5 Small Business Tips and Tools for This Holiday Season

Do you have a plan for your business for the upcoming holiday season? It’s that time of year again already. The holiday season is already upon us. Perhaps you have already booked a fabulous getaway to your annual retreat in the Alps or warm, sunny Florida, or maybe you are just promising yourself, and your family to really get in some overdue rest and relaxation.

So how can you ‘fireproof’ your business and personal time this holiday season?

1. Get the Jump on Staff Holiday Requests

This is the time of the year every small business owner and entrepreneur needs to take the lead on scheduling early. Create a calendar for the office to keep track of employees’ time off and make sure there is coverage around the holidays. Be proactive about organizing vacation schedules and consider recruiting outsourced staff to cover empty seats well in advance.

2. Leverage the #TwitterIPO

Twitter’s hot IPO is sure to result in millions of new users for the social network. This new service for marketers is an excellent and valuable way for small business owners and entrepreneurs to keep on top of social media during the holiday season. By using current geo-targeting filters, Promoted Account options, and scheduled Tweets, you can keep your web traffic up and lead generation machine turning while relaxing, eating, and enjoying family time.

3. The Ultimate Turkey Recipe

Having the freedom to take all the time off you want this season because you leveraged the important and necessary tools isn’t going to be as enjoyable as you imagine if you incinerate the turkey. Four-star chef, and founder of one of this year’s hot startups, G-Code Magazine blogs that the “surefire” way to ensure your culinary success is to cover your turkey in bacon to stop it from burning and to lock in the moisture, so it doesn’t end up as turkey jerky.

4. Back it All Up!

Perhaps the worst nightmare of most entrepreneurs and business owners is finally taking a vacation only to find themselves cut off from monitoring the last thirty minutes worth of data and metrics. Bringing along a backup device in your travels is always smart, as is using cloud storage for everything possible. The Suitcase Entrepreneur recommends getting your hands on an app called Recuva, which can help recover lost data that has been deleted or when a device gets fried.

5. Toll Free Business Phone Services

Toll free services offer essential call forwarding and call capture benefits for ensuring no lead is ever lost. Even more important this year is pre-ordering one of the new 844 vanity numbers scheduled to release on December 7th. In order to kick business up a notch, pre-order your new 844 vanity number so you can get kick start your brand when 2014 rings in.

Image: © frenta – Fotolia.com