Valentine's Day is a big one for Twitter. The platform says it's expecting to see 31.5 million tweets Valentine's related tweets this year - up from 26.2 million in 2016 - providing a perfect opportunity for marketers to tap into the trend and reach users with their themed offers and creative messaging.
Twitter's already published a guide on how brands can tap into the Valentine's Day trend this year, but evidently they felt that wasn't enough - this week, Twitter's published another Valentine's Day tips post, this time looking at the top hashtags and keywords brands should use to boost their visibility during the event.
As shown in the above GIF, the top hashtags Twitter believes will be trending on and in the lead up to February 14th are:
#bemine, #bemyvalentine, #candyhearts, #galentinesday, #hugsandkisses, #secretadmirer, #SinglesDay, #sweetheart, #thatslove, #valentine, #valentines, #valentinesday2017, #whoneedsavalentine, #willyoubemyvalentine
Using these tags should help boost your message - so long as it's relevant and in context, of course.
Twitter also astutely advises that you should limit your hashtag usage to a maximum of three per tweet. We'd actually advise even lower than this, based on various research reports (with two being the optimum), but individual results will vary.
In addition, Twitter advises that brands should consider they words they use in their tweets to ensure optimal discovery potential.
"Understanding what keywords people are using will help you think of Tweet topics and craft relevant content."
Twitter expects 'love', 'chocolate', 'singles', 'date night', 'flowers', 'romance', 'bouquets', 'roses', 'date night' and 'gift ideas' to all be popular terms people will be searching for in tweets around the event.
It might be worth setting up a TweetDeck search stream for any relevant mentions in your area, which will enable you to respond to relevant queries - or at the least, get a better understand of trends and what people are looking for.
For example, if you sell flowers, you can set up a stream to find any mentions of 'flowers' in your immediate vicinity.
Now most of those matches aren't going to be relevant - 'flowers' by itself is too vague a search term, but it does give you a starting point, enabling you to further narrow down how people are talking about flowers, and how to find those with purchase intent.
In this instance, most people who are tweeting about flowers are recipients already, so too late for you to catch them - but depending on your approach there may still be opportunities.
There are a lot of people, for example, asking for someone to buy them flowers.
so if any of you are in love with me or decide to fall in love with me before valentine's day, my favorite flowers are peonies fyi
- AB (@annuh_bailey) February 9, 2017
While it wouldn't be efficient to hyper-target all of this person's followers with ads for those specific flowers in the hopes that they'll make a purchase, you could look to send these people flowers on behalf of your brand as an awareness opportunity. Targeting highly engaged people could lead to them tweeting their appreciation, expanding your brand message through UGC.
Now that might not be the most effective outreach process either, but there are other ways to use TweetDeck searches.
For instance, changing the search term from flowers to the more specific "buy flowers" may yield more relevant results.
Where can I buy flowers from for valentines day?
- Misandrist Sunflower (@TrizzhAyyBee) February 7, 2017
The more you look into the results, the more opportunities you'll find - it does take time, but it can yield good data for your targeting and outreach efforts.
Valentine's Day present a good opportunity for promotion because it's essentially a commercial-based celebration - people are actively looking to buy gifts and the mood around the event is generally positive.
It also provides opportunities for brands to come up with more creative, fun takes on the event, like anti-Valentine's Day messages and humorous takes on the theme.
You don't need a lot of words to express how you're feeling this #ValentinesDay: https://t.co/D7LdUI2bps pic.twitter.com/rtrVDiVa3O
- Disney D23 (@DisneyD23) February 9, 2017
However you approach it, it may be worth checking out the activity on Twitter in your region and looking to tap into the trending conversation.