Social media marketing can sometimes feel like a never-ending cycle of coming up with content, which is why so many profiles now post about “national days”. But does posting about National Polka Dot Day help or hurt your small business’s branding?
This week on the S.O.B. (Small Owned Business) Marketing podcast, Vivian and I are discussing how small businesses can use national days strategically in their social media marketing, and how using national days as content can also go wrong and dilute your branding.
Our Marketing HOT TAKE this week: We all need to touch grass. You do not need to post every day on social media! Quality over quantity. Disagree? Let me know in the comments!
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Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to our Marketing Cult! Please Leave Us a Review
02:39 The Relevance of National Days
07:31 Pros and Cons of National Days
16:39 Engaging Employees and Customers
22:15 The Risks of Overusing National Days
28:39 TLDL; Using National Days for Social Media Marketing
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Chelsea: That is a great way also to use national days and translate it into content. Instead of just posting it, like "oh happy National Hat Day". You can say...
*Intro*
Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Vivian: A hip to the hop to the hippity hippity hop. Chelsea said I look like a hip hopper today. You guys friendly reminder, we do have some merch if you're watching this on the YouTube channel.
Chelsea: Let me move my mic a little bit so you can see.
Vivian: Move it. Alright, so Chelsea's wearing our small business baddie shirt. We have those in various colors and also I'm wearing our SOB small owned business hat. It's a trucker hat. Go check out our merch. Great way to support this podcast. Another great way you can support the podcast is to buy us a coffee. Simply go to buymeacoffee.com/sobmarketing and you guys can contribute and help us keep this conversation going. We're excited to dive into another episode today and reminder TLDL, too long didn't listen. There's going to be a chapter at the very end of this episode you can fast forward to if you're on the run and get a brief synopsis from Chelsea about the conversation. Then we're going to recommend that you come back and you listen to the whole conversation because we want you guys to know what we say about...
Chelsea: About national days.
Vivian: You guys.
Chelsea: You know, today, Vivian, not today when we're recording, but when this episode comes out, it's National Hat Day. So look at you.
Vivian: I wore my hat on the perfect day. So this is, you guys all know there are 20 gajillion of these. There's literally every day, 365 days a year. Each day has something going on. Today the discussion we're going to have is, does this benefit your small business and can you get something out of it or is it just like an annoying thing that you shouldn't participate in?
Chelsea: Yeah, and a little spoiler for this conversation, there is no right or wrong answer, but we're going to discuss the pros and the cons.
Vivian: Yes.
Chelsea: But of course, before we get started, Vivian, I have the *pew, pew, pew, pew, pew* marketing hot take.
Vivian: Pretty soon you guys, you're going to tune into these episodes and the *pew* is just going to be the entire episode because it gets longer and longer every time.
Chelsea: It's just going to be start to finish. I'm just in the background going *pew*. So when I was writing these notes, I guess I was in a mood because I have an actual hot take. But before my actual hot take, I wrote, we all need to touch grass and then crossed it out.
Vivian: All right. Explain to the old lady here, the 40 something.
Chelsea: Sure.
Vivian: What exactly does it mean to touch grass? Like what does that refer? Does that just mean like you're cooped up in the house too much or scrolling through too much and so you need to go out and live a life?
Chelsea: Yes. You need to go outside and touch some grass. You need to put the phone down, get off the TV. Get off the phone go outside and do some hobbies.
Vivian: All right, so make me a cool girl though, so I don't use this incorrectly. Okay, give me a scenario. Tell me something someone would say that I could say "you need to go touch grass" to.
Chelsea: Perfect example Vivian, I know you will not have watched this show. It's not your cup of tea, but I don't know if you've seen that Heated Rivalry has taken over the world.
Vivian: What's Heated Rivalry?
Chelsea: It's a gay hockey romance.
Vivian: Okay. I think it streams on some of these. Is it Paramount or something like that?
Chelsea: It's HBO Max.
Vivian: Okay, okay. I have heard of this.
Chelsea: It has taken over. It has taken over people's lives, me included. Gotta go touch some grass, okay? These are fictional characters. They can't take over our lives anymore. You gotta wait at least a year for season two. We gotta go move on with our lives. That's when you gotta go touch grass.
Vivian: Okay. So if you were to tell me the whole like synopsis of this show that I am never going to watch, then if I got tired of it at some point, I'd be like, Chelsea, you need to go touch grass.
