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🦃 Get ready for Thanksgiving in September
Welcome back to TWISM!
Pssst… Black Friday is 64 days away. Meta wants your holiday ads running in 21.
Meta's own holiday playbook says to start your ads by mid-October, so its system has time to learn before the peak (Social Media Today). Start in November instead, and your Black Friday budget goes to a campaign that's still working out who buys from you.
Meta published the rest of its 2026 holiday guides on Sep 17, four of them, aimed at agencies, advertisers and small businesses (Social Media Today). I pulled the useful parts into the plan below, so you don't have to read them.
Before you can turn a holiday ad on, you need products picked, photos shot and creators booked, and that's more than a week of work. So I split it into one job a week for the next three weeks, and the ads go live on Oct 15. 👇
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📊 Three numbers that explain why you need to start in September
These numbers come from Meta's own survey of shoppers who use its apps, so they're Meta describing its own customers (Social Media Today).
94% look to creators for holiday shopping guidance. The creators worth working with are booked by November. So September is when you ask.
59% messaged a business directly during the holiday season. If you answer every DM yourself from your phone, you’ll be overloaded by November. September is when you set up saved replies.
85% bought something in-store after seeing it on social. For a local business, that's the post that gets someone to walk in. September is when you shoot the products.
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🗓️ Week of Sep 28: decide what you're selling
This week's job is choosing, before you create anything.
Pick 3-5 products or offers. Pick the ones with the best margin and stock.
Fix the listings. Meta's SMB playbook ships a product-listing optimization checklist, so run your picks through it (Social Media Today). The short version: titles, photos, prices, stock, and one image per product that still looks good small.
Put the dates on a calendar. Thanksgiving is Nov 26, Black Friday is Nov 27 and Cyber Monday is Nov 30.
Write each offer in one sentence. If it doesn't fit in one, it's not ready to be an ad.
Post what's already going viral in your niche today — even with zero ideas and no designer.
The hard part of posting isn't posting. It's knowing what to post.
Post Planner shows you the top posts in your niche, rated by how viral they went. Pick a winner, describe your own take, and AI turns it into an original image in seconds. Then schedule it to every network without leaving the app.
AI images are now on every plan, Free included.
No ideas needed, no designer needed.
🎬 Week of Oct 5: make the content, book the creators
With the products picked, this week is about making the content and lining up help.
Ask the creators. With 94% of Meta's surveyed shoppers looking to creators, ask this week. Pick one or two small creators in your niche and ask each for one post, paid in product or a flat fee. If you want Meta's creative explainer, it sits with the rest of the guides in Meta's holiday insights center.
Batch the content. Shoot the 3-5 products once, then cut the footage into Reels and stills. Make enough for all of November.
And while you’re working on your holiday campaign:
Pin the holiday products now. Pinterest handles more than 80B searches a month, and most of them are visual (Social Media Today). Holiday shoppers search Pinterest early, so a Pin you post in October is still being found in December. Post one Pin per product you picked in week one, with the photo from this week's shoot. If you plan to run Pinterest ads, open the ads account now, because a new visual search ad placement goes into beta in the next few weeks.
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🚀 Week of Oct 12: campaigns on, DMs ready
Turn the Meta campaigns on by Oct 15. Build one campaign around the 3-5 products you picked in week one and the Reels and stills you shot in week two, and give it a daily budget. Then leave it alone. Pausing it in November and restarting later throws away the learning you turned it on early to get. Meta's tips say to lean in on budget from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, so hold part of the spend back for those four days.
Set up the DMs. 59% of Meta's surveyed shoppers messaged a business during the season, so the questions are coming whether or not you're ready for them. Write saved replies for shipping, returns, sizing and hours on Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, then set an away message for after hours.
If you run Pinterest ads, check the new campaign optimization score in Ads Manager. It grades you on Performance+ adoption, creative variations, broad targeting and steady budget, and Pinterest wants at least 3 ad formats per ad group and 5+ distinct ads (Social Media Today).
⚠️ The bar: nothing here needs to be perfect on Oct 15. It needs to be running.
☝️ The one-sentence version
Meta wants your holiday ads running by Oct 15, so this week pick the products, next week make the creative and book the creators, and the week after turn it on and set up your DMs, because November is for selling.
Hit reply and tell me: what's the one thing you'll have live before Oct 15?
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📚 Sources
That's all for today. Thanks for reading. Now…
Go BIG or go home!
~ Josh from "This Week in Social Media"
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