With the holidays fast approaching, people are going to get busy. Now, it is more important than ever not to lose sight of your goals to finish the year strong and start next year off on the right foot. To keep your social media efforts up through the madness, here are some suggestions to increase traffic and engagement during the holidays:

Write a Master List of Status Updates/Posts/Sharable Ideas

Having a list of ideas or even partially written articles will be handy for times when you’re too busy to think, when you are suffering from writer’s block or when you just run out of time. It keeps your stream engaging, so you stay fresh on your customer’s minds. As you post, cross them off your list so you don’t duplicate later.  If you use WordPress, you can even post your ideas for articles as drafts to be worked on and published later.  I’ve got 29 partially written articles in the Invincible Robots queue for times when I need a go to.  I also use the WordPress app to save an article idea directly to the site. This saves me time when I want to remember the idea and work on it later.

Have an Employee or Two on Hand to Live Tweet

If your business is holiday related, consider having an employee or two available to live tweet on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, in the wee hours of the morning.  Scheduling tweets ahead of time is always good, but being able to react and engage with customers live is a much better option.

Create a Holiday Themed Version of Your Logo

Put a spin on your logo for each holiday. If it works for Google to change their logo daily, it can spice up your website. It’s not only fun and festive, but it adds a nice touch for your audience. Make one for each of the major holidays in your market and rotate them accordingly. You can also make subtle changes every year, just to keep things fresh and different.

Promote Engagement and Ask for User Generated Content

Run a contest or some sort of promotion to get user-generated content. It will take some of the pressure off you to keep your streams moving and it will get people talking to and about your company.

Offer Social Media Exclusive Deals

Offer deals exclusive to your Twitter and/or Facebook following. If you really want to track conversions, offer one deal for your Twitter followers, and one deal for your Facebook fans. See which one converts better, and then switch them to determine if it’s the network or the deal. Not only does this work well for the holidays, but it can work for you anytime of the year.

What are some of the ways you are preparing for the holiday season with your social media efforts?