5 ways to manage your social media during the holidays

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Social media traffic spikes by 73 percent during the holiday — as soon as your team requests a break to go on vacation. Click to Tweet

It is a wonderful time of year! But you might worry how you'll capture your social media presence while your team members take the time to munch on custard tarts, unwrapped gifts, or enjoy. a little craving for snacks with their friends and family.

It can feel cruel that the season when most of your team asks to go on vacation is also the busiest time on social media. Thanks to big shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, e-commerce is in full swing this time of year. Everyone is out there looking for the best deals and hottest brands, and they're talking about it; Social media traffic spikes 73 percent during the holidays!

We know that most social media professionals are hesitant to take time off on vacation. The nature of social media requires a near-constant commitment, and people often take time off to avoid losing money. But with many companies awaiting paid time off (use it or lose it!), the end of the calendar year can bring a flurry of leave requests and with it the anxiety of how well best to handle the workload.

This is a good route for walking: you can plan your holiday with nice promotions and marketing, but if no one is around to respond to angry customers blowing up your Facebook page on Christmas Eve, goodwill towards your business may collapse.

Last month, Jay Baer presented a great webinar to our friends at ICUC.social on how to effectively manage social media during this most wonderful time of the year. Here's a roundup of the best tips from Jay and ICUC. Plan your social media by taking these five steps before the holiday hits us in full force.

1. Review your Operations Manual

Sit down with your team and review your activity plan in detail. Take special consideration of how you plan to respond to negative comments and reviews during this time. Many of these customers may find your brand for the first time during their holiday shopping, so make sure your tone, voice, personality, and speed of response. always fit Key into conversion and retention.

You will also want to confirm that all passwords and permissions are set correctly. Don't forget about things like software keys — they should all be up to date and stored in a safe yet easily accessible place.

2. Identify Possible Headache

Ask each member of your team to write down as many possible nightmare scenarios as they can imagine happening during the peak holiday season. It may sound silly, but this activity will help prepare you for the worst.

These situations could include one where the person with the Instagram password was completely inaccessible because they were on vacation in Bali. Or the credit card you used to buy Facebook ads expires three days before Christmas and everyone in the finance department doesn't connect.

Once you've made your list, go through it line by line and talk about how you would handle each situation. Of course, you never expect these things to happen, but you absolutely must be prepared to act quickly and directly if they do.

3. Look at the Internal Response Schedule

This is a big schedule. You can adjust the response time on social media normally while some (or most) of your team ran out of money over the holidays.

There will be a ton of mentions of your company and you only have so much time in the day, right? If you usually respond after a few hours, consider doubling that time when you're running things with the skeleton team.

Alternatively, you may feel compelled to push things too hard. Chatting is high during the holidays, but so are the stakes. Do you really want to respond to customers slower than usual? If you want to commit to responding at the same speed you are currently using, when your volume can double or triple, calculate that now and plan it out!

4. Stepping Through Your Crisis Plan

You may not feel like you need a social media crisis plan – until you do, and then you need it badly! Don't put yourself in a difficult position during the busiest time of the year, completely unprepared to deal with a social media crisis. Now is the time to review your crisis plan – and if you haven't already, create one right away – and make sure it is up to date and accurately reflects the entire media universe. your social.

Confirm contact information for your entire team and find out who's next if someone can't be reached. You may also want to talk to other departments like sales, operations, customer service, and PR. Members of other departments can help you anticipate any potential negatives before the end of the year that you may need to address through social media.

Again, it is highly unlikely that these terrible things will actually happen to you. But would you rather be put to sleep if they did?

5. Reviewing a Help Request

The reality for your company may simply not be enough people to cover your social media channels throughout the holiday season. You don't want your team to sacrifice their downtime, and you don't want to maintain massive workloads for just a few employees. But you also don't want to miss the opportunity to connect with customers and promote your brand during the highest traffic times of the year.

Good news! There are social media professionals out there whose job it is to be your helpers when you need them. They have a lot of experience and can handle content management, reply to comments and reviews and even refer clients to management if needed.

If this seems like the right choice for your company this holiday season, connect with the good people at ICUC.social . They'll help you plan today, so your social media team can focus on having fun without worrying about things going wrong! Also, remember to watch Guide to Preparing for the Holidays their.