Small businesses: How to use St. Patrick’s Day to your advantage

Only days away, St. Patrick’s Day is the celebration that puts Ireland firmly on the map of a global audience.

With many of the world’s major cities set to turn their landmarks green, is there a little something small businesses could be doing to ‘highlight’ themselves on the anniversary of Ireland becoming a snake-free nation?

It’s important to stand out, so you’ll need to get creative.

Here at Enterprise Nation, we’ve gathered some super social media tips, and mixed them with some great advice from Twitter expert Samantha Kelly, to serve you up a smorgasbord of ways to use St. Patrick’s Day to your benefit.

Hashtags

No matter which platform you’re using, you’ll need to include hashtags to get seen on St. Patrick’s Day. Try the following:

• #StPatricksDay

• #StPatricksDay2024

• #Irish

• #GlobalIrish

Discounts

Everyone likes a discount, and you can make yours stand out by applying a unique discount code (for example, PADDY10) or offering a 17% sale on certain items.

The Irish collection

Showcase your Irish items across your social media during the St. Patrick’s Day activities when ‘everyone has a little Irish in them’. You might snag a sale from a sentimental follower.

If you’re an Irish craft business, show behind-the-scenes clips of your workmanship. Don’t be afraid to show your personality or your co-workers/staff on your platforms. People want to get to know who they’re buying from.

The Patricks and Patricias

Why not offer a discount or free gift to all Patricks and Patricias on St. Patrick’s Day? What better way to spread the word through social media than have your followers tagging their favourite Pats to avail themselves of a free coffee or special offer?

Give people the facts

How much do you know about St. Patrick’s? Is it just the story about the snakes? Why not get clued up on all things St. Patrick and share a quiz through your stories or some true/false facts to generate some audience participation?

Serve up the nostalgia

Barry’s or Lyon’s? Tayto or King? This is always a fun topic of conversation.

Get the chat flowing on your media channels by creating a little nostalgic moment with an image of the immersion switch. A simple ‘Who remembers this?’ will have your comment sections flooded with anecdotes about the biggest fear of all – leaving the immersion on.

Run a competition

Might be cutting it a bit fine but as the Bank Holiday is close to the weekend, no doubt people will be stretching out the celebrations for days.

Run a tag-and-share competition on your social media channels to run until Sunday. “Tag someone who loves St. Patrick’s Day more than you” or “Tag your most ‘Irish’ friend and tell us why” should throw up some interesting reads in the comments section.

User-generated content

Ask your followers to send you images or videos of how they’re spending their St. Patrick’s Day. Encourage them to tag you in their stories for shares on to your platform.

If you’re feeling very creative, put together a video of all the Irish festive images and clips they send you.

Show them you’re celebrating

Find whatever green clothing you have in your wardrobe and that’s your outfit for the day. Even if you don’t want to dress up like a leprechaun, adding a bit of green to your garments lets your followers know you’re in on ‘the craic’. So don’t forget those selfies!

The power of the dog, and cat

Do not underestimate the ‘pulling’ power of our cute furry friends. Do your followers want to see you dress (small green hat or bow tie) your family pet up on St. Patrick’s Day? Of course they do. Will they share such a cute image? Of course they will.

Just make sure your pet is on board with the whole dressing up thing – the ‘grumpy cat’ persona has already been taken.