The Holiday Season 2010 seems to have already started - last week in fact. TV commercials are already talking about pre-Black Friday sales, and "don't wait until Black Friday" specials.
You are about to enter your busiest 7 weeks of the year, and today is the Monday when you should start seeing a surge of traffic on your website. Every Monday from now through January should show a surge of traffic.
Other than holiday selling, something else happens during this time of year. People are much more open to personal bonding. It's part of the gift-giving season; it's why greeting cards are sent simply to say hello and it's why people want to get together in person. People are all inspired to open their hearts during this time of year.
We don't want to sounds like a Scrooge, but this is also when you can forge unbreakable bonds with your customers if you take the right approach.
Here's one approach you can take with your Facebook and Blog posts. This will require you to put yourself in the spotlight amongst your customers. But at the same time, they will learn who you are as a person, and come to trust you more on a personal level.
Write the story of your first holiday in business. If not your first, then one of the holidays long past that you fondly remember. Maybe you can share the story of how you helped someone pick out the perfect gift, or ring. It should be a story your customers can empathize with, maybe even designed to spark memories of their happy holidays.
Dig up some old photos of yourself from the holiday season and include them in your story.
This story doesn't have to be long, maybe 250 - 300 words. Once you have the story written, post it to your blog or your website, and share it on Facebook and Twitter. Individually post the associated photos to each of your photo sharing sites with a description that includes the URL of your blog.
Why are we doing this? This is how you create a social media persona. Social media is not a new type of marketing; it's the same old "networking" but within a new medium. Over the next several days, we'll give you ideas how you can continue telling stories to your social audience which will build the framework for steadily growing sales throughout the coming year.
