Does your business get busy at this time of year? Or are you looking at taking a real break over the holidays? Here are five things that you can do now to make sure that your business will survive the silly season.
Organise your social media
I always say you need to make time to save time! Spending just a few hours on preparing content to cover you for your break will make the difference between pretending you’re on holidays and fully switching off.
It doesn’t need to be difficult. Grab this free Content Vault for 100 content ideas for your business. Use one or two each day and you’ll be sorted. Otherwise use a different theme each day to help streamline your ideas and content (Eg Monday quote, Tuesday tip, Wednesday share etc). I find this the easiest way to prepare my posts for social media.
You could also save yourself a couple of hours of work by getting someone else to schedule the content for you once you’ve created it.
Update your hours
If you’ll be shutting down for a well earned break, make sure that you don’t leave any potential clients hanging! Update your website, Facebook and other online touch points with important information on your new hours, or how long you’ll be closed down. There is nothing worse than a potential client to be left wondering why you haven’t responded. It’s the quickest way to lose them!
Set up an auto responder on Facebook
There are two ways you can utilise an autoresponder to get yourself prepared for the holidays. Setting one up now will help educate clients of your upcoming closure, changes to hours or alternatively closing dates for work to be completed before Christmas.
On the day of your closure, update the wording in your autoresponder to let them know when you’ll be back.
Communicate, and then communicate again
Make sure your customers know if you’re closing or you have deadlines for completion of work for a pre-Christmas delivery. The easiest way to do this is to create a few simple graphics which you can use on social media. Once created, make sure that you schedule them regularly (like every couple of days) at least one month out from your break.
Another way to communicate to your audience is to create a few emails and schedule them – one for the next couple of weeks, one a week out before your deadline (if you have one) and one the day you close. Weave in a Christmas message where appropriate and you’re sorted!
Relax
Give yourself a pat on the back and enjoy your break knowing that your audience is well informed about what’s happening and that the wheels aren’t going to fall off whilst you’re away!
If the thought of being organised or prepared makes you break out in hives, you’re in luck! We can help with any of these tasks. You might also be interested in our special Let’s Get Social Christmas Package to help free up your time, so you can get back to what you love doing the most. Drop us a line if you would like more info.
