Ok, so we realise that Christmas is going to be a little different this year, however the one thing we can guarantee is that social media is going to be very busy indeed!

As a business, if you haven’t done so already, it’s time to plan some Christmas content for your social feeds over the holidays. Having a social media strategy and posting regularly on all channels is important for any business all year round and it really shouldn’t stop over the festive season, even if your business is closed for a period of time.

It’s fair to say that this year has been challenging for many businesses and social media has been a crucial tool in keeping connected to customers, clients and staff. We appreciate that due to government regulations being introduced throughout the year, businesses have had to adapt their social media content to ensure their feeds reflect the most up-to-date rules and we expect this to be ongoing for some time yet.

Throughout this blog we’re going to give you some advice on how to keep your social media channels running, without having too much impact on your well-earned rest!

Firstly, it’s important to plan ahead and scheduling content is definitely the way forward here – it’s time effective and it means you can have regular content going out to your followers in case you get carried away with festivities and forget to do that post. It also gives you a chance to really think about what you want to say. There are various free scheduling tools available including Hootsuite, Later and Buffer. Check them out and see which one suits your needs best.

One of the main pieces of content you need to include on your social media channels is your business opening times. Pinning this at the top of your feed is a great idea and makes it easily accessible to everyone.

When you are scheduling content over the holidays, it is important to keep a few things in mind:

Your call to action. If your office is closed, you don’t want people calling you if no one is going to pick up the phone. Instead, direct people to your website so they can find out more about your business, products and services.

Be careful planning posts if there is going to be no one around to edit them if needs be. For example, a post that seems harmless now could be perceived in a completely different way if something major happens in the World that you could not have predicted. It would be best practice to play safe with your posts and reduce the amount of scheduled posts over the period if no one is going to be around to make any adjustments.

Monitoring comments and messages on your social media channels can be difficult over the holidays, if your team is off. While you might not be able to monitor every day as usual, if staff are working at any point over Christmas and New Year they should take a look at your notifications and reply to any outstanding messages. Staff should also keep an eye on what has been scheduled for your social feeds just in case circumstances have changed to ensure any planned posts don’t cause unintentional damage to your business. If you are not going to have anyone available to monitor comments and messages, make this clear on your business opening times post. For messages, you can set up an ‘out of office’ message (just like you would on an email) by going to ‘Settings’ then ‘Automated Responses’. This allows you to customise your message and provide details as to when the messenger’s message will be responded to. This is a great tool and one we would recommend using if cover is going to be limited.

So, what type of content should we be posting? Unless you’re one of the big brands, we recommend keeping content light-hearted, positive and fun. It is the most wonderful time of the year, after all! If you’re a business that usually posts 7 times a week, there’s no harm in scaling the number of posts back. 3/4 posts per week is more than sufficient and is enough to keep your followers on board.

Take time over the holidays to thank staff, customers and clients. It’s been a difficult year in more ways than one and this sentiment will go a very long way. Reflect on your highlights of 2020 and provide an update on what your followers can expect from your business in 2021. Perhaps you have a new product coming out, new business premises to move into or a staff member joining your team; this would be a great time to share this news.

There you have it! ‘Tis the season to be social and with many people off work and online we predict a very busy couple of weeks in the world of social media!

On behalf of the team at Social Soda we would like to wish our clients and followers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!