How to Welcome Your Blog Visitors for Christmas – In Just 5 Steps

‘Merry Christmas!’, is something you’d say to friends, family and even new acquaintances if meeting them next week for Christmas. So why don’t we extend this pleasant welcome to the nice, cheery people that read our blog posts?

The most we do is add a ‘Merry’ or two to a post we publish on Christmas or after. Not bad, but it’s not like we really put real effort in. Here are just 5 ways you can welcome your blog visitors for Christmas with the help of a few great apps, services and social networks.

1. Starting with the Basics: Blog Posts

If most of your readership celebrates Christmas, the easiest way to wish them some merry wishes is to add a simple ‘Merry Christmas’ in front of the one, two or dozen blog posts you’re publishing on the Christmas night as well as the next few days. As I mentioned in the beginning, it’s like saying hello during the holidays, so it makes a whole lot of sense for bloggers that have a very personal approach in their blogging.

You might not think that wishing “Merry Christmas” is appropriate if you run a business blog, but think again. While your clients might be companies, the people that work in them are – people! Duh! Even those of us that usually wear suits to work end up wearing ugly Christmas sweaters during the end of the December.

By wishing a Merry Christmas to your business blog readership, you’re putting your hair down, having a casual blog week and treating your readers like real people – which they will definitely appreciate. All it took is a simple “Merry Christmas”…

2. Greet Anyone Who Visits Your Blogs, Thanks to WordPress Plugins

While adding a “Merry Christmas” to your blog posts is great, why stop there? The popular blog content management system WordPress has a number of Christmas plugins you might want to checkout. While some just add lights and decorations, others let you greet your visitors with special messages, based on the website their come from. WP Greet Box was a popular plugin to display welcome messages back in the day, but unfortunately, the last version was released 4 years ago, making it incompatible with new versions of WordPress.

Thankfully, there is no need to worry. Different WordPress developers have been very busy, creating numerous plugins to help you display messages on your WordPress blog, depending on what you want to achieve.
My personal favourite is Optin Monster, a quite advanced WordPress plugin with a number of features that let you create “popups” that can launch depending on the criteria you set for it: Just visitors who aren’t logged into WordPress, those that are reading articles from a specific category or those that are leaving your website.

The latter is known as “Exit Intent” technology and detects when a user is intending to “exit” your website by clicking to close the tab it’s in, based on the movement of the user’s mouse. Very useful, especially when you consider that by using Optin Monster’s or any other “Exit Intent” popup, you can say greetings to your readers as they are about to leave. That’s the exact moment when they’re not expecting anyone to care so your “Merry Christmas” will mean a lot. You can even supercharge this magican moment by offering them a Christmas present in the form of:

• Free “upgrade” content that will give readers even more value based on the blog posts that they’ve already shown interest in.
• A free ebook as a piece of content that readers can download, in exchange for giving you their email in order to send email newsletters in the future.

3. Merry Mailchimpmus, Right?

While we’re on the topic of email, you did make sure to send all the readers that singed up for your weekly newsletter a Christmas greeting, didn’t you? If not, you still have time.

An easy way is adding a Christmas graphic and greeting to the top of your usual email newsletter, easily doable in any advanced enough email editing software such as Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor.

If you want to go a step further, you’ll need to google for “email templates” for your favourite newsletter software or just go to ThemeForest. A good email template repository should and will offer you templates specifically made to be used during the holidays. Some might be over designed, but most will use a fair combination of Christmas decorations and subtle design details to lure your readers into reading your Christmas email greeting.

#4 Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat Jingle Bells!

Jingle bells, Twitter tweets, Facebook’s got a like for you… or some other lyrics that make more sense when associated with the various social media channels you usually use to post your blog posts to.

I’m sure you have your Christmas greeting message already prepared for Christmas morning, along with a graphic that combines elements of your blog, the topic you blog about, Santa and a Christmas try – but do you think that one post is enough.

Here at .Me, we decided to use the 12 days before Christmas to publish a whole series of graphics that celebrate the days leading up to the holidays. The extra step that we took? Adding tips on personal branding (that we usually blog about) to the messages in a holiday context! Check them out on our Facebook page!

#5. Have Your Reader’s Adress? Merry old school strategies!

We’re going old school for this one. For most e-commerce websites with business blogs, as well as some personal websites where you know exactly who is reading your website – you have the address of your perspective readers. While having a physical address isn’t a digital innovation, it does let you send something to your dear readers that isn’t just a graphic or a number of characters shown on a screen.

And most, of all, it’s special and, as the well-known founders of Basecamp put it: isn’t scalable. Not everyone will send physical greetings to their readers. It’s not scalable. However, it’s special. It sets you apart. In a galaxy far far away (Hey, the Star Wars movies are showing these days) it makes you a special kind of blogger that’s going to take their time to say “Merry Christmas” in a new, yet old-school way.

We’ve written how to use Christmas, Halloween and other events to make your blog stand out, and greeting your readers is just another way oh standing out thanks to a special occasion.

So, in the spirit of this blog post, Merry Christmas in advance 😉