Maintaining a Social Media Presence During Your Off-Season

Are you trying to achieve consistent social media engagement with your followers even though your brand may not be considered relevant all year round? Not all brands have a product or service in demand each and every season. Brand marketing leaders must think creatively to invest more in their content during seasons when customers will respond to it the most. However, the marketing for these brands should not dwindle down during their off season. It’s important to keep content consistent to retain followers and inspire purchases all year round. Here’s some ideas to maintain your brand through all four seasons:  

Use This Time to Generate Customer Loyalty 

How often to post:

If your business provides a product or service that’s deemed “irrelevant” for certain parts of the year, for example, a swimwear brand… staying on top of your social media content in the dead of winter is just as important as during the summer months. You want to be top of mind throughout the year. Posting one time per week during off-season, is NOT enough to sustain interest, that’s why it’s recommended you post at least 2-3 times per week during off-season.  

What content to post:

Reach out to your customers and ask questions about what type of content they want to see from your business as well as any insights on how products or services can be enhanced. It’s very important to take the time to LISTEN to what your market is telling you and fully engage in that conversation. Not only will this allow customers to feel a genuine connection to the brand and sustain their loyalty, but it will also naturally develop the business’ content profile to create posts that followers will interact with more authentically. Furthermore, asking your customers questions offers key reviews and testimonials from a variety of demographics that your business can gather for data analysis.  

Keeping engagement:

One creative way to keep your audience engaged during your off-season is through user generated content. Having followers post reviews, tutorials, or even promotions to their personal pages for their intimate followers to see will help your business reach a lot more followers. Starting conversations on social media like Facebook and Twitter or engaging with popular influencers that are relevant to your brand are effective ways of sparking attention from audiences you may not have reached yet. Consumers trust the opinions of smaller influencers more than they do commercial advertisements, so creating positive relationships with these influencers will further advance the consumer experience.  

Showing Constant Value in the Customer 

You may be surprised to learn that much of modern retail relies on offering discounts during quieter periods in business. One way of following through with this is selling old stock for much lower prices or heavily discounting certain products that are in excess stock. Online retailers often offer free or discounted shipping during their off-season because it’s proven to be a powerful technique to drive sales when they’re expected to dip. Some customers may have one specific product from your brand that they consider indispensable, and if that product is popular amongst a wide market, there’s a great opportunity for you to offer a heavy one-day discount. Customers will remember they bought their favorite product during an off-season period which reminds them to stay engaged with your brand on social media all year to find out when the best deals happen.  

Use the time you have during your off-season and the data you have collected from engaging with your followers to make your content even better. Using all of your effort to develop plans, ideas, and a strong brand image will show your followers that you value their opinions and want to provide useful, enjoyable, and even entertaining content that reflects your values. Pushing relatable and educational blog posts across your platforms, shooting short-form video content/Reels, or curating a theme for your profile pages are just a few of the many ways marketers can take the time to enhance their content during the off-season. Providing useful, educational content that’s relevant to your brand will help gain follower trust, which is very important rather than just posting content for clicks. It’s vital to stay on top of industry related news stories as well as form an official brand voice on relevant world topics that followers are interested in.

Developing Alternate Products or Services 

Creating merchandise for customers to wear is another great way of earning a positive brand reputation by having a brand they’re proud to publicly represent and reaching new audiences through subliminal promotion. Having unique SWAG that customers will love, and that no other brand offers, keeps customers engaged all year round. Marketing teams like to start social media competitions around their SWAG where followers are encouraged to post a photo with the newest merchandise to win something, such as gift cards. Asking followers to tag your business or use a hashtag you created for that competition or promotion in their posts will increase overall brand awareness. Bottom line, providing brand-specific merchandise will keep your marketing momentum going throughout the year.

Businesses want to represent the core of their content on the social platforms that are most relevant to the products or services they provide, for example an online retail store will focus most of their branding content on photos for Instagram whereas a local business will focus their marketing on a more interactive platform like Facebook. A lot of businesses do not venture outside of one or a few platforms for their marketing because they believe it’s a lost effort. However, brands have slowly become more creative in how they can grow their brand awareness and provide various types of content to reach a wider audience. For example, creating a YouTube page or Reels on Instagram for content such as tutorials on how to use products, useful tips, or videos encompassing your brand values and goals allows you to reach a new audience and grow overall brand interest. This also provides additional promotional opportunities such as video collaborations with popular influencers that want your brand to gain more attention as well as theirs.

Last but not least, brands are retaining their professional and wholistic standards on their strongest platforms, and then creating more personal profiles on separate platforms to drive alternative audiences. For example, brands are creating TikTok accounts that allows them to post more light-hearted, entertaining, and enjoyable content that can go viral much faster. This has recently been proven to help younger audiences learn about new brands. It’s also a great way for brands to broaden their brand voice to be more relatable to the general customer. Developing unique content on a non-traditional social media platform is another way of earning customer support and gaining marketing traction during off-season periods.

These are just a few ways to keep your audience engaged even during slower times in your business throughout the year! Be sure to comment or reach out with your favorite ways to maintain your brand all year round!

Cheers to connecting with purpose and intention,

Bre