Businesses need to maximise Christmas cheer to increase place sentiment

Seasons greetings, yuletide joy. Well, we’ve made it this far and it’s finally time for everyone to gift themselves a little sparkle. Adding festive cheer to social media posts gives shoppers a little shot of festive spice in their step and improves place sentiment. If you're creating content about your local business, you need to make sure it's localised, and as glitzy as tinsel. 

Every week we make a virtual stop in a town across the UK to sniff out the best in social media. This week we’re off to the Isle of Wight. Let’s find out what the Isle of Wight’s High Street’s social media best looks like and how businesses are engaging customers.

Maybe* Place Insights allows you to benchmark the social media activity, posts, engagement, sentiment and conversation topics of all businesses within your place. When you know what the local conversation sounds like in any town or place, you can replicate the successful tactics no matter where you are.

How many businesses in the Isle of Wight have social media accounts?

Maybe* Place Insights shows us that only 23% of businesses in the Isle of Wight have social media accounts. This is under the national average of 28%.

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How many businesses in Isle of Wight local High Street create social media content everyday?

Of those 23% of businesses, an average of 25% of them are active every day. But at weekends this drops as low as 16%. Active businesses have climbed steadily but slowly through November, but the Isle of Wight will need to do more throughout December.

How many posts do businesses make and how engaging are they?

Local businesses in the Isle of Wight create an average of 1,250 pieces of social media content per day. Engagements average about 82,000 per day, which is approximately 66 per post. While the Isle of Wight’s businesses as a whole are not active on social media, the ones who are, are creating great content.

What is Isle of Wight’s best social media content?

We’ve used the Maybe* Best Post in a Place tool to find Isle of Wight’s best post on Friday 4th December.

Lockdown ended on December 2nd, and as we headed into the first weekend where we could go out, many  decided to take it easy and stay safe. Local restaurant Novo put a £25 takeaway up for grabs to engage its Facebook fans.


What conversations do Isle of Wight’s businesses create?

The businesses on the Isle of Wight put place at the centre of the conversation and all around it. Christmas and Black Friday also feature as seasonal hashtags, as does the local news hashtag. A little more support for shopping local, and supporting small would be great to see to give the place conversation a bit more variety and a clearer picture of what the Isle of Wight has to offer.

What’s the tone of the conversation?

Businesses in the Isle of Wight need to increase the positivity and inspiration in the language of the posts they create. The conversation is a very bland and neutral one and needs a little more sparkle and a bit more glitter to make it shine.

Key takeaway

What you say and how you say it matters. No one wants a bland conversation, especially at Christmas. So put a little tinsel on it, break out the Santa emoji, for 'tis the season to be jolly.

Maybe* is a social media management platform that helps organisations make social media work better for them. We provide easy to use engagement tools, smart insights and reports that rock.