The holiday season can put a bit of strain on any business. People are likely to request time off, or their attention may be focused elsewhere. Depending on the kind of business you have, you might see a huge upswing in customers which could make you busier than any time throughout the rest of the year.

Simply put, the holiday season presents a lot of opportunity for businesses, so long as they are able to stay organized throughout the occasional mayhem. Here are some ways you can do exactly that:

• Plan ahead. Take a look at your calendar and mark down important days that you need to be aware of. These could include Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday or any other big days that you will need to prepare for. Put together your communication and advertising plans months ahead of time so that you will already be prepared to implement those plans by the time the holiday season rolls around.

• Pre-schedule social media and blog posts. There’s a good chance that you’ll be so busy during the holiday season that you’ll be tempted to make your marketing take a backseat. After all, marketing is usually the first area to get pushed aside during busy times. However, by doing so you’re losing a huge opportunity to increase business and find new customers around the holiday season. With social media, for example, rather than abandoning your networks, you could pre-schedule posts through Hootsuite or another social media application for Facebook, Twitter and more. Have holiday-themed blog posts written ahead of time so that all you need to do is post them up when the time comes to publish.

• Stay in touch with colleagues. Make sure that you know for sure when employees are planning on taking off, and that everyone within your business understands the expectations that you have for them during the holiday season. Strong communication is especially important during extremely busy times.

• Go mobile. You’re likely going to find yourself out and about more often during the holiday season, so be sure that you have mobile access to all the important information and tasks related to your business that you need.

How has your business prepared itself for the holiday season this year?

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