How to improve your holiday greeting

'Tis the season for generic holiday greetings from companies filling our in-boxes and social media feeds. While greetings are shared throughout the year, it is now when the holidays stack up, that we are flooded with the best stock sites such as iStockPhoto have to offer.

My best advice to clients and others is –?just stop.

Save yourself the time of scrolling through a mind-numbing quantity of stock images just to fill the bucket, and our social feeds, with generic messaging that contribute nothing. It doesn't help build your brand. It doesn't make a connection with followers. And I feel confident when I say, I don't think one person is going to wake up in the morning wondering why their bank, bike shop or other local business did not wish them a happy (insert holiday name here).

I also recognize that bucket fillers are hard to give up – so, here are a few ideas for how you can improve them.

Design your own – Work with your marketing team, graphic designer or break out a new project in Canva, and come up with a holiday template that is unique to your organization. It will still look generic (sorry, not sorry), but at least it will be "your" generic.

Take a photograph – Consider how you can take your own photograph to create a holiday greeting – and don't feel like you have to put words on top of everything! The fact is, just using a photo takes you less time (hello efficiency) and fits much better into social media feeds (stop throwing ads into my photo album).

Ask your employees – With each holiday, ask an employee what the day (or days) mean to them, or have the share their favorite holiday traditions. Keep it simple, consider using video, and let your people shine.

Focus on your people – Want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving? Use photos from when your team went to donate turkeys to the local food pantry. Merry Christmas? Find a couple of photos from your recent ugly sweater day, cookie swap or other festive gathering.

Share the love – Use the opportunity to share content from a community partner that is connected to the holiday.

Again, if I had my way, I would get all within the sound of my post to stop using their limited time and resources on generic holiday greetings (also, don't get me started on the amount of space we give to "our office will be closed" messaging). But, if you are going to include these bucket fillers, let's try to make them work harder and better for your organization.