The Holiday Content You Should Have Scheduled in October

Schedule the predictable posts now and keep your hands free for the rest. Roughly four in ten shoppers start before November, so a calendar that begins in December is late by design. The businesses that handle this well are not more creative in the holidays. They are less busy, because they did the boring part early.

If you are reading this in November, you have not missed the season. You have missed the comfortable version of it, and the fix is to spend two hours this week rather than twenty minutes a day for the next eight.

When do customers actually start?

Earlier than most businesses plan for, and the gap between those two dates is where the stress comes from.

The National Retail Federation surveyed 8,247 US consumers between October 1 and 7, 2025, with a margin of error of 1.1 percentage points. It found 42% planned to begin browsing and buying before November, while 60% expected to finish their shopping in December.

Both of those numbers matter and they pull in opposite directions. A large group is already looking in October. A larger group is still deciding in December. That means the season is not a single push in the last fortnight; it is a long window with different people at different stages throughout.

The same survey found 63% planned to do most of their shopping over Thanksgiving weekend, and put average planned spending at $890.49 per person, of which $627.93 was gifts.

What should you actually schedule in advance?

Everything that does not depend on knowing what today is.

Roughly two thirds of holiday content is predictable weeks ahead. Your opening hours over the holidays. Your last order dates for delivery. What you sell that makes a sensible gift. Any promotion you have already decided to run. Gift card availability. What is closed and when.

None of that requires inspiration and all of it will be asked. Writing it in one sitting takes an afternoon; writing it piecemeal in December takes the whole month and it will still be late.

The remaining third is the content that has to be current. What actually happened in the shop today, the queue, the last-minute rush, the thing that sold out. That is the content worth having your hands free for, and it is consistently the best-performing part of a holiday feed because it is unmistakably real.

What does the schedule look like?

Four phases, and most businesses only run the third.

The early phase gets skipped because it feels premature, and it is the one aimed at the 42% who are already looking. Nothing in it needs to be promotional. It is simply making sure that a person browsing in early November finds out you sell something suitable.

The deadline phase is the one that actually converts, and it is almost entirely logistics. The last date you can order for delivery before Christmas is the single most useful post you will publish all season. Post it more than once.

What is the most common mistake?

Announcing your closing hours once, on a day nobody was looking.

Every year businesses post their holiday hours in a single post in mid-December and then field the same question by message for three weeks. Post it repeatedly across the final fortnight, put it in your bio, put it on your Google Business Profile, pin it.

Repetition feels excessive to the person publishing and is invisible to the person reading. At the reach rates on most platforms, only a small fraction of your audience saw it the first time. On Facebook, Socialinsider's study of 25 million posts across 130,683 business pages found an average engagement rate of 0.15%, which is a useful reminder that "we already posted that" is not the same as "people know".

What about the discount?

Decide it now, and decide whether you are actually competing on it.

A small business rarely wins a discount contest, and December is the month where the discount arms race is loudest. What smaller businesses do win on is certainty: it is in stock, it will arrive, someone will answer if there is a problem.

Those are more persuasive than a percentage in the final fortnight, when the anxiety is about whether the gift arrives rather than what it cost. Say the reassuring thing plainly and repeatedly.

If you are running a promotion, the specifics of Black Friday deserve their own treatment, and I go through them in the Black Friday post.

Where should the effort go?

Toward the places people check rather than the places you post.

For most local businesses that ordering is: your Google Business Profile first, because it carries the hours and appears when someone searches for you; your messages and inbox second, because December questions are urgent and unanswered ones cost sales; your feed third.

That is the reverse of how most holiday effort gets allocated. The feed is the visible part, so it absorbs the attention, while the profile that actually answers "are you open on the 24th" sits stale.

I set out why the profile deserves more weight than it gets in the Google Business Profile comparison.

What about the quiet week?

Use it, gently.

The days between Christmas and New Year are unusually quiet on business feeds and unusually active on phones. Very little competes for attention, which makes it a reasonable window for a genuine thank you, a note about January hours, or something simply human.

It is not a good window for selling. People are not making decisions. What it is good for is being present in a week where almost nobody else bothered, which is remembered.

Schedule those posts in advance too. The whole point of the quiet week is that you are not working.

What I see in holiday calendars

Two patterns, both of which produce the same December.

The first is the calendar that starts on December 1. It misses the early browsers entirely, then compresses everything into three frantic weeks where the logistics posts compete with the promotional ones and both get diluted.

The second is over-production: elaborate seasonal assets made in November for a feed that would have responded better to a photo of what is actually happening in the shop. The effort is real and it is spent on the wrong tier.

The businesses that do this well have a boring schedule, finished early, and enough capacity left to answer messages within the hour. That second part is what actually converts in December.

What to do on Monday

Write your last order date, your holiday opening hours and your gift card details into three posts. Schedule each of them at least twice across December. That is the highest-value hour you will spend on this season.

Then update your Google Business Profile hours for the holiday period. Not in December. Now, while you are thinking about it, because that is the field customers actually check.

Then leave the rest of December mostly empty, on purpose, so you have room for whatever actually happens.

FAQ

What should businesses post on social media during the holidays? Two thirds predictable logistics, scheduled well in advance: opening hours, last order dates, gift suggestions, gift card availability. One third current content about what is actually happening, which needs your time free to capture.

When should holiday social media planning start? Before November. The National Retail Federation's 2025 consumer survey found 42% of shoppers planned to start browsing and buying before November, so a calendar beginning in December misses a large group entirely.

How often should I post my holiday opening hours? More often than feels comfortable, across the final two weeks, plus in your bio and on your Google Business Profile. Organic reach means most of your audience did not see the first post.

Should a small business discount for the holidays? Only if the numbers work. Smaller businesses usually compete better on certainty than on price: in stock, arrives on time, someone answers if there is a problem. Those matter more as the deadline approaches.

Is it worth posting between Christmas and New Year? Yes, for presence rather than selling. Feeds are quiet and phones are busy, so a simple thank you or a note about January hours goes further than usual. Schedule it in advance.

About the author

Adam Palmer is President of Inertia Digital Marketing, the agency behind Social Fonts. He has spent 15 years running paid and organic campaigns for clients ranging from single-location small businesses to national franchise networks, and has managed over $50 million in paid digital spend.