Chelsea: Yes.
Vivian: Perfect. Now I know how to use it in a sentence appropriately.
Chelsea: Although I feel like if I just give you the synopsis you shouldn't do, if I started sending you like nonstop memes and videos and stuff like that, then you should tell me to touch grass.
Vivian: So what is your hot take?
Chelsea: My actual hot take besides touching grass is, we don't have to post to social media every day. I know we've had this discussion before on this podcast. I feel like it's worth saying again, because I feel like as small business owners, we kind of get caught up in social media and this need to constantly have to post something new. New does not mean good. Posting every day is not the goal. Posting quality content that your consumers will enjoy is the goal.
Vivian: Yeah. I agree with you and maybe the tides have turned in 2026. Maybe this is going to be the year that we agree on every single little thing. What do y'all think? But I agree with you. I do think in having just personally speaking to it, having gone through this little bout of not being too into social media lately, like I needed a break from it to kind of regroup and then also, I don't know, keep my sanity and I have life stuff going on. So I agree with that. I do think there's a healthy dose of being able to utilize social media because remember, we always tell you guys, it is a marketing channel just like any other marketing channel. What you post for personal stuff and what you post for business or if you're a brand, if you are the brand and you're posting as the brand, just remember there's always that little bit of separation. Give yourself that latitude to be able to say, I don't need to post every day. It's better to do quality posts as opposed to just posting a bunch of like crazy stuff or maybe just all trending stuff that is going to attract the wrong kind of people. Cause that's also a thing too.
Chelsea: Exactly. Well, and that's part of the discussion we're going to have today with national days. Because where do you find that balance between I'm posting a national day that relates to my small business and I'm posting national days just because I need to post something today and now I'm attracting the wrong audience.
Vivian: Well, let me then share my love hate relationship to kind of kick off this conversation about national days. I have a love hate relationship with these and I'm going to tell you why. In my other job, my day job.
Chelsea: Is this your night job?
Vivian: This is my night job. This is my... What do they call it? My... Not headlining, my spot, my moonlighting. That's what it's called. I moonlight as a podcaster, marketeer. No, I'm a marketing professional all day long. This is just for an organization that I work for. It has become this little bit of a nuisance, I'll say, because there is a day for everything and there are so many times we get accused of not recognizing people for National X, Y, and Z Day. It doesn't have to do with promoting an awareness or something. It's usually promoting a recognition of a particular staff or team member job or role, right?
I'm just going to give you one that's off the top of my head, National Secretary Day. National Administrative Assistant Day. We've had those forever, at least I know National Administrative Assistant Day. I remember us doing something, I think even 20 years back for that. Just recognizing the person in the organization in that role. But since then, there have been so many other recognition days that literally I'm constantly being accused of forgetting one, and I'm like, I didn't even know that existed. So I a love hate relationship with it. If you're listening, you may have the same, but that's one of the ways that people can utilize it, is to recognize an employee or a team member.
Chelsea: Yeah, Vivian, that's a great example because that is a great way also to use national days and translate it into content. Instead of just posting like, happy national hat day. Happy national hat day. You can say happy national administrative assistant day. Here's our administrative assistant. Let's shout her out. It makes it more personal.
Vivian: And it gives you an opportunity to talk more in depth about them. How long they've been with the company.
Chelsea: You're highlighting your staff. It makes your staff feel good. It helps your customers get to know your staff better. It's a good way to build that relationship, you know?
Vivian: Yeah. So like you said, that is a great way to kind of, we're not using the term kill two birds with one stone anymore. I don't even know what to say.
Chelsea: Give me a different one.
Vivian: I don't know. Like it's, you're able to do two things at once. Okay. Shout people out, make them feel recognized, show your appreciation for them. Then also by same token you're able to introduce that person to potential customers.
What other things though, if let's say I didn't want to take that route, what else could I do with the national day that would promote my business?
Chelsea: Special promotions. So let's say you're a salon and it's national ladies night. You can host an event. That can be fun. Or let's say you're a pet groomer. It's National Mutt Day. This is still social media related, but if it's National Mutt Day, you can ask all of your customers to leave pictures of their dogs. You're getting them to interact with your business. You're still, it's more than just posting. It's getting that interaction. It's starting that conversation with your consumer.
