7 Ways To Prepare Your Blog For The Holidays

Before you know it, Thanksgiving will be here, and then Christmas. While many people have several days off during that of year, it’s probably the time of year when everyone is the busiest.

I know it is for me. What with all of the holiday gatherings, charity events, and travel I can find myself going for days at a time. 

Related read: Holiday Deals For Bloggers

If you’re a blogger the holiday season can feel even busier. So busy that you end up spending less time blogging. That’s not a bad thing. Even bloggers need some time off.

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Instead of this time away from your blog having a negative effect, it can have a positive one with these seven tips for prepping your blog for a holiday break.

1. Plan your content

This is probably the most important of the seven tips. Hence why I put planning as number one.

Don’t worry though if you haven't done this already, you still have time (unless you’re reading this in the midst of the holiday season, you might not have as much time).

To get your holiday content planned out carve out a few hours to brainstorm and work on your content calendar. Doing this will help you determine what you'd like to write and post about during the holiday season.

This can also help you determine whether you'd like to stick to your typical posting schedule or post less. Or if you'd like to have guest bloggers fill in the gaps.

Related read: How I Plan My Blog And Social Content

2. Update your old posts

Spend some time going through your old posts, especially your older holiday posts, to give them a little facelift. These older posts can help draw in readers without you having to do much of anything. Especially if they’re still relevant.

I like to update my old gift guides with current products and sales and then re-post them. That's so much easier than doing brand new gift guide posts every year.

Some things that you can do to update your older posts are to add

• Add or update keywords and longtail keywords in copy and headlines
• Refresh the related post links in your holiday content
• Create and pin new Pinterest ready images

Related read: The Importance Of SEO For A Blog

3. Pre-schedule everything

While you may have the best intentions of writing posts and posting on social media, blog posts for the weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Year. So making sure your social and blog posts are pre-scheduled can make sure you don’t have to stress about writing and posting when you don’t have the time or just don’t want to.

4. Automate

While you’re enjoying your eggnog and unwrapping presents you can also be promoting your blog via social media and sending emails to your subscribers. All you have to do is automate it.

For your social media posts, you can use social media management tools. That’s what I’ll be using and have been using so I don’t have to spend hours every day manually pinning, tweeting, or posting.

My favorite tools for automating my social media are Metricool, Later, Tailwind, the posting tools in the Facebook Business Suite, and the Pinterest platform.

Another way to automate your email is to use an RSS feed. Some email service options I like are MailerLite and Kit.

5. Set a schedule

Every good business has a holiday schedule for its employees. As a blogger, you should have one too. With a schedule, you can determine what days you will and won’t work as well as for how long each day.

My schedule last year was to take Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year’s Day off, plus a few other days in between. That way I didn’t feel pressured to do any blog work and could put things in place so I still had an online and social presence during those times.

6. Set expectations

If you plan to take time off on the days you tend to post on your blog, upload a new video, or do live streaming to let your subscribers and followers know. They’ll completely understand that you want to enjoy the holidays as well.

When setting expectations with your followers and readers, they will know what to expect during the timeframe you’ll be taking off and when you’ll be back. If you’re an ultra planner, you can even tease what you’ll be posting when you return.

7. Have holiday offers

If you sell products on your blog or site consider offering holiday specials. You can offer them to everyone who visits the blog or have offers exclusively for your email subscribers.

Do you have any other tips for prepping your blog for the holidays?

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