It’s the busy season — especially for artists and small businesses. Here are some quick things you can do to make sure your website and social media are ready for the holidays.
Update Your Hours
Make sure that all of your holiday hours are updated, clear, and listed on your website AND social media. Customers will use both your website and Facebook as resources to see when they can contact you, order something, or if you have a shop, come pick something up. Nothing is more frustrating during the holiday season than counting on hours you find online and then missing out on purchasing something because the business never updated their hours online.
Have a Plan to Respond to Your Customers
Although you may be open only limited holiday hours it is important to still have some way for customers to get in contact with you. By checking your social media accounts and emails at least once a day you will be able to get back to your customers in a timely manner. Your response to people reaching out during the holiday season will show them that you care about their business.
Update Social Media
Make sure your social media is up to date and informative about what your company is up to this holiday season. Update the hours and contact information. You can also add a fun holiday header graphic to get your customers in the holiday mood. Consider offering a different type of discount to Facebook or Twitter followers as you will reward loyal followers and you can keep track of where your business is coming from. Always make sure to respond to Facebook and Direct Twitter messages as you would any other phone call or email. How you respond publicly says a lot about your business, especially during the holiday season.
Plan Promotions
Determine holiday promotions for your business early. Things like email campaigns and social media campaigns can help drive traffic to your website, and help customers know what you are all about this holiday season. Thinking of promotions early will help you avoid having to come up with how you wish to promote your business during the stressful holiday season. By doing things ahead of time you will have everything ready to go and set so you can focus your attention on making your customers happy and planning your personal holiday needs. If you haven’t started — it really is not too late. Spend some time this afternoon or this weekend planning out social media posts and your email campaigns through the new year.
Do not forget what you have planned, though. Emergencies come up and schedules change – make sure you update pre-scheduled releases accordingly. You don’t want a social media post about that hot new item in stock to go out right after you have run out of stock.
Remember the Reason for the Season
The holiday season is about giving. Show your customers that you care about something other than sales by donating some percent of holiday sales towards a charity, or offer customers a deal on your holiday themed goods. This will show them that you are in a giving holiday spirit and will make your shop more desirable than ones that seem to only be out for themselves and using the holiday season to only make money.
Conclusion
It is never too early (or late) to start preparing for the holiday season and the end of the year. Once the new year rolls around, make sure to update your hours so they are back to your normal routine, send an email thanking everyone for a great holiday season, and start planning what you might want to do throughout the rest of the year.