Vivian: What I've noticed in the things that you've brought up though is there's always this thread of incorporating it into the type of business or the industry that you're in, right?
Chelsea: Yes, that's really important, y'all. The national day that you're going to post about or have a promotion about, it has to relate to your business because if it's random, it feels like spam. If it's random, it just doesn't work with your business.
Vivian: I like that you also had a layer of going above and beyond to these. Like you said, when we think about these so many times, we're in January, and you're thinking ahead, you're like, how can I do things to kind of get ahead? If you're starting to plan out some of your social media posts, one of the easy things you can do is actually pull up a, there's an entire calendar online of just national days and they have both a mix of awareness and recognition days and just random holidays that people make up. If you see any of those that you can get engagement on, that is a really good idea. So like you said, if you're a vet, look for the days that specifically are somehow incorporating animals and then maybe prompt people to share a picture of their animal on that post. That way you're utilizing your, because we forget that these Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all these things are called social media channels, you guys. We're supposed to be social on them. So if you feel like lately you have just been posting and ghosting or posting and just kind of talking at people. These are great avenues for you to open that up and say, okay, any opportunity I have to get someone involved in the conversation. National Donut Day, tell me what is the last donut you ate? Was it a pumpkin spice donut? Was it a Boston cream pie? Whatever, prompt people to get them involved in the conversation.
Chelsea: Now I really want a donut.
Vivian: I know. I'm just hungry in general. If you put something in front of me right now, I would eat it.
Chelsea: What I wanted to say before we move on is, y'all, I used to create carousels of national days for that month. Like the beginning of every month, I would post a carousel for the national days coming up and I would divide it into like health and wellness, food-related ones, just general business-related or retail ones. Let me know in the comments if you want me to do that again.
Vivian: Yeah, we were one of the benefits of signing up for the email list that we send out under The Seasoned Marketer was every week we send out an email and at the beginning of every month we would take Chelsea's list and just do a first of the month, it would go out and it just had a list of them. I would get some responses. People would reply back. I think the last two or three months we haven't done that. We discontinued. We want to provide you with stuff that you could use in your marketing and to make things a little easier for you. If that list would be something that you would go on the social media and check for or look at the email we send out, let her know so that way.
Chelsea: I'll continue to do it. I'll do it.
*S.O.B. Community Ad*
Vivian: This episode of the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is brought to you by the S.O.B. Community. If you are a small business owner that is neglecting your marketing and you feel like you've wasted time and money on marketing help that didn't deliver. Or if you're just craving support from people who actually get what it's like to run and promote a small business, then our membership community is for you. Visit skool.com/sob to sign up today to get instant access and weekly support. That's S-K-O-O-L dot com slash sob.
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Chelsea: Vivian, I want to go back to the administrative assistant example.
Vivian: I'm only going to let you do it if you can do a rewind.
Chelsea: *rewind sound effect*
Vivian: I love it.
Chelsea: I thought that was pretty good.
Vivian: That's a great sound effect.
Chelsea: I thought that was pretty good!
Vivian: Okay, so we just rewound to...
Chelsea: To the administrative assistant example because I want to talk again about how national days can help you relate to your employees. Yeah, relate your employees to your customers and create that connection. So here's a great example. Now, this isn't a national day example, but the Charleston Music Farm and the Charleston Music Hall, at the end of the year, they like to share their staff's favorite concert picks. Like concerts of the years, concerts of the year. I love that. I love that. It's my favorite part of the year of their social media. I love to see what their staff enjoyed, right?
Vivian: Well, and what it does is it gives you a, because depending, people have different personalities. They have different favorite shows. It's almost like you're luring in those customers that each have a different vibe to them.
Chelsea: Exactly, exactly. So in September, it's National Read a Book Day, sometime in September. So for example, if you're a bookstore, that's the perfect time to have your staff pick out books to share with your customers, and a great way to relate to them. Like their favorite book picks.
Vivian: I love that. Can we go ahead and make a pit stop at the outlandish post?
Chelsea: Okay?
Vivian: I found some outlandish days that I really, really loved, and I feel like we have to talk about these.
Chelsea: Oh god. Okay. No, go ahead.
Vivian: Yeah, because we told you guys there is a day for practically everything. Okay. So there is a way, just be sure that you're finding a way to integrate stuff into either your industry or something that is relevant to potential customers. Because when they see the post, the idea being if it's a post that they like or that they can share or that they engage with, then maybe they'll also start following you. So you can use this as a little breadcrumb to get somebody to start following.
