has a really cool tool where you’re able to put in a number of hashtags within a campaign. When scheduling that content, you’re able to put that out there you can also add the branded hashtag cluster to that every time you’re doing it. This means you don’t have to type in several hashtags all at once.

The key take-home from all of this is that we are now in, early December. You need to be looking at planning, your entire campaigns. Get scheduling. Is really important right now at Christmas.

I want to mention as a digital review for December is to have a look at data analytics. I do stress this, I do say it’s important. The key things that I do say are that you need to be doing Google analytics if you can’t do that, then monster insights or using Google search console is a very good basic level.

The reason why I’m now stressing on this is because of the next thing that I want to talk about, which is Google analytics 4.

Google Analytics 4

I’ve been on a course that was really good and insightful about Google analytics 4. I thought it was really helpful.

Google Analytics 4 is different to the existing universal analytics. It does offer you more. However, the interface and the way that it’s built is going to be the main stumbling block for anyone getting into that. The main reason for me highlighting this topic is because Google analytics will change in 2023.

When we get to July. Universal analytics will continue to exist. But it will stop pulling any kind of data for you? This is something that you can’t stop or prevent because Google has implemented that.

Google Analytics 4, then pick up which is why you should have transferred over and start now to track through Google analytics 4.

Just to kind of zoom back on Christmas. Scheduling your content and understanding your campaigns and your hashtags is going to neaten some things up when it comes to you, knowing what your marketing is and being able to analyze what things are proving popular within your products and services through Christmas.

This will then tie you into looking at analytics and an overview of how your website might’ve performed at the end of the Christmas period. Hopefully, this will then allow you to plan ahead in January.

As you get more excited about doing analytics and tracking what things are happening on your socials and on your website, you will be looking at doing that more. At this point in time, that’s really good and it’s great practice, but you will also hit the stumbling block in July with Google analytics 4.

So there’s a whole bunch of stuff there that I’ve repeated in previous posts, and I’ve catered this a little bit more to. Christmas and where I think you might need to be for your Christmas campaigning.

I just want to end on a few things that I’ve been doing, uh, things that have been getting right and wrong, because I really want to be open and transparent about some of the things that I’m doing. The hope is that you learn from some of the mistakes that I’ve made.

USB-C

So USB C’s are changing in the sense that. The traditional iPhone charges. We’ll become defunct. In the future more and more devices will now have USB-C.

This is mainly because, The European union and the people that set up the GDPR policy have now created a separate policy on hardware. All hardware needs to be moving away from USB. USB-C is essentially the universal plug to use for everything.

GoPro and RODE

This is where I show off at. I say the I’ve been using my iPhone to Recode because I’ve got a new iPhone and the GoPro does some stuff, which is really good. Sometimes I use it sometimes. I don’t. This Rode camera is really, really wonderful and offers me a really good clean sound in audio. Both of these devices now use USB-C. I am starting to see issues with this area. The is actually niching in its own market. The cables that I’m using for USB-C don’t work because there’s a bit more technology within each USB-C which makes each one unique to the hardware that it’s using as well as why you’re using it.

So, again, this is stuff that has stopped me from recording on my GoPro right now, temporarily. And has blocked me from using the Rode to its full extent. So these are things that you could probably watch out for in the year 2023.

Interviews

I have a number of interviews that I want to do. So if you’re watching this and listening, and you’re a social enterprise, if I can help you in some way, and we can have a conversation and you don’t mind it being recorded, then please do reach out. I am eager and doing more and more interviews in the year 2023.

DScript

Descript is a great tool. It’s something that I’m using more and more, and it’s something that seems to help with how I edit. Sound and audio and text together. This is a really great tool that I’m going to cover in the future. For now, it’s a tool that has enabled me to create videos and podcasts all at the same time simultaneously.

Canva

My top tool would definitely be Canva. I have had a video about how to design things for Canva.

When you’re doing your social there seems to be more and more of a trend towards video and gifs and animated gifts. This is because this is where audiences have a higher click-through rate when it comes to looking at video or animated content. If you’re not a fan of Canva, then. Get on. It is really good. I’m also mentioning Canva because through November Canva has been implementing and changing and upgrading its ecosystem. What this means is you can now do more with animated gifts, more with video presentations and more with creating videos.

These are all new areas and you could utilize them better and more insightfully in all of your campaignings. Particularly with Christmas.