I may be a little biased — but autumn is the best time of the year. It’s right before the holidays begin and it’s time for small- and medium-sized businesses to prepare for the rush of shoppers after the notoriously slow summer months. Your company, regardless of the industry, can stand out on social media with new, fall-themed social media post ideas.
To implement these social media content ideas, start as you normally would with any digital marketing campaign. Identify your target audience and the goals you’d like to reach during the next quarter. Make sure that your plan of action connects directly with your long-range business goals.
Then, create an online marketing calendar. For my digital content campaigns, I use a simple spreadsheet to map out the details of the plan. This includes listing the publication date and time, the platform you’re using, keywords to integrate, the delegation of responsibilities and a clear explanation of the text and images you plan to share.
The more work you do ahead of time, the easier the plan will be to implement as the weather changes and the pace of life quickens. Here are some social media content ideas to inspire your best autumn yet.
1. Share your new fall collections or product launches
If you know you’ll have a new product or collection that will drop this fall, that product launch is the best place to start getting social media post ideas. Start, like everything in marketing, with a clear understanding of your target audience for the launch. Then, create a timeline with associated social media content ideas leading up to the big day.
The idea is to start the psychological process that prospective customers go through to complete a sale. It’s called the rule of seven in marketing, and it describes how someone must engage with a brand at least seven times before they gain enough trust to go through with the sale.
With new product launches, you’ll want to start early to build a case that what you are about to offer will meet a specific need or desire of your target audience. Think of a fun way that demonstrates that you’re helping to alleviate one of their pain points, and create a campaign around it. Consider leading up to the drop months in advance. If you make a big deal about it, your customers are more likely to do as well.
2. Post fall-themed content that is relevant to your industry
Some industries shine in the fall: companies that rake leaves or chop wood in preparation for the winter, products designed to make the back-to-school rush smoother, or even food delivery services that use seasonal squashes to make tasty dinners. If your business has an obvious hook to autumn, don’t let the marketing opportunity pass you by.
You’ve certainly seen the pumpkin spice phenomenon that hits candlemakers, cafes, and restaurants during this time of year. But you can do your own version based on your specific brand identity.
For example, let’s say you run a retail shop that sells trendy clothes. You’re hoping to increase your back-to-school sales by 25% compared to last year. One way you could use social media tools to help is by holding live modeling sessions for teens in your community. You could promote weekly events and webcast them through your Facebook or Instagram pages, encouraging the models to tag their friends and talk about why they love the looks.
3. Run fall-themed contests or giveaways
Everyone loves a giveaway, especially when the prize is something coveted and cozy for fall. If your company doesn’t have an item to giveaway, try raffling a fall-related item like cozy blanket or warm slippers.
Try to connect your giveaway with your company in some way. For example, let’s say your target audience is busy moms during back-to-school time. You could partner with a local spa or create a basket filled with pampering supplies.
Contests and challenges are also extremely popular on social media platforms. Let’s say you are a personal trainer. Create a day-by-day workout program and encourage your followers to exercise along with you during the cooler months. Ask for user-generated content such as post-workout selfies or even before-and-after photos. Then, the people who complete your contest will be eligible for a free month of training.
4. Share fall-related tips and advice
Fall comes with its own list of challenges, such as clearing fallen leaves from roof gutters and figuring out where that other glove went. If it makes sense for your company, develop social media post ideas centered around ways to maximize the success of the season.
One way to do this is by offering local recommendations for fun outdoor activities. If your business has been operating in the area for years, this kind of social media content can underscore how well you know the community. It will position you as a thought leader in your region, too.
5. Partner with other businesses in your community to host fall events
A social media presence can only be amplified with in-person events, especially when they’re done in partnership with other businesses in your community. Think about how you can help make the lives of the people in your target audience better and create the event around this.
The more partners you have organizing an event, the broader your audience will be. Consider organizing a family fun day or a community resource fair so that many different businesses can share the event with their followers on their social media channels. Don’t forget to hold a raffle by collecting email addresses for future marketing opportunities!
6. Use fall-themed visuals in your social media posts
Some images, like the changing color of the leaves, pumpkin patches and comfy sweaters, just speak to the season. When you include these visuals in your social media content, you will clue your followers into the fact that this is newly published and worthy of their attention.
One way to engage your followers is to hold a contest encouraging them to submit their best fall-themed photo to your social media accounts. The topic can depend on your industry. For example, let’s say you run a hair salon. Encourage people to post their best “before and after” shots of new hairstyles for autumn. When they post on your page, their friends will see how great they look — and where they went for their makeover.
7. Use fall-themed hashtags in your social media posts
If you haven’t learned how to find hashtags for your social media posts, this is the season to learn. For the uninitiated, hashtags are those “number sign” symbols that go in front of one or more words. When a phrase becomes a hashtag, it benefits from coding within a social media platform that helps people find that trending phrase.
8. Share interactive content
Interactive content is a great way to boost customer engagement on social media, as it relies on the biggest strengths of the platform. Your followers want to create a relationship with your brand, and that’s the best way for you to enjoy loyal customers, too. The key to this is to keep things light and fun.
Fall-themed polls
Polls can gather important customer feedback to improve your understanding of your target audience. But they can also be really goofy and remind your customers that your company is interested in making them smile.
Ask your followers about their favorite scary movie, their best homemade hot chocolate recipe, or whether they prefer to rake their leaves or let them rot. People love to chime in with their opinions, and you’re sending the message that you care about what they think — and that is likely to translate from fun to sales.
Quizzes about autumn
Could you guess that the largest pumpkin ever grown weighed 2,749 pounds? Or did you know that a 1.5-acre yard could result in more than 200,000 pounds of fallen leaves? Or that pumpkin spice in a Starbucks latte contains no pumpkin?
There are an endless number of interesting fall-themed questions you could create for quizzes. These social media post ideas are a fun way to let your followers take a moment out of their day to simply do something fun. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action at the end to lead them to a section of your website to share more interesting facts about your business or this time of year.
9. Share user-generated content
When your social media marketing plan encourages your followers to submit content they create, you benefit in two ways. First, you save time by not having to create the content. Second, their friends can see their participation and become aware of your brand at the same time. This concept is known as social proof, which uses the same idea as word-of-mouth advertising. That is, if the brand is good enough for my friend, it’s worth a look.
Customer fall photos
Ask your customers to submit photos that relate to the work you’ve done. If you own a landscape architecture company, these photos could be beautiful trees that change color with the season. If you own a restaurant, you could ask your customers to take pictures of their seasonal meals.
Create incentives, such as 10% of the bill if they show that they posted a photo tagging you on their Instagram Story. Give your followers a reason to play along.
Testimonials from happy clients during the fall months
Testimonials are great any time of the year, but you can create a campaign around collecting as many as possible. Work with your team to ask your most loyal customers for a short testimonial about their experience working with your business. Then, you can use fall-themed design frame templates to post them on your social media.
10. Highlight nonprofits doing fall initiatives
Even if your company is a for-profit business, you can still highlight the work done by area nonprofits during the fall season. When you partner with a charity, you demonstrate your company values to your followers and prospective customers. This can give them the reason they need to choose you over the competition.
Talk to nonprofit leaders in your community to see what they’d like to highlight. You could also organize a community service day with your team — and document the work as yet more social media post ideas.
Start your social media strategy with confidence
As you plan your posts to finish out the fall, consider the social media best practices and features that make it engaging and fun for your followers to join along on your social media marketing campaign. Be creative as you decide what kind of outreach you’d like to do online. Don’t forget to create baseline metrics associated with your goals to see if what you planned worked.