Chelsea: You can tell we're just hungry. Now we want bread.
Vivian: So at the outlandish post where we have now parked the car, here are some outlandish days, national days that I found that...
Chelsea: Okay, I'm scared.
Vivian: Yeah, you should be, okay. Buckle up.
Chelsea: Oh God.
Vivian: National Cat Herder Day, which is December 15th. What do you think that day is recognizing?
Chelsea: It should recognize me. Trying to get my cats all together. I only have two, but they're a nightmare.
Vivian: But see, this one is not, it's actually not even correlated to actual cats.
Chelsea: Excuse me?
Vivian: Yeah, it recognizes people whose life or job is like herding cats. Okay, so if you feel like you relate to that, December 15th, you can share why your job is like herding cats.
Chelsea: Sure.
Vivian: National Ding-a-ling Day.
Chelsea: Huh?
Vivian: December 12th.
Chelsea: That doesn't need a national day.
Vivian: It encourages people to call someone they haven't spoken to in a while like an old friend, a classmate, or a relative.
Chelsea: I'm sorry. That's not what ding-a-ling means.
Vivian: That's what it means here.
Chelsea: That's not what ding-a-ling means.
Vivian: Okay. If you want to encourage people to make connections or remind them to reach out to someone they haven't spoken to in a while, do it on December 12th on National Ding-a-ling Day.
Chelsea: Vivian's making me mad.
Vivian: Weary Willy Day, December 9th, another December day.
Chelsea: Huh?
Vivian: This recognizes the art of clowning. So if you guys are clowns out there, it's a tribute to Emmett Kelly's Weary Willy character. You guys give it a goog, I don't know what to tell you. I didn't know who Emmett Kelly was, but apparently he was a very popular clown. Fry an egg on a sidewalk day, July 4th.
Chelsea: At least that one wasn't a...never mind. Keep going.
Vivian: So July 4th, don't just throw fireworks at each other, but frying an egg on the sidewalk.
Chelsea: That's just be part of my July 4th celebration for now. I'm going to show up to Vivian's and I'm going to crack a bunch of eggs.
Vivian: You're not taking my eggs because our eggs are precious around here. We have chickens, y'all. Then the last one was December. Well, no, two more. December 16th is Barbie and Barney Backlash Day.
Chelsea: Huh? What did Barbie do?
Vivian: Listen, if you have beef with either Barbie or Barney, December 16th. That's when you bring it up on social media.
Chelsea: Okay, got it.
Vivian: Or this is my favorite and I hope every single one of you will participate in this one because you guys are little weirdos like we are. September 9th is Wonderful Weirdos Day and that's just a day to celebrate your unique self and others.
Chelsea: I appreciate that one. That one wasn't bad. That one was an outlandish. That one's normal.
Vivian: All right, so, Chelsea, we've talked about all of the great stuff we can do with incorporating national days into our marketing. Is there a way, though, that we could do this the wrong way? And it can be harmful.
Chelsea: Yeah, I don't suggest posting about National Dingaling Day. I'm going to be honest. I just don't think it would hit home with your target audience, whoever they are. Just in general. No, in all seriousness, the problem with national days is it can dilute your branding and your messaging. If you're posting too much about national days, it can start to feel like spam. If you're posting, let's say four times a week and two of those posts are about national days, it's going to feel like you're a national day profile. Not whatever your business is.
Vivian: Well, and this is a great, I found a very well written blog from 2017 you guys, okay 2017. So even back in 2017 Sarah Hoffman from the Occidental, an online magazine, even had beef with national days back then and it not gotten as bad as it is now. Okay, this is what she wrote and I'm quoting here.
"These national days are just another example of the prominent role commercialism has in our lives. We buy whatever is being celebrated, then often post about it online using these fake holidays as a means to acquire our generation's favorite form of psychological validation, social media likes."
Chelsea: I mean Sarah went for it.
Vivian: I'm checking in Sarah, are you okay? Because if you were mad in 2017, girl, I don't know that you're going to survive 2026. But she's got a point there. I think kind of stemming from what you said, which is if you overdo it, it does start to turn into this thing where people start to wonder, why are you posting every single national day? Do you not have any other form of connecting with us. Do you not have anything deeper to kind of... So these are fun and they should be peppered into the year, but don't make them your sole way of trying to build a connection with somebody.
