Halloween unofficially kicks off the holiday season and with early reports predicting record sales, we’ve got seven tips for businesses on how to get into the spirit with Facebook marketing campaigns.

Start Early

Halloween isn’t too soon to think about your marketing and social media strategies for Christmas and beyond. Facebook can be used to build buzz before leading up to the holidays.

Retail marketers begin planning for Christmas in July, so there’s really no such thing as starting too early.

Photo Contests

Halloween is among the most creative holidays of the year, so take advantage of it with a photo contest.

It’s a traditional marketing tactic but with social media, still oh-so-effective.

Encourage fans to post photos of their carved pumpkin, their home decorations or their costumes.

Or ask for photos of the best costume in your neighborhood. Or show off your company culture by posting photos of your staff in costumes.

Update Pictures for the Season

The holidays are a great time to update your Facebook photo strips or profile photo to reflect the season.

Or create a tab dedicated to seasonal photos. You could even add an application that will help fans infuse the holiday into their own profile photos. Starbucks has a tool that imposes fans’ likenesses upon a pumpkin, calling the result a carving.

Polls and Questions

A great tool for spurring engagement, and one that is so easy to implement, is Facebook polls and questions.

One neat example: Target encourages fans to poll their friends about what costume to wear on Halloween.

Leverage the News Feed

The Facebook news feed group posts with identical keywords, presenting a real opportunity for word of mouth campaigns.

This month’s holiday is showing up on everyone’s homepage right now. As friends post about Halloween, and click on what their friends say about it, posts using the phrase continue to become more visible.

Get Fans To ‘Talk About This’

The latest measurement tool from Facebook is a gift that keeps on giving this holiday season. The “talking about this” metric is a great way to regularly gauge who’s talking about your Facebook page, and what’s getting them to talk about it.

The seasonal costume chain Spirit Halloween has 126,143 "talking about this" as of this writing. Contributing to that phenomenon, the page has numerous promotions going, including $5 discounts on purchases of $25 or more and daily contest that appears to be driving up the fan count.

Don’t Be a Scrooge

Small businesses have an opportunity to raise their visibility and give back to the community at the same time during the holidays.

How? Partner with a local food bank before Thanksgiving, for example. For every new page fan in the week before the holiday, donate one can of food.

Companies can match fan donations to a selected charity. A running tally of total donations can be mad within a Facebook tab.

Do you plan on using Facebook to do shopping or marketing this holiday season?

Source: All Facebook