How to use the summer months to maximize your social media strategy

For most brands, the summer months result in a ‘big news’ lull. Vacation time for families, and many businesses implement Summer Fridays (closing shop early). It’s a mini-calm before the back-to-school/fall/holiday storm, and also the perfect time to revamp your social media strategy and digital communications. Let me explain.

• Are there a series of white papers you wanted to read, but have been sitting around collecting dust bunnies?
• Do you feel that you haven’t previously had the time to explore some of the emerging trends or digital channels?
• Is there a platform or some new technology your team always wanted to try?
• Is that 300-page research report on your consumer base still sitting there unread?
• How about that small test program your college wanted to partner up with your team on (but there was too much going on in your department to give the program that good ole’ college try?)?

Welcome to summer.

In my experience, the timeframe between June 1 and mid-August is an essential period for testing, learning, review, and improving. It’s also the time to take a deeper look into your consumer base and finding better ways to engage them within your social media platforms.

Another perk of summer? Reach across the silos of your organization. Use these warm months to visit your customer service managers and see how you can improve the merge between your service and social worlds. Is there a way to sync up the contact information of your best customers to see how often they have sent you questions via Twitter? How about exploring the outreach methods your teams conduct via social and embedding customer service work flow for seamless (and incredibly helpful) customer engagement? (Pssst, this is totally doable).

Summer doesn’t mean all campaigns cease. I know that your business is still launching programs, but I also know that it may be a fraction of the size of your upcoming holiday campaign. Embrace the lulls in these months and spend them building up your digital arsenal. Your Q4 holiday will thank you.

Blagica Bottigliero
VP of Digital Media