Plan the Holidays
Howdy,
If you are rolling your eyes at the holiday tinsel hanging next to the jack-o-lanterns and grumbling that you think it's too early to tackle your holiday planning, you'll thank me later.
Check your procrastinating self at the door and grab your wild and creative entrepreneurial thinking hat to get to work on this task this week. Here it is:
#1. Plan your holiday promotions. Whatever they are.
Though you don’t have to keep reading, here are some tips and considerations to support you in this task.
Just grab a calendar - any calendar. Paper, Google or even better, just jump right into the social media posting system you use (Hootsuite, Canva, Later), for example, and go, go, go.
Your holiday plan could be complex, but it also could be a “Merry Christmas” post on December 25th. Only you know what your people need to hear from you.
Still stuck? Here are some ideas if you need more support with this task.
If you’re a personal brand, decide what stories would be meaningful to share during the holidays. What quotes come to mind that you might want to create images for to share on Instagram? Facebook? If you can create and schedule them this week. Do it.
If you are a writer with a freshly authored book on the shelf, how will you promote it? Does it have any relevance to the holiday season? Connect the dots for us. Will you offer a holiday bonus? Will you do a signed-copy giveaway? Will you share a heart warming story from it’s pages? Plan it. Do it.
If you are a counselor or life coach, maybe choose one theme per week to address leading up to peak holiday season. How can they navigate grief or overwhelm? What does the world need to know about giving well? What do people need to hear that only you can tell them?
If you are a healer or creative with a service or product to sell - THIS IS A BIG SEASON FOR YOU. It’s also a hard season - there’s a lot of noise out there. What promotions will you offer, how will you tell people about those offerings? Create the graphics now. Schedule their launches now. Don’t wait!
Here are some more steps you can take if you still need more…
First, work backwards. If the peak holiday date for you is Christmas, that’s a known. It’s December 25th. If you are working more toward the New Year’s Resolution’s crowd, get to it. That date - whatever it is - is the END of your promotion calendar (even if you are selling a product that can be purchased afterwards, people’s brains don’t work like that). Then work week by week back to where we are now - the beginning of October! What needs to happen on each of those weeks?
Remember, if you’re in the United States, people will be distracted around Thanksgiving time. You need to build a strong, momentum BEFORE that week. (This applies for any other holidays that may affect your people. There are a lot of winter holidays!)
Second, consider frequency. You might start off slow. A mention here or there of the holidays. Then, by December first if you are working with Christmas, for example, you may be mentioning your promotion in one way or another daily. Yes. Daily. (Remember, you are planning and scheduling this in advance - so sharing daily does not mean you are on social media, for example, daily.)
Third, be creative. You don’t have to “sell” all the time, and not every thing has to be a social media post. Think about how you can talk about the same thing in different ways. Yes, you may have social media posts going. But you may also send an email. One day, you may change your Facebook cover to feature your offering. You may be a shift in how your signature line in your emails or what you feature in the footer on your website.
Don’t be overwhelmed. And don’t you dare NOT try something brave!
There is so much you could know about planning for the holidays. This is NOT an exhaustive - how-to, and that is kind of the point. I’ll be sharing a sample timeline in the next week or so on social, so stay tuned there. And if you have questions or concerns, hop on Facebook and ask away.
It’s my honor to support and partner with you.