This time of year typically marks the start of a very busy 6-7 weeks of holidays. Whether you plan on traveling during the holiday season or will be hosting family and friends in your home, it can be a challenge to stay on track with your social media marketing plans.
With a plan, some free tools and some focused effort, you can schedule social media posts now and have an effective content strategy in place for the busy holiday season. Then, no matter what events (planned or spontaneous) take place, you’ve maintained a consistent presence on social media during the next 6-7 weeks.
Here are a few tips and ideas to help you take action this week:
Blog Posts
At a minimum, plan on one post each week over the next 6 weeks. So that’s 6 blog post topics to choose now (if you aren’t already using a content calendar). If your schedule is hectic, don’t pick topics that require a lot of research. Instead, try these ideas:
- Look at trending topics and write a post voicing your opinion or experience on those topics.
- Compile a re-cap of 2012: your most popular posts or all the posts you’ve written on a specific topic.
- Re-cap the most popular posts in your industry – for example, I write a weekly recap of the 8 most-read social media articles I’ve shared online. It doesn’t take as long to write as a standard blog post and my audience finds it helpful.
- Write 2-3 blog posts in one sitting and schedule them in WordPress for a later publishing date.
- Ask several guest bloggers to each share a post.
Facebook Posts
Aim for one post a day, but if that sounds a little overwhelming then create at least 3 posts per week for the next 6 weeks using Facebook’s post scheduling feature. Here are some ideas for your posts:
- Are you using Google Reader, AllTop or email subscriptions to find interesting articles for your audience each week? Choose 6 of your favorite articles and create a post that links to the article.
- Write 6 tips that will help your audience (call it your “Tip of the Week”) and schedule a Facebook post once a week.
- Videos – share a few of your YouTube videos or create several short (1-3 minute) videos with a tip for your audience.
- Find 6 motivational quotes and use a free tool like Quozio or Pinstamatic to create quotes with images. You can then save the image as a file on your computer, upload that photo to Facebook and schedule the photo.
- Special promotions – are you planning on having any holiday or end-of-year specials? Write the promotions now and schedule a post for each of them.
Twitter Tweets
Make sure you’ve linked your Facebook Page to Twitter so all of your Facebook posts automatically post to your Twitter account.
Use the free version of Hootsuite, Social Oomph or TweetDeck to schedule several Tweets per day. If it seems too overwhelming to schedule 6 weeks worth of Tweets in one sitting, then make time once a week to schedule that week’s worth of Tweets.
Ideas for Tweets:
- Helpful tips for your target audience
- Links to previous blog posts
- Special promotions
- Motivational Quotes
- Short videos (helpful tips or product review/preview)
Additional blog posts you may find helpful:
Share Posts on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus
Set Up a Facebook Content Calendar
Once you’ve scheduled these posts and Tweets, then continue to engage real-time on your sites as much as you can. But if you find that your real-time engagement doesn’t happen as often as normal over the next 6 weeks, then this “holiday season” strategy assures that you will continue to share new content with your audience.
About Terry League