What to do on socials for your Christmas and New Year’s marketing 

Instead of piss poor planning, we instead want to plan with purpose so we don’t get completely stressed and overwhelmed over the Christmas period.  Or, you don’t do what I do and just completely forget and time just runs away. The first thing we want to do is get our calendars out. I simply go to Kmart and get those tear sheets that have an entire month of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.  I use these sheets to literally brain dump.  You can work it out and plan what you’re going to do over the next quarter because we’ve got a lot coming up.

We have got Black Friday coming up and then Cyber Monday.  Some people do a whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. And some people even do a pre-Black Friday.  Then you’ve got Christmas Eve and Christmas. There is also Boxing Day sales and a Thanksgiving sale.  And that is not all, you then have New Year’s and back to school topped off with Valentine’s Day.  That is all going to keep you busy for the next few months.

You have your client avatar, and you’ve got the season. Change your language, change your promotion, change, even adapt your desirable offer.  Or even how you name that desirable offer so that it suits your ideal customer with what they’re going through right now.

Christmas is a very anxious and overwhelming time. It’s a perfect moment for you to change your language to talk about how you can overcome your anxiety over that time.  And then change your content to relate to those people during this time.

Here are tips to survive the next few months

1. We want to set a strategy, and your strategy is going to have purpose and intention. What are you hoping to achieve over this time? For me, I personally want to have a bit of a rest, I want to have a bit of family time, I want to have a bit of a holiday, I want to enjoy those times as well. But I also want to keep momentum in my business. I still want to be building my list. To be evoking curiosity and nurturing in my online audience. So it doesn’t all go dead and stop my progress. And I’d like to make some money too. So if we can set a strategy and we can also systemise or schedule in some of that stuff we will have less work to worry about. And this is why we want to plan.
2. We want to nail our timeline. And that’s why we have that content calendar. Because you can go in and template Christmas Day, you can template Boxing Day, you can template those things and schedule them all into your diary. That way you have those posts ready to go. So you don’t have to wake up on Christmas morning and instead of opening gifts with your kids under the tree, you’re running around scrambling to go and post. You can do that stuff now.
3. You want to choose your social media channels. So if you’re going to schedule it on Facebook, are you going to then go and schedule it in LinkedIn? is that relevant for Instagram? How are you going to change the language to talk to the audience on those profiles? Are you going to use hashtags? Aren’t you going to use the hashtags? What is relevant as part of your strategy right now? Because we know that what works on Instagram, what works on LinkedIn, what works on Facebook, doesn’t necessarily work on each of the channels as your audience is different and the language may be different. And your pictures may even need to be different.  Your templates even need to be different, especially on Instagram if you’re using tiles.
4. What have you already got that you can give away. So we all have stuff, we’ve got content already. You can either go in and download your content from last year. If you were posting last year over this time.  You can go into your Facebook page and download your page content from last year, and then repurpose some of that. Or maybe you’ve rebranded. So, therefore, you’ve got to update some of those templates. But what options do you have? What giveaways do you have? Now, we don’t want to necessarily go and create a whole bunch of new stuff, we just want to tweak it to make it relevant for the season right now.
5. We want to go and schedule and template the hell out of it. It would probably be a good idea to allocate around three hours to go in and schedule all the stuff that you can schedule into your social media channels. So you can template it and do it in one mass sitting. One thing about scheduling it is much better to do it in bulk.
6. Work backwards from your promotions. So if you’re going to do a 12 Days of Christmas, you have to let people know a week before that you’re going to be doing the 12 Days of Christmas. So you can let everybody know that it’s coming. If you’re going to do a Black Friday sale, is it important to say to everyone ‘Watch the space, Black Friday sale coming on Friday?’. So, not only do you have to schedule in what it is that you’re going to be doing, but you have to work backwards. What is the relevant content that you need to be putting out there to warn them that it’s coming to let them know or get them excited or evoke curiosity? If you’re going to do a special Live to talk about a new program or new something that you’re going to be doing, you have to go schedule that into your social media content plan.  Then you’ve got to put in the time to actually show up and manage it.

Don’t forget to schedule in your days off – we all need a break sometimes

Now one of the very important things that you need to do is also go block out your holiday days in your calendar so no clients go and book in those times. Or perhaps don’t go and throw a challenge over those days. Don’t go put in a campaign or run a special or do something over that period if you know that you’re going to be busy.

You also need to go into Google My Business and record the days that you’re not working, especially if you’re shopfront or if you post product out. You can also use your Facebook banner to say what specials or promotions you’ve got or any days that you may not be open. And remember, if you turn those days off on Facebook calendar you need to remember to turn the days back on again.

Plan ahead

The next thing you want to do at the end of January, or during January, if you do have some quiet time, is then you’ve got to go plan for the next quarter. What are you going to be doing over the next quarter? When are the public holidays? What I do is take out my calendar and cross out all the public holidays for the Gold Coast and any special birthdays for myself or for my children.  So when people go to book in for the year, I know that those days have been taken out of my calendar. You don’t want people to be booking in those special times or special days.

