Most Holiday Content Calendars Are Useless

You don't need a spreadsheet with sixty posts colour-coded by theme.

You need to know what you're saying this week.

Every year, marketing advice tells you to plan your entire holiday season in advance. Map out every post, every email, every story. Schedule it all in October so you can relax in November.

Sounds great. Doesn't work.

Here's what actually happens: you spend hours creating this perfect calendar. Then reality hits. A product sells out. A shipping delay happens. A trend changes. Your carefully planned content is suddenly irrelevant or wrong.

So you either post it anyway and look out of touch, or you scramble to create new content and the calendar was pointless.

Better approach: plan in chunks.

Sit down on Sunday. Figure out what you're posting this week. Write it, schedule it, done. Next Sunday, do it again.

This keeps your content relevant. If something changes, you're only adjusting a few days of posts, not six weeks. If something's working, you can do more of it immediately.

For email, same thing. You don't need twelve emails drafted in advance. You need to know when you're sending and roughly what you're saying. Write it a few days before. This way you can respond to what's actually happening with your business.

Is everyone asking about gift wrapping? Send an email about it. Did something sell better than expected? Feature it. Is shipping getting tight? Warn people now, not according to your October plan.

The best holiday content addresses real-life situations. You can't respond if everything's locked in months ahead.

Plan the framework. Know your key dates. Understand your offers. But leave room to be flexible.

Rigidity doesn't make you more professional. It makes you slower.

Jingle All The Way gives you templates and frameworks, not rigid calendars. £15, launching October 8th. Join the list at Triovia