There are now less than 65 days till Christmas, so if you haven't finalized your holiday marketing plan, time is quickly running out. But as you go about planning out your Christmas marketing strategy, wouldn't it be great to know exactly when - down to the day - users on social are most active in the period, and what they're talking about?
Twitter's UK arm has actually compiled his very data, putting together a couple of interesting graphs that examine overall tweet volumes from the 2015 holiday season relating to Christmas-related conversation. And while the data is UK-specific, the milestone dates are likely very similar across most regions that celebrate the holiday - and even if they do differ slightly, it still offers some interesting food for thought as to when you should be reaching out to your audience for maximum impact.
The first graph looks at mention volume related to 35 different conversation topics around Christmas, including "Christmas lights", "Christmas trees" and holiday jumpers.
(Note: click on any of the graphs for a larger version)
It's interesting to note when the conversation peaks around each element, helping to guide when you should be reaching out with celebratory posts related to Christmas parties or advent calendars. Using this as a guide, brands can better plan when to market their products - for example, a company giving away Christmas decorations as part of their seasonal campaign might want to ramp up their efforts on the week of December 6th (or its equivalent in 2016), while businesses in the fashion and beauty sectors might want to target the Christmas party period to reach people trying to look their best.
Knowing the likely conversation peaks can also help those brands considering ways to tap into trending conversations and hashtag streams.
Twitter's second graph looks at sentiment and emotions around Christmas, based on how they're reflected in tweets.
This is great insight to have for marketing teams looking to maximize the impact of their messaging by reaching people at just the right time. With an understanding of the emotional mood of each period, marketers can refine their messaging accordingly in order to provide relevant cues at the times their audience are most receptive to receiving them.
Twitter's also provided some additional contextual graphs around holiday season ads and foods, but the information is largely UK-specific - you can read the full post here for more detail.
But there is one other data point worthy of focus - the best Christmas movies, based on UK Twitter mention volume.
Maybe less helpful from a marketing standpoint, but still, great to see John McClain still rates a mention.