When we are coming up with what it is that we’re going to do over this time, we have to consider what do we have that your audience is prepared to pay for at this time of year? Because that’s going to help us come up with what that desirable offer is.  Then we have to consider, of course, the logical customer journey for that right now.  Days and times may be affected over the holiday season. For example, there’s no school drop off and pick up anymore. Therefore for all people who’ve been scheduling their content for school pickup, because their target audience is moms who’ve got children. That may need to change now because they’re not doing school pick up or drop off anymore and the times they check Facebook may be different. So you’ve got to consider what they’re going to be doing during that time. 

Your content also needs to be relevant to people right then and there. So for example, teachers gift – now is the time.  Do you have to allow for postage? If so, you have got to compel people to purchase now, and put a bit of FOMO in there and say ‘Make sure that you’ve ordered everything now so that they get it in time. Because of the postage delays with COVID’.

I highly recommend that product based businesses go in and put the postage dates and the cut-off dates on your banner. ‘You have to order your products by this date or else it won’t get to you in time’.

Keeping the momentum going

The whole purpose during this period is to build your list and to do things more effectively so you can still keep momentum to still nurture those relationships online.  Hopefully still making a few sales as well.

These are some of the things that you can do to keep that ball rolling.

• Hold a webinar. You could decide to hold a webinar, now, bearing in mind that it is school holidays. You may decide to do one in December, maybe January. And of course, the headline is going to be something that is going to be relevant to what people are feeling right now. A solution that you can offer them. And of course, there’s going to be an up-sell into something. So make sure that you have something to send them into.
• Run a challenge. But again, take into account the likeliness of your ideal client having time for one now.  If they don’t, then prepare to do one in February, you can start planning now.
• Book a call, you want to make sure that you’re still going out and engaging your audience and letting them know when you are available. So they can book a call. And you can still build your list your options.
• You may have an eBook that you can give away, you might have a calendar.  You can use that freebie to entice them to book a call or join the program.
• Maybe you’ve done a Facebook Live that shares 10 tips.  You probably have something already that you could be giving away.
• Are you still going out and creating opportunities? Are you still going and finding people who have your audience that you could do a podcast interview for? Even if the podcast interview isn’t for now, go and book yourself.  ‘I’m available for podcast next year. This is what I do. Who would like to book me in February?’
• Have you planned your Facebook Lives? Have you also gone and planned to do a joint Facebook Live with somebody else who has your audience? go onto social media and ask. ‘Hey, I’m available to do a joint Facebook Live over these dates? Who would like to join me to do it?’
• A Christmas competition. But again, what is your strategy? Is it to build your list? Is it to get more Facebook page likes? Is it to get more visibility? Is it to point people to a new program or something that you have on offer at the moment?
• Maybe it’s just VIP signup?
• You could say ‘Hey, I’m feeling really charitable at the moment.  I’ve got a Christmas giveaway. tag someone you know, enter your details or apply here’ and just do a giveaway.
• You could also give out a promotional code, ‘Give me your email address and you can get a promotional code that gets you 20% off. My gift to you to say thank you for being on my Facebook page and thank you for supporting me.’
• Maybe you want to raise awareness for a new product or service that you have coming. So just evoke curiosity. I always say to people, there’s no such thing as a launch on Facebook. The whole time, you’ve got to be letting people know what’s coming, and what’s going on so that you can evoke curiosity and keep them engaged and interested.
• Shout outs and gratitude are huge! And Christmas is a great time to be doing this. This is where you can show your appreciation for your cheerleaders, your top fans on your page. You could thank them by just giving them a shout out and tagging them or offering them a discount or a free session or something.
• Giving back, which shows your values. So you might have a social cause or a charity that you may wish to raise awareness for over this time. Maybe you want to use the donate button on Facebook, and get people to donate to a special cause right now.  That can also grow your online presence, but also show your values and help you to connect with your ideal audience.
• You could give away a checklist. Checklists are fantastic. If you’ve got a checklist ‘How to Survive the Christmas Season’, ‘How to Start Next Year on the Front Foot’

To recap

The important stuff.  Do the before, plan beforehand, work backwards, evoke curiosity, get people excited, go into groups and share, like it, whatever you choose to do, just give it horns and make sure that it actually works. And then afterwards, follow up review and close those deals. So if you’re getting email addresses, well, what’s the next thing? What is the next part of that? The next part of that is to say thank you.  Thank you for buying my gift. What about this? Or did you know I’ve got this do you perhaps want this?

You have to have a strategy, and the strategy goes beyond getting the email. And the strategy goes beyond getting people to the webinar. The strategy goes beyond booking that call. Beyond getting the email. It goes beyond – and unfortunately,  some of you are just not going beyond. You’re stopping there.  You need to review what worked or didn’t work so that when you do it again, you can just do it better!!!