As we approach the busy holiday season, along with prepping our thanksgiving grocery shopping lists and buying Christmas presents, we also need to start preparing our businesses!

It’s so easy to get caught up in the holidays and lose track of things, I think we’ve all been there where our business takes a hit during this time due to lack of planning but not this year! I am a firm believer in working ahead of things, this way when the stress of the holiday season creeps up, you don’t have to add the stress of your business too.

Here are my top 5 tips for working ahead during the holiday season: 

Think ahead and take action over the holiday season–

Whatever you have been putting off, it’s time to get busy! You don’t want your normal work plus the work you’ve been ignoring. We’re trying to minimize our workload here, right? Block out some time on your calendar this week to schedule your calendar, respond to emails, get ahead on tasks, write that blog you’ve been putting off, just grab a coffee and get to work!

Schedule, schedule, schedule –

Just because you’re out of office, doesn’t mean your social media accounts should be! Take a few hours today to schedule the next two months of your social media. I live and breathe Planoly.com, I highly suggest using this site to plan your content ahead. Bonus tip: bank all your captions in a google doc or Trello boards to pull from and repurpose for easy content creation!

Keep the momentum going this holiday season–

It’s so easy to lose traction during the holidays! Plan out some small promotions to run while you’re out of the office and get welcomed back to a slew of new business! I love doing holiday promotions to keep business active, my biggest pro tip is to create an automated system on your website so that your promotion really can be hands-off!

Get clear on your goals for the holiday season –

Organize what you want to be accomplished over the next few months and create a game plan NOW. Work ahead to see what systems you can put in place to automate your success! I love Asana to get organized and visualize my goals, it’s so helpful when working ahead because you can assign tasks out to your later self.

Go the extra mile over the holiday season –

Make your business stand out by gifting your clients a small gift for the holidays! This shows that you care and that they are a priority even when you’re out of the office. This is such a nice touch can and it can be as simple as a Starbucks or Amazon gift card.

Bonus**

If you have a team of employees, make sure that you have systems and vacation policies in place so when you are all out of office nothing slips through the cracks. Have a team meeting before things get busy and make sure everyone is on the same page and clear on what their tasks are.

Happy Holidays, and Happy new year!