By Mia Hays
During the holidays, our time overflows with gift buying and wrapping, holiday parties, family and friends and the revolving door of welcome and not so welcome guests. Our time and focus are split. Therefore, many competitors are “gone skiing,” so to speak, while potential clients are accessing the same material and sites as the rest of the year. This presents you with the perfect opportunity to end your year with a bang. Follow these tips and you’re sure to find more success and cheer this holiday season.
Don’t stop. The media is scavenging for stories, and now is the time when you may get a story published that may have been normally overlooked. Write an end of the year summary. Review the year with your bookkeeper and a few clients about the year. How did you do financially? How did your clients feel about your performance this past year? Type it up and send it off to an industry trade publication.
If you can’t beat them, join them. Our holidays are flooded with festivities. You can’t avoid them, and if you try, you’re either ignored or deemed a scrooge. Think about it. When you pass a shop front, what grabs your attention? Is it the everyday display sets or those with holiday decorations and lights? The same is true for your business. Create articles, images or blogs that embrace the season. Potential clients and the media will take notice and remember.
Use social media. Always. Everyone wants some vacation time over the holidays, us PR people included. However, that does not mean that we can stop with our social media presence. Plan your posts, pictures and captions in advance, freeing up some time at the peak of the merriment. If you don’t want to be doing the posting manually, then schedule the release by investing in an app like Hootsuite or Spoutsocial that will do it automatically while you are making merry!
Expect to have to follow up with people. Both clients and the media have untraditional schedules and other distractions due to different vacations or abnormal time away from the phone or computer. An extra phone call or reminder email will often help.
Send out New Year’s cards from your business. This not only sets your card apart from the flood of Christmas cards but also reminds people that you are still there when they are looking to start the new year strong.