​Are you ready for the holidays?

Now, I don't mean is your Christmas shopping done. What I am asking is if your business is ready for the Holiday Season? Do you have a plan for your holiday marketing and social media?

Have you decided what your holiday offering is? Do you know where and how you are going to market your products and services this season? When your shipping deadlines are? No?

Don't worry, I am sharing my planning strategy that will guarantee the best Christmas season your business has ever seen!! (And who knows, maybe you'll enjoy the holidays with your friends and family a little more this year!)

I don't know about you but I CRASHED into September. The summer is over, the kids are back to school, back to activities and back to routine! And on top of what's happening in our families, our businesses also tend to get busy. Before we know it BAM it's October 1st and Black Friday is LESS THAN 2 MONTHS AWAY!!! 

My goal is to get you holiday ready. Create a plan and execute it. So lets get started!!

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As a social media manager I work with multiple clients and social media accounts including my own! It can be difficult to organize, create and schedule all this content and still have to time to live my life!
One of the biggest reasons people come to me is because the simply do not have time to do all the things that they think they should be doing on social while managing a business and home. In this post I am going to share how I research, organize, create and curate content then schedule it for my social media. I’m not going to lie to you here, social media is a tonne of work, but this workflow will help you manage “ALL” the things that you need to do to grow your social with your own content.

1. Research
2. Plan & Schedule
3. Curate
4. Create (Batch)
5. Schedule

Research

1. This is HUGE. If you do not know who your target audience take the time to really figure out who you are trying to reach. I always recommend creating an avatar. Write down everything you can in regards to their habits, behaviors, finances, spending, relationships, family, work, play, etc. Once you have them described to a tee give that person a name and don't create, post or share anything that won't resonate with your Avatar.
2. Check out the competition, other industry influencers or businesses with a similar target market. Check out their websites and/or different social media profiles. Look at what is and isn't working for them and see if there is a way to incorporate their success into your profiles.
3. Network - always engage your audience. Ask them questions and talk to them I suggest spending time in Facebook groups, try and showcase your skill and expertise by offering information or help. Think about how you would behave at an in person networking event and try to put that into your online world.
4. Audience Insights on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are a great too in addition to Google Analytics. You can find out a lot about your audience by looking at these insights.

Plan 
Based on your research, put together a plan for the month. Think about a few things.

1. What is happening in your business - sales, launch, promos, giveaways, etc
2. Is there a holiday/seasonal theme that is relevant to your business and/or audience - spring, Easter, Summer Break, Back-To-School, festival season, etc
3. Posting Frequency. Think about how many times you want to post/day. Ask yourself what you can commit to posting vs what you’d “like” to post. Think about how much content you will have to create, if that’s reasonable, if your audience can handle that many posts and how much content you will need to curate. There is no magic formula. I have found that each audience, business and industry all have their own needs and wants - you just need to figure out yours​​​​
4. Choose a Platform: Determine what platform(s) you are going to be on. It does not serve you to try and be on ALL the platforms just because “someone” on Facebook said you have to be!! If you know your audience, and you better, you should know where they are. To do social media well you are best to pick one (maybe two) platforms to focus on. If you need to be everywhere, sprinkle some content in where you can but don’t spend 100% of your time and energy on a platform that isn’t serving you.
5. Batch your time: Set aside blocks of time in your schedule these can be 15 min chunks or 4 hour chunks of time - whatever works best for you. Then look at your list of things that you need to do and assign a task to each block of time. Only focus on one task at a time and shut-off all distractions. By focusing on one task until it's completed you will check off more things on your to-do list. When we switch from task-to-task we waste more time and are less productive. 

Curate and Create Content
Brain dump any and everything that is relevant to your target audience based on the above research that you have done then create and curate content around those ideas and topics. Search the Internet, YouTube, Pinterest or Facebook for content to share on your social platforms that resonate with your audience. This can include viral videos, quotes and articles that you can mix in with your own content to be more diverse. This will also help you create your own content for your audience. 

Types of Content that you can create for your business includes:

1. Live Video
2. Videos
3. Blog or Vlog Posts
4. Quote Images that are branded to your business
5. Announcements, Contests, Giveaways and Sales Graphics
6. Questions for your audience

Schedule
Create a schedule of your posts based on the content that you have created and collected. Determine what your goals are for the week/month or quarter and schedule that content in a way that makes sense with your business' timeline and over arching themes. Plan your daily posts based on what you can commit to. 

Once you have your schedule created go ahead an schedule your content! Depending on your posting frequency and the platforms you are using you should consider a scheduler tool. There are multiple tools out there that you can use that can post to multiple platforms and do a variety of tasks that will make your life so much easier!! One of my favorite tools for Pinterest and Instagram is Tailwind if you'd like to try it. 

To make your life a little simpler I have created a list of my Favorite FREE (or Cheap) Social Media Management Tools. This list of tools, programs and apps will help you to save time and money while creating a killer social media following for your business!!

​This page contains affiliate links and we have advertising relationships with the stores and companies in this post.​