This year, we at The Practice have been feeling nostalgic, having looked back on 2014’s top digital trends in our last post. For today’s post, we were keen to remember some of our favourite Christmas social media campaigns, and what to include for online success.

As ever, Christmas is where brands can really get creative on social media, enticing consumers with giveaways and competitions. In one of the best visual social media campaigns we’ve seem at Christmas, Topshop’s 2013 campaign spoke to our creative imaginations. The high-street brand used Pinterest to launch their “Dear Topshop” campaign, asking fans to create moodboards solely on Pinterest which contained their favourite Christmas items- whether decorations, food items, gifts or clothes. Pins were to include the hash tag #DearTopshop and submit their board links on Topshop’s website, with the best in line to win shopping sprees. The brand also promoted pinned items and the campaign details on its site homepage, encouraging fans to get involved.

While no incentive was involved, we loved Harvey Nichols’ social media Christmas campaign last year, #Spentitonmyself. The initiative saw the company create a humorous viral video in which shoppers purchased inexpensive presents for their family and friends such as paper clips and toothpicks, meaning they had more to spend on themselves! The light-hearted theme encouraged users to share their extravagant and not-so extravagant purchases across social media and as a result, the hash tag was trending for two days.

One of our all time Christmas favourites has to be Coca-Cola’s 2011 campaign, in which the brand encouraged fans to tweet their Christmas wishes. Participants were asked to share their messages online through Twitter and Coke Zone, (Coca-Cola’s site dedicated to customer insights and engagement), with the chance of these being displayed on the company’s giant neon sign at Piccadilly Circus. The company really scaled up the Christmas cheer, displaying 864 tweets, while the campaign achieved 6278 webcam views of its billboard live stream for those who couldn’t see it in person.

So how can your business increase its online reach to a greater audience this Christmas? As some of the most successful brands have demonstrated, a hash tag campaign is perhaps the most powerful organic way for sparking audience participation. A catchy, festive hash tag backed up by a great incentive will certainly draw attention and encourage sharing- something that allows users to share their best stories, images, videos, and creative posts is likely to be effective. And as Christmas is all about the material, and visual sharing, this is the time when platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest should really be made the most of. Creating seasonal Pinterest boards, uploading and cataloging products should all be given precedence at this time of year. With sales in mind, Christmas is also when the promoted tweet or sponsored post becomes even more important, so it can help to boost your social media campaigns with some paid advertising.

Which Christmas social media campaigns stand out in your mind? Do you have an all-time favourite? And how have your amplified your social strategy this holiday season? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page too.