It might only be mid October, but we’re going to say it … C … CHRISTMAS!

Here in The Works office we’ve had a divide of opinion over the C word, with some of us going Christmas mad (yes, already) and the remaining Grinch’s complaining that it’s still too far away to get excited. But like it or not, Christmas is coming, and it’s coming fast – yay!

Christmas is prime selling time for many businesses, and the fight for attention, sales, online traffic and conversation has officially begun. While we’re ready for Christmas personally, it’s time to start looking at how you can prepare yourself professionally.

The weather is definitely ready for Christmas, it’s dark before we even get home from work on a night, and it’s around this time people start behaving like it’s winter; by behaving, we really mean doing nothing but sit in front of the TV with the heating on! With people not going out as much as usual, online activity tends to boom. So it might be worth remembering that when thinking of your online PR and marketing strategies, especially with Cyber Monday and Black Friday (27 November) being so crazy last year. And don’t forget the best thing about Christmas… watching A LOT of binge-worthy TV, another thing to remember when wanting to reach your audience over the festive period!

Christmas might be the ‘most wonderful time of the year’ but it’s also the most stressful. Think of how stressed you are, running around finding gifts and trying to get everything done, well your audience will be doing exactly that too. Whatever you want them to do, whether it’s visit your website or buy a product, make it easy for them.  It’s important to make your marketing and PR as accessible as possible and really simple to interact with, that way you have more chance of it being successful.

We’ve already started adding Christmas jobs to our diaries, and we may or not be drinking out of novelty Christmas cups already. There are only 10 more Fridays until Christmas Day, that’s only 10 more Monday mornings, and 48 more weekday get ups, while that might be exciting for a Christmas fanatic like me, from a business point of view its quite scary … but you are all super organised and started preparing back in Summer like everyone suggests .. right?