What is Blue Monday?
Blue Monday is the third Monday of January, which is supposedly the most depressing day of the year. It’s this day because New Year's feels far away, but it’s still a week until the end of the month, which for many is payday. However, this day was initially created by a UK Travel company in 2005 that claimed to have calculated this day. This was using an equation that considers the weather conditions that apply to the Northern Hemisphere. Yeah, we don’t really get it either. The equation was later dismissed by scientists to be ‘baseless pseudoscience’. However, is there at least some truth in Blue Monday?
January can feel challenging for a lot of people. The hype and build-up for Christmas and New Year are over, everything is colder, the days are short and dark, and many are recovering financially from December’s outlays. December can be one of the most hectic months for many businesses, along with summer, so it’s an important time to not lose focus on the aspirations you set at the start of the year. We at Digital Peninsula Network want to focus on the good you can do in January to set up for a successful year, whether you believe in Blue Monday or not.
1) Freshen Up Your Social Media
Small businesses use social media as a crucial way to stay in touch with their audience. Look at your social media pages and see what can be updated. Here are some examples of what you could look at:
- Profile picture
- Cover photo
- Your business description
- Shop information
- Auto message replies
- Photo albums
Another tip for social media focuses on Facebook groups. You can create a group to keep your audience up to date or run special events and competitions. It’s also worth joining existing groups too. You can find ones for your local community and other small businesses. By doing this, you can find out about events you can join that you wouldn’t have found otherwise. You can also stay in touch with similar businesses who you can collab in the future.
If you want more support with social media and how best to keep your audience engaged, we host a fully-funded Social Media Strategy course. To find out more about what we cover, visit our website: https://www.digitalpeninsula.org/social-media-strategy
2) Plan Your Content
Content planning is great for staying organised and for reducing pressure. By creating a plan ahead of time, you can organise events and campaigns early to reduce last-minute rushes. A great tip is to look at what’s coming up and what you can join in. Often these are events such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter, and Summer Holidays.
If you’re stuck for ideas, you can find a list of main events in the UK here: https://www.eparenting.co.uk/celebrations/celebrations.shtml
Create a plan of what you want to do for these events and start creating the resources you’ll need for them. This may be a certain amount of stock, blogs for your website or social media campaigns.
If you want to learn more about how to best plan your content, we run a fully-funded Content Creation course for small businesses. You can find out more about what’s included in the course here: https://www.digitalpeninsula.org/content-creation
3) Think Big! (and small)
It’s time to make some New Years resolutions. What do you want to achieve this year? You might want:
- A certain number of followers?
- A certain amount of revenue?
- A new store location?
- A new website?
Whatever it may be, make a list and how you can achieve them. Though it’s great to aim high, make sure you include some small achievable goals too. Not everyone can triple their business size each year and be trending on social media. Set goals you know you can achieve but add a few which aim high. You never know, you might surprise yourself with what you can achieve!
4) We Love A Good Sale!
For many, money might be tight in January, but that doesn’t stop everyone from loving a good sale or discount! The best part is, there are a gazillion ways to do this.
- You can offer them discounts to existing customers
- You can offer discounts to new customers only
- You can run a site-wide sale
Another great way is to run a sale that benefits you in more ways than one. You can add discounts as an incentive to do something. For example, you could release a survey on business feedback or find out what your audience would like to see from you. For completing the survey, they could get a discount code.
5) Refresh Your Website
Make sure your website looks nice and shiny new for the New Year. It’s a good practice to check and update your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) every so often. Check the language and terms you use on your website and see if you could make them any better.
A good trick to check your wording is to use Google Trends where you can compare one phrase or keyword to another. https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=GB
If you need more help with SEO, we would recommend our fully-funded SEO webinar for an easy 2-hour session at SEO. https://www.digitalpeninsula.org/webinar-seo
You may not even have a website to begin with though, and that’s okay! We can help there too. We run a fully-funded WordPress course which is one of our most favourited courses. If you’re looking to find out how to get started with building a website, with all the ins and outs of GDRP and blogs, visit our WordPress page for more info. https://www.digitalpeninsula.org/website-development-course-using-wordpress
6) Get Your Photos Looking Flash
Look through your website and social media and see if you need to update your photos. Have you made any product changes since you last added them? Maybe you’ve since got better at photography and editing and, they need better lighting? Or perhaps you need to learn about editing and photography in the first place!
Good imagery can make a big difference to your business. It shows you’re professional and have good quality products and services. You want to display the best bits of your business, so don’t skimp out on photos.
If you want to learn more about image editing and photography/videography, we teach fully-funded courses on these topics. You can learn more about them here:
Image Editing: https://www.digitalpeninsula.org/content-creation
Videography: https://www.digitalpeninsula.org/webinar-video
