Will you be working on your social media over Christmas?

Like many social media marketing agencies in Manchester and around the North West, Social Magnet is closing its shop over the Christmas break; between 25th-2nd January, we shall all be out of the office, enjoying the festivities with friends and family.

For someone who works in social media, this presents an unusual problem. Social media is very popular over Christmas (as last year’s research from StatCounter shows) and the majority of channels see a spike in usage over the festive period. Facebook in particular enjoys a huge jump in visitors across the holidays; potentially, we’d all rather talk to our friends online than we would our relatives around the dining table.

This jump in traffic presents an unparalleled opportunity for those who work on social media campaigns; no other period in the year gives social media professionals such a massive audience to appeal to. It would seem that if you’re not talking to your audience over Christmas, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

Naturally, few of us want to be thinking about work over the festive break and scheduling software will be playing a large role in keeping campaigns ticking over between Christmas day and the New Year. Thankfully, for those who want to escape their role for the festive season, updates can be scheduled on programmes like Tweetdeck, allowing social media professionals to maintain a presence across many sites throughout the period, rather than ‘go dark’; a vital tactic if you want to remain in the social media conscious during the busiest time of the year.

But what happens when the audience tries to communicate to your account? Of course, one of the main benefits of using social media is the opportunity to communicate with your customers; to answer questions and to generate conversations. Obviously, these can’t be scheduled and, it would appear that, some sort of ‘live interaction’ is necessary. But which social media professionals will be biting the bullet and working (to some extent) over Christmas?

Having posed the question on Twitter, it would appear that most of them will be:

GeordieChris: I will use this to convince my clients to continue paying me over the holidays. Social media never sleeps.

BrionyGunson: People still use FB/Twitter at Xmas – if anything, they’ll be at it more! You run the risk of letting all your hard work go stale.

Pbfhpunk: I’ll log on over the break and tweet/post.

Katy_sighs: Was hoping to schedule them but looks as though I’ll be dipping in and out every day.

Didsburylife: [Christmas] Break [from social media]? What break?

ICCLiverpool: Bit of both [scheduled and live updates] I suspect, along with occasional log-ons during the holidays. No rest for the wicked!

Audiosilver: I think its likely peeps will have a bit more time to kick back and browse over Xmas – prob a good time to get their attention.

TweetsByAlex: I’ve scheduled a load [of updates] in, but I’ll probably pop onto Cotweet at some point through the holiday because I’m sad like that!

Stuartpt: Wouldn’t that depend on your client? If it’s Santa you want to be on it.

But, will you be updating your social media accounts over Christmas? Drop us a comment below and let us know.