Chelsea: Exactly. I think I've already mentioned this in this episode, but just slapping together something like Happy National Blank Day and just throwing up a picture that's not relevant to your business in any way. How is that in any way helpful to your social media strategy? Because again, social media is a marketing strategy. I mean, in your personal life, you have fun, you do whatever you want. But as a small business owner, this is a marketing strategy and you need to be strategic about the things that you're posting.
Vivian: Actually, I want a strategy for all your personal selfies as well. Okay, you guys, like if you're posting 20 million selfies on your social, I want to know why, there's gotta be a strategy. I'm joking.
Chelsea: Yeah, Vivian, it's called thirst trap.
Vivian: Thirst trap.
Chelsea: You gotta get good at the thirst trap.
Vivian: That's right. All right, Chelsea, is there any other...what?
Chelsea: See, I need to go touch grass because I already, I was like, The Heated Rivalry...
Vivian: No, no, no, go touch grass.
Chelsea: What were you going to say?
Vivian: Are there any other ways that would not make our business look good if we...
Chelsea: I think we already mentioned this before, but again posting about a national day that has nothing to do with your business. So let's go back to the pet groomer. If I'm a pet groomer, I don't need to be posting about National Coffee Day.
Vivian: Maybe you like coffee and it gets you through the day to actually do your job. How about not National Corn Dog Day?
Chelsea: You know what? Sure. That's a pretty, that's a good one.
Vivian: Now listen. National sock day. You could totally talk about how many sock surgeries you have to do because dogs eat a lot of socks.
Chelsea: No, that's totally, well, if you're a vet, not a dog, not a pet groomer. Please as a pet groomer, do not be doing any surgery.
I'm going to give Vivian kudos though. That's a great example of, you can be creative and make something make sense. With the coffee. If you're trying to really connect and create a personal connection with your consumers. Yeah, I'm posting about National Coffee Day. Yeah, I'm not a coffee shop. But you know, I have a nice intimate relationship with my customers and I'm telling you guys, it's National Coffee Day and I need my coffee to get through the day. Like that, you're right. That's fine.
Vivian: Yeah.
Chelsea: If you love corn dogs. I mean, maybe I guess. But I don't know.
Vivian: Maybe you have someone on your team that was a national corn, national corn dog eating champion. So you can spotlight them. There's always a way, y'all just gotta get creative.
No, I do think, because Chelsea and I do have a lot of experience in healthcare. There are things like if I was thinking, okay I don't have really anything this particular week. National Donut Day does land on this week. Maybe I can plan to do something about recognizing that's National Donut Day, but also talking about how consumption of sugary foods like donuts can often lead to diabetes and other conditions and stuff like that. So there are ways to kind of loop it back, but it still has to make sense at the end of the day.
Chelsea: It still has to make sense, and again, you don't want to do it too much. You don't want to be constantly posting about national days.
Okay Vivian, before we get any more slap happy or whatever is going on in this episode, should I go ahead and do the TLDL?
Vivian: Do it.
Chelsea: Okay, TLDL, if you skipped ahead to this chapter, I'm going to give you a brief summary of what we talked about today. When you get the chance, go back and listen to this entire episode because it is interesting. No, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's good. It's good. You want to giggle? This is the episode for you. Today, we talked about national days, specifically how they can benefit and also be hurtful depending on how you use them in your social media strategy.
National days can be helpful as long as you are posting about days that relate to your small business. You're not posting too much. You know, you're peppering them in throughout the year and you are staying strategic with your marketing, your social media marketing.
National days can be hurtful because it can dilute your branding and messaging and it can start to feel like spam. So that's why you need to be careful with these sort of things.
Vivian: Very quickly, before you turn this podcast episode off, subscribe. All right? We want you guys to be notified every time we drop a new episode. Reminder, you can binge and listen to all of the 130 plus episodes that we have available for you. You guys, we love doing this. We want you to be engaged. Leave us comments down below and until next week.
Chelsea: Leave us a voice note.
Vivian: Yes.
Chelsea: Go get your small business baddie a shirt.
Vivian: That's right.
Chelsea: I have all of the links in the show notes and go be the best SOB you can be.
Vivian: And touch grass.