We’re all entitled to a Christmas holiday, but the truth is the world of social media never rests and your company will need to keep its machine going throughout the downtime. Holidays are a particularly critical time for brands in relation to social crises developing. Expectations and tensions are high. Bad feelings can seep into social, where customers are able to vent in a public way.

But don’t worry, if you’re a Social Media Manager you will be able to unplug this festive season. It just takes some careful planning. Here are three steps to help you out.

#1. Don’t be the victim of a social crisis this Christmas.

Chances are, a crisis will play out during your holiday – that’s just how the world works. A little planning goes a long way and will guarantee your afternoon mince pie isn’t interrupted by a disgruntled customer. Here are some basic steps to make sure you’re covered:

  • Double-check your crisis plan make sure to adjust due to people being out, and add in the personal phone numbers of key stakeholders in case you need to escalate an issue.

  • Set up email alerts. Using a social media management platform like Falcon Social, you can customise your alerts based on specific words, phrases, and their sensitivity for your brand. You can also set up a Listen project around your brand name and creating an alert that is triggered by a medium increase (for example 50% times average) in mentions. Then if your brand starts building buzz across the web for all the wrong reasons, you’ll soon find out about it no matter where you are.

  • Crosstrain your team. It might be appropriate to set up a social media rota, so that it’s more than just you checking in on mentions of your brand. In any case, make sure everyone who needs to knows what the plan is, should something develop over Christmas.

#2. Find your festive voice.

Keep in mind that this is meant to be the ‘giving’ season, and so you might want to focus more on delighting your customers at this time. Social media monitoring or listening can help you tap into what your audience is talking about, and tailor your content or messaging accordingly. If you’re a beauty brand and your community is focussed on a specific style or trend, think about how you can create or curate some relevant content for them. Or perhaps even pull together a competition, or even giveaway for your more loyal fans.

#3. Tis the season to schedule.

Depending on the structure of your content team, you’ll need to map out your content calendar ahead of time. Scope out the window of time that your various team members will be gone, plan extra material to fill in the gaps, establish new deadlines (before they leave), and designate a point person in the office to push the content live and promote it. Or schedule your content to go out at a specific moment when you know they will be online. Just make sure there is someone trained on how to use the social accounts who can respond to mentions and mitigate any potential crisis (see #1).

Remember to enjoy your time off and use the time to rest and recharge your batteries, and spend time with loved ones. A little preparation in the lead up to it can guarantee that you and your team get the rest you need, without your social media strategy grinding to a halt or your brand reputation being compromised.

Oh, and finally just make sure you’re going to spend Christmas somewhere with Wi-Fi. 

 

By Helle Tyllesen, Director of Customer Strategy at Falcon Social.

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