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Do you want to know how to stay consistent with your marketing over the holidays?
Are you dreaming of taking some time off over Christmas, but since you run your business yourself you just feel as if you can?
Keep on reading as I’ll be sharing my top tips to ensure you can get some well-deserved time off over Christmas whilst still being consistent with your marketing.
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When it comes to marketing, I believe it is vital that you are consistent, and I mean consistent in terms of tone of voice, visual branding and frequency of content. Other than during a launch phase you content, email and social media marketing should be at a consistent frequency, so people know when to expect you.
Now maybe you have been consistent all year. You’ve worked all year and showed up week in and week out, and now you think ‘I need a week off’. It is natural to not want to undo all of your good work and there are ways around that. Keeping reading to find out what you should do.
Side note: You can also use these techniques for when you want to take some time off at any time of the year.
Get a true picture of all the marketing that would be running during your time off
The first thing you need to do is understand everything that you would need to run during your time off. That means setting the dates for your holiday. For example, you might decide to take off the 23rd of December to the 2nd of January. Write those dates down and then write down all of the marketing you would normally run during this time.
Then for everything on your list you’ll need to write next to it whether it is something that can be scheduled in advance or something that has to be published in real-time, recorded live etc. Note that I said write down whether something can be scheduled. For example, maybe right now you are using Facebook as one of your marketing channels. You usually post live, but technically you can schedule in advance. If there is a way to schedule then note that down, even if you don’t usually schedule in advance.
Create and schedule, in advance, as much as possible
At this point, you should have a list of all of the marketing that would normally run during the holidays that you can schedule in advance. My advice is to create and schedule all of that marketing activity.
Now maybe you are against using schedulers in general. You’ve heard that for most social media platforms the reach when post natively (ie on the platform) is better than using a scheduler. Now that is true, but you aren’t talking about using the scheduler indefinitely. This is about using a scheduler for a determined amount of time so you can have a break. I would think that fewer people seeing your posts, but you managing to have a proper rest is well worth it.
If you have already been using a scheduler in the past or have a preferred scheduled then great. However, if you haven’t used a scheduler before and just want to schedule one platform my recommendations would be
If you only want to schedule content on one social media platform
If you only want to schedule social media on one social media platform, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok then I recommend that you schedule directly on the platform. To schedule on TikTok you’ll need to schedule via your laptop/computer rather than the mobile app.
If you want to schedule content on multiple social media platform
Later is my preferred scheduler. I started out using it for Instagram, but now it is my go-to whenever I’m scheduling content for Christmas or any other holiday I take over the year. The beauty of using Later is that you can quickly schedule across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest and Twitter. And the best bit is Later makes it super easy for you to be able to upload a video, graphic or image to be posted on multiple platforms and then customise your caption. This is great if you want to share the same asset but want to be able to shorten the caption for Twitter, take out the link for Instagram etc. You can try Later for yourself by clicking here.
If you want to schedule Pinterest Pins
One options is to schedule Pinterest Pins directly in Pinterest. Another options is to schedule your Pinterest Pins via Tailwind. Tailwind is the leading scheduler for Pinterest and most importantly an official Pinterest partner. The beauty of using Tailwind is that you can easily schedule one pin to be pinned to multiple boards over the upcoming weeks and months. You can start a free trial with Tailwind, which allows you to schedule 100 Pins, here.
If you want to schedule long-form content
If you have a podcast, blog or YouTube channel then you can create that content as usual and set the release date within the platforms themselves.
If you want to schedule emails
With email marketing, you can create the emails and then set the date and time for when they should be sent
Once you know operationally how you can schedule everything it is time to create the content. This is the perfect time to batch create your content. If you haven’t heard of the term batching before you can find out more about batching in How to save time by batching your marketing content.
However, the short version is that you create the same piece of content over and over again. This is the most effective way of creating content and given the amount of content you might need to create to ensure you stay consistent with your marketing over the holidays it would be the perfect time for a mega batching session.
Go back through your list and then work out what makes sense to do together. For example, if you need to create 3 videos then it would be best to record those videos back-to-back, then edit them and then upload them altogether. You can then do this for each type of content you create. The point is to try group similar tasks together (writing captions, recording videos, editing, proofreading, creating graphics etc).
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Review the marketing that happens in real-time or live
By now you should have a decent proportion of your marketing created and scheduled. However, on your original list, you might have written down a number of marketing activities that happen live or in real-time. An example of this would be if you go live on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube. At this point, you’ll need to decide how you want to proceed. If there is no way around it and you have to be present to make this activity work you’ll either decide you don’t might doing the live for the sake of consistency or that you are going to not run that activity. If you decide to not run your activity and it’s something your audience expects – tell them in advance.
Tell your audience you are taking a break
If you have an audience that is used to the frequency of your marketing activity, then you should tell them that you are taking a break. Let’s be real over the holidays most people are taking a break themselves so will be understanding of you taking a break. However, if they turn up for your regular Friday at 1pm training in your Facebook Group and you aren’t there then they’ll be annoyed. Therefore you should give your audience plenty of notice. In the previous training make it clear you won’t be having one next week, as you are having a break over Christmas and you’ll be back on the X.
Some businesses will make sure that the last post on social media before their break makes it very clear they are ‘out of the office’ and states when they’ll be back.
All of these activities are making it clear to your audience you are taking a break. It is important to be upfront and honest about taking a break rather than disappearing and hoping no one notices. Setting expectations allows you to break your regular marketing pattern and not seem to be inconsistent.
Don’t forget other forms of communication
I’ve been focusing on how to keep your marketing consistent over the holidays, but don’t forget about other forms of communication with prospects, clients and customers.
In the same way that you can put an out of office on your emails, there are now ways to put autoresponders on your social media inboxes. For example, on LinkedIn, if you have a Premium account you can set up an Away message.
Also, if you have Facebook Messenger or a type of chatbox integrated into your website consider whether that should be live during your time off you won’t be there to respond.
An alternative – Hire someone
All the rest of my advice has been how you can stay consistent within the limitations of you delivering all of the marketing. However, there is another way. You can hire someone such as a VA (Virtual Assistant) or a social media manager. You could hire someone to look after everything during your holidays or you might schedule some activity and then leave some tasks left to them.
If you plan on hiring someone to work with you in the future then hiring someone now for a set period of time might be a great way to see how that process works and you could treat it as a trial run for the person you are hiring.
There you have it! You now know how to stay consistent with your marketing over the holidays.
I really hope this blog post has helped reassure you that you can take some well-deserved time off over the holidays and not ruin your hard work. The joy of technology means that so much can be scheduled and automated, and outside of that as long as you set expectations about when you won’t be working or available then there is no reason why you can’t enjoy a wonderful break.
Before you run off to enjoy your Christmas break I have a question for you – are you ready for 2021? Are you going to come back after your well-deserved break full of energy and know exactly what you need to be working on or are you going to sit at your desk and wonder how you are going to make sure you have a successful year in 2021?
If you are the latter then I’m here to help with my 2024 Strategy Day.
A 2024 Strategy Day is designed for coaches, consultants and online service providers who are ready to have their best year in business by concentrating on creating a strong foundation and doing the necessary planning.
I’ll guide you through my 5-step process and ensure by the end of the day you have clarity over your 2024 goals and be confident about how to achieve those goals.
Find out more and book a 2024 Strategy Day here!
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