Seriously, schedule your Happy New Year’s social, email & SMS message now

With only a few days left in the year, now is the time to think about how you’re going to ring out the old and in the new.  It’s also time to think about scheduling your Twitter, Facebook, email, and SMS New Year’s messages.

With more than 17 million tablets and smartphones gifted this Christmas this is probably going to the busiest New Year’s Day in the history for social networking.  Instagram’s growing popularity, Facebook’s billion users and Twitter’s continued growth means that trying to get that all important New Year’s message to friends, family, and followers might not be so easy this year.

Add to that Facebook’s, Google+’s, and Dropbox’s automatic image and video uploading services which will be constantly pushing large files to the web as revealers snapping and recording the countdown and you’ll see that it might not be that easy to get a clear data connection (never mind cellular connection) come midnight on January 1.

So with this colossal amount of traffic expected in the few hours between 11pm and 1am it’s a good idea to schedule your social media updates and SMS messages now and, thankfully, there are plenty of easy ways you can do this.

Happy New Year Facebook
This year Facebook has launched a free app that lets you write a private New Year’s message to friends and family.  The app is straightforward, it lets you select specific friends or a group of friends to whom you can write your message, it even suggests come text for you “Have a Happy New Year and a great 2013!” and allows you to add a photograph.

Happy New Year Twitter/Facebook
If you want something a little bit more public than you’ll have to turn to a third party service like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.

If you don’t have an account with either of these then you can sign up using your regular Twitter, Facebook or other social media accounts.  Tweetdeck and Hootsuite do the usual social media dashboard thing of showing you your latest updates and those from your friends but they also let you schedule updates, which can be posted to a number of social networks at the same time.

Happy New Year Gmail
If you want to say Happy New Year to someone who isn’t a big social networker then you can do so using Boomerang for Gmail.  Boomerang is an addon for Firefox and Chrome which lets you schedule emails for delivery.  The free version of the apps lets you send 10 free messages a month, so with this you’ll only be able to contact a few close friends (or colleagues/clients).

If you are using Microsoft Outlook you can also schedule messages for midnight delivery.  The process is straightforward but you might need to leave your computer on in order to actually send the message.

Happy New Year SMS
It’s also possible to send your New Year’s greeting using text.  The easiest way to do this is to log into your service provider’s website and set up your message there.  Of course this one depends on your provider’s website and whether they offer such a service.  If they do just be aware that messages can still be delayed due to the massive traffic the networks are expected to see come midnight.

With these you should be able to wish everyone a happy 2013 while still enjoying your midnight celebrations.