Who’s Looking After Your Website This Christmas?

We all like to take a break over Christmas, ther’s nothing wrong with that. But the internet never takes a holiday, regardless of whether there’s a turkey dinner involved, so I’ve got a few tips to make your online life a little easier this Christmas and to help ensure your website or blog is still being looked after. Contrary to common belief the internet doesn’t go that quiet over Xmas with people online checking out advice on their new presents, looking at products in the sale and checking out all their social media profiles to see what all their friends are up to and what santa has brought. Not all these tips might be relevant to you but if you do have a business presence online they might be worth considering this Xmas…

Schedule a blog post

Scheduling blog posts over the holidays is a good way to ensure you’re still getting content out to your audience while taking a well deserved break yourself. Now I wouldn’t recommend doing this too much as you still want to create current, relevant content that you can respond to (If you’re not there to write a post, chances are you can’t write comments either). It’s probably best to explain at the start that it’s a scheduled post so you avoid any confusion.

If you’re using WordPress, simply edit the date in the ‘Publish’ screen, next to where your write the post by clicking Edit’ on ‘Publish Immediately’ and then selecting a time and date that suits you. This works great over the holidays as you can do all your work in advance and make it seem like you are still posting blogs posts.

Use your social media profiles

You should use your presence on social media to communicate with your audience and customers over the festive period. If you’re not able to provide your full support hours over Christmas, make sure you let people know this by posting a short message on your Twitter account, Facebook page or customer forum. It’s much better to set expectation with your customers, so they’re not posting questions or queries that aren’t going to get answered. Just make sure you do reply to any comments when you get back.

Get creative with your out of office

We’re all used to the usual out of office messages, it’s hardly something that’s going to get your interest. But what about recording an out of office message? You can film a simple video, telling people when you’re going to be away and wishing them a Happy Christmas and New Year while you’re at it. The chances are that someone’s going to remember that a lot more!

To set your video out of office, you can record and upload a short video into Youtube, then include the link in your out of office message. I remember getting a video out-of-office from Gary Vaynerchcuck once and it’s always stuck in my mind as a great way to give a little twist to something ordinary.

Schedule Facebook ads

If you’ve got a sale starting just after Christmas, why not schedule your ads to start on a certain date?. Most people know about scheduling Google ads, but now you can do this on Facebook.

To schedule your ad to start at a certain date or time, go through the usual process of creating a campaign, then click ‘Run my ad only during specified dates’ and select your date and time. You can also set the usual factors such as target audience and cost per click too.

Being there yourself

It’s a sign of changing times; but the holidays may well be one of the busiest times for people going online. This graph from Inside Facebook shows that last year, Facebook in the UK had its busiest day on Christmas day.
Whether it’s people uploading pictures, wishing each other Happy Christmas or just testing out their shiny new laptop, people are clearly active on social networks on Christmas Day. This could be a great opportunity to get one up on your competitors by being online when they might not be.
Let’s take the example of someone that sells cameras: A popular present at Christmas, that many people will probably be trying out by uploading their pictures online. What if you’re also online and able to help them out if they’re asking for tips on Twitter? This could be a great opportunity for you, especially if that same person is also looking to upgrade their present with a few accessories.

Hopefully these few simple tips have helped you make sure your website and online profiles are being well looked after this Christmas. It could easily be one of your busiest times of year, so it’s worth spending a bit of extra time before you go away, to make sure everything’s in order.

From us at Simply Zesty, have a very Happy Christmas