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With the holidays upon us, this topic is top of mind. I manage the social media strategy and content for a veterinary brand in the emergency and specialty medicine space. Because veterinary medicine is a service industry, we don’t have the usual needs of holiday-specific content that a product marketing team would have on social media. So, though we do post content like holiday hazards for pets during the various holidays, we struggle with whether it is relevant for our business to post general holiday messages (i.e., Warm wishes for the holiday season.) either at this time or throughout the year.

I’ve always felt that if we post about some holidays but not all holidays throughout the year (i.e. Posting about Christmas, Hanukkah and Veterans Day, but then not posting on Easter, Ramadan or Presidents Day), that opens our company up to criticism that we obviously didn’t intend for, so we’ve erred on the side of caution. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on why you do/don’t post holiday-specific messages for the businesses you represent on social media. And if you do post about them, how do you choose which to post about and which not to, to ensure you are still being relevant to your company culture and audience?

For the two organizations I work for (graduate art school + art museum), our policy is to not post about holidays. We only post about holiday related hours in an informational way.

Holidays could easily bring negative reactions and feelings from our audiences, so it makes sense to just say no to holidays rather than get into which are more relevant (important) to our business.

Our exception for the school is if a student-organization holds a celebration and shares images with us for social. For example, a dumpling meal for Lunar New Year has been a regular for a few years. In these cases, we share from the aspect of student life.

Our museum has in the past created content for Black History Month, Women’s History Month, AAPI Heritage month, Pride month, etc. The content was always related to a collection artist/object so it was educationally based. Creating the content was a big lift, and there were always questions on what ‘months’ to create for and if we were meeting our mission by focusing on an artist’s particular background during a specific time for engagement.

I have previously created “Happy ____!” holiday posts for a small B2B organization, but I would never do that again. It’s just not necessary if your business is not directly related.

I think your educational holiday content like pet hazards is great - its valuable and relevant.

We typically stay away from the holidays as well, but this year, I needed some extra content towards the end of August/beginning of September and posted for Labor Day. Our construction company utilizes local unions, so it aligned well with our existing messaging around our “people and safety”.

I agree with @amanda.coe – what you have done with the holiday hazards seems great. It seems like holidays without any religious affiliation would be safe and I would consider posting for any of the following US holidays:

  • New Year’s Day
  • Memorial Day
  • Independence Day
  • Labor Day

This is, unfortunately, a constant social question no matter who you are/what industry your company is in. My company ultimately decided against any holiday if it’s cultural or religious. We’re a global company so we also avoid national holidays. International days like World Engineering Day, New Years’ Day we do still post about though. (New Years was under discussion because of Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year dates but ultimately this went ahead)  

I think you’ve struck a nice balance though. 

For us, we do post holiday specific content such as Merry Christmas posts on Christmas, reason being that I believe it helps add a personable touch to professional business socials. And using holidays for content is typically effortless engagement. 

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