In the words of Andy Williams, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year”.
There will indeed be “parties for hosting” and “marshmallows for toasting” but there’s also blogs to be blogged and tweets to be tweeted.
There’s a temptation to slow down social media efforts over the Christmas period, but don’t make that mistake, because for many businesses it’s one of the most important times of year.
There are potentially millions of customers sitting back and casually browsing the web for days on end, so to let your online communications dry up could be costly.
Here’s a few tips for managing your online channels over the festive period;
Blogging
Lets be honest, the last thing you want to be doing throughout Christmas is sat at your laptop writing content. So make it easy for yourself by creating a stash of content now that you can feed in to your blog throughout the holidays.
If you’re a WordPress user, you could even prepare your content now and set an automated post date for each piece.
While your at home quaffing mulled wine and eating mince pies, Google’s crawlers will still be hard at work. So keep them happy by providing them with fresh content as you usually would.
Monitoring your Twitter account is essential at any time of the year, and Christmas is no exception.
This doesn’t mean you’re required to sit in front of the computer 24 hours a day. If you have a smartphone, download a Twitter mobile application (Try the official Twitter app, TweetDeck or Seesmic) – You can then tweet, search and check your mentions and DMs easily, wherever you are.
If you know there’s a few days when you definitely won’t be able to access Twitter, set up a few automated Tweets using TweetDeck or HootSuite.
If your business has a Facebook page, make sue you don’t neglect it over Christmas. You may not be in the office, but your Facebook community may still be active on the site.
Last year, Facebook experienced huge peaks in traffic over the Christmas period.
This jump in traffic could be an opportunity for you to give your campaign a push and ramp up any paid advertising on the site.
Mobile
During holiday periods, your mobile phone can be your best friend.
There are a host of mobile applications available that can help you stay on top of your social media and marketing campaigns when out of the office.
See our posts 14 useful iPhone apps for the web marketer and 12 Android apps for the digital marketer.
Managing your social media doesn’t have to take over your Christmas. Consider the points above and have yourself a stress-free holiday.
Happy Christmas!
