What are awareness days in Social Media and why should you use them?
Awareness days, weeks and months are tools to create awareness of a cause or popular topic on social media. If you use them properly, they can be a great way of showcasing your products and services, reaching a new audience and driving awareness and engagement with your brand. They always include a hashtag which means they can potentially start trending on Twitter and Instagram.
So, by joining the conversation around these topics you can reach and engage with a new audience.
How to use awareness days in social media marketing
- Pick your dates carefully and thoughtfully
- Use them as a content prompt – Which days spark an idea for a promotion? What stories can tell to showcase your brand values, products and services?
- Use topics that are relevant to your business and your customers – Any tenuous, off-brand links to dates just looks shady
- Do your research – check the relevant hashtags on Twitter and Instagram to get some ideas and make sure you that have the correct hashtag
- Don’t just post a sales message and add a completely irrelevant hashtag
Examples of using awareness days for Cornwall tourism businesses
18 January is Blue Monday and Brew Monday – A perfect opportunity for Cornish tourism businesses to spread a little positivity with images of the beautiful blue Cornish coastline and promote a summer booking. Let your audience know what they’re missing! Promote your holiday lettings company with a post around snuggling up with a brew in a cosy cottage or café with a sea view. Or ask your followers to post their favourite beach photos in a facebook thread to cheer everyone up.
14 February isn’t just Valentine’s Day, it’s also Love Your Beach Day and the start of Love Your Beach Week. Organised by Your Shore Rangers, it creates awareness of the plastic pollution on our beaches and encourages people to get involved in a beach clean-up. With our proximity to the Cornwall coastline, keeping our beaches clean is important to all of us. This is a great opportunity to lead by example, get your team involved and promote the beauty of our local area.
15 May is International Water Safety Day and Learn To Swim Day. Surf Schools and water based activity companies (such as coasteering and boat trips) can use this as an opportunity to showcase safety measures. Accommodation providers could thank the RNLI, local lifeguards etc… And highlight beach safety. Hotels with pools and leisure centres can talk about the many children who have learned to swim on holiday and show them having fun.
There are an abundance of awareness days for hospitality businesses to showcase their food and drink range. This will work particularly well if it ties into a promotion such as ‘Half price pepperoni pizzas for #PepperoniPizzaDay’
Use a content calendar
Using a content calendar will help you plan ahead and put everything in place to create successful promotions and marketing content. Some awareness days may even spark an idea for a blog post, brand video or newsletter that can then be repurposed into different types of social media posts. Planning in advance will also give you the time to research the correct hashtag and get inspiration from previous content.
Download our free content calendar for Cornish destination businesses below.
Finally, have some fun!
These topics are often a great way to show a bit of personality and create a connection with your audience. Think about your images and perhaps use gifs or video, get the team involved and ask questions to engage with your audience. If you can raise a smile they are more likely to share your post and that will increase your reach and engagement.
