When we launched our 25 Days of Christmas Facebook several years ago, our goal was to support our annual programming stunt, 25 Days of Christmas, the biggest holiday event on cable. Since we launched, the page has grown to become the largest Christmas community on Facebook with over 4.6 million fans who are passionate & highly engaged, using the page as a forum to share their enthusiasm for the holidays all year long. Our editorial strategy for the page includes regular updates throughout the year to meet fan demand. Christmas superfans love to talk about the holiday 365 days a year, sharing memories of holidays past and talking about their excitement for the upcoming season. In June 2013, we noticed that fans were talking about Half-Mas, the halfway point to Christmas. To capitalize on this organic conversations, we posted a shareable graphic on June 25 reminding fans that there were only six more months til Christmas! The post garnered over 30,000 shares. Another highly anticipated event is the release of the schedule for 25 Days of Christmas. This year, we decided to reward our superfans by announcing the schedule on the 25 Days of Christmas Facebook page before it was released to the general public. The post was shared over 107,000 times, making it ABC Family’s most shared post ever, even beating posts for Pretty Little Liars! During the key months of November and December, we post as often as 30 times a day—fans simply can’t get enough of our updates. We share content about around our holiday movies, recipes, craft ideas, sweepstakes opportunities and more, including our favorite fan posts! Our fans love to share photos of their holiday decorations, Christmas trees, holiday craft projects, holiday card photos & of course, photos of the treats they make using their favorite holiday recipes. This year fans posted tens of thousands of holiday photos & avidly commented on each other’s creativity. This year, we also featured two apps on the Facebook page, giving fans even more ways to interact with our content & share their enthusiasm for the holidays. We created a Countdown Calendar offering exclusive content & a free holiday music download each day, and a Holiday Social Station featuring multiple ways for fans to decorate their Facebook profile photos and download holiday-themed timeline covers. Both apps registered hundreds of thousands of interactions throughout the holiday season. ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas has been a tradition in millions of Americans households for many holiday seasons. The content strategy on our Facebook page was so popular that our community nearly doubled in size in 2013, going from 2.5 million to 4.6 million fans. Our Facebook page is more than just a page for a programming stunt—it’s a destination for holiday superfans where they can engage with holiday content and other like-minded consumers 12 months a year.
