Whether you’re raising awareness for World Mental Health Day or celebrating your inner foodie with National French Fry Day, there’s a national holiday for you. Brands rely on hashtag holidays to get people to engage, share content, promote a cause or celebrate.
However, with the vast number of hashtag holidays celebrated across the globe, it’s difficult to know which version of the hashtags are correct and the most used. Don’t get lost in a hashtag holiday wormhole. Instead, we’re here to help with you plan your social media marketing strategy and see the most popular hashtag holidays for 2018.
We’ve cherry-picked a combination of generally celebrated, industry-specific and lesser known hashtag holidays and compiled them into a downloadable PDF and Google calendar below:
If you’re uncertain about which hashtag holidays you should use in 2018, we’ve also provided a quick process to prioritize and strategize your approach.
Here are three questions your brand should answer before participating in hashtag holidays:
1. Is the Hashtag Brand Relevant?
A Sprout Social customer survey discovered when brands share irrelevant information, 41% of people tend to unfollow the company on social. This insight is important to any organization’s bottom line, especially since 57% of consumers are more likely to purchase something from a brand they follow and 75% have made a purchase because of social.
Avoid being the one that hijacks a hashtag holiday and promotes something that has nothing to do with your brand or product. The hashtag holiday you’re celebrating should speak to your audience, not annoy them.
Some brands worry about using the correct hashtag for something as popular as National Friendship Day. There are various hashtags associated with friendship, but what if your brand is one of the few using the wrong hashtag?
Luckily, you can combat confusion by deep diving into the message volume and sharing data between the various hashtags. With Sprout’s Twitter Keyword Report, we compiled our list of holidays and identified which occasions were the most popular by social shares and volume.
In addition to uncovering holiday share of voice, the report allowed us to determine which hashtag iteration was most commonly used for each holiday.
2. Is the Hashtag Overlapping Any Major Holidays?
Using the right hashtag holidays at the right time can be tricky business. For example, National Hamburger Day falls on May 28, but that also happens to be Memorial Day in 2018. There’s a fine balance between posting something inappropriate during a holiday and meshing the two together.
Don’t fret hamburger makers, there’s a tasteful way of promoting the national day and the holiday without being inconsiderate. You can offer discounts for veterans, but try to avoid picking a more wacky hashtag holiday over a national holiday where customers could take offense.
JUST ANNOUNCED: There will be 4 fee-free days to #FindYourPark in 2018!
1/15 – #MLKDay
4/21 – 1st day of #NationalParkWeek
9/22 – National Public Lands Day #NPLD
11/11 – #VeteransDay https://t.co/0dOmRuvoBb pic.twitter.com/0MrwSLItHu— NationalParkService (@NatlParkService) December 12, 2017
Remember, hashtag holidays can be celebrated globally, so it’s important for brands to identify holidays celebrated by any region they’re targeting. This is basic knowledge for any social media manager out there, but it’s always best to play it safe.
3. Is Hashtag Performance Being Measured?
You’ve got your content planned and your hashtags picked, but how do you know if your efforts paid off? Brands still struggle to track and measure performance when it comes to social media. But there are ways to ensure you’re not wasting time with certain hashtags.
It pays to visualize your campaigns and for a lot of businesses, that includes hashtag holidays. Additionally, you need a tool to understand the share of voice across various brands, product lines or even your competitors.
Using Sprout Social’s reporting suite, it’s easier to measure the relevance and power of your hashtags. Dig deeper into your hashtag analytics and set a literal measure for success. You can do this by benchmarking your best hashtag holiday from a year prior and setting new goals around that performance.
Start planning your strategy today and download our hashtag holidays PDF or Google Calendar to stay on top of the most important days!
Go Celebrate
What are some of your favorite hashtag holidays? Are there any new days that we should consider for 2019? Tweet us at @SproutSocial or share your thoughts in the comments below!