Around this time of year, many business owners are planning some much-needed R&R, but the question of ‘what do I do with my social media while I’m away?’ is often forgotten until the last minute when you’re packing your bags and realize you want to switch that airplane mode on for a week. Here’s how a social media consultant does it!

Plan Plan Plan

The first step is to make sure you’re planning your social media hiatus as a part of your vacation plans. Book your cottage, book your tours and plan ahead for social media. 

Ask yourself: 

• What work needs to be done this summer? 

• What programs/products/services need to be promoted? 

• Do you normally do a bi-weekly blog/newsletter as I do at KA Social Media? 

• Are there any services/products that won’t be available while you’re away? 

Write down everything that needs to be done and divide it into daily/weekly tasks that can give you some real time away from your phone, and then make time to have it ready before you head out. 

This might mean pre-scheduling a couple of newsletters, blog posts, etc. in advance, or scheduling out several weeks of your evergreen content to make sure your social media is active when you aren’t. Then plan out the time you need to get it done well before your vacation starts.

Preschedule Content

I’ve mentioned before how much I love scheduling content so you can focus on other things. And it’s the secret to successfully taking some time away from your business social media accounts.  

Look at the calendar for when you’re planning to be away and write down specific things that you want to promote and talk about on your social media. Once you have set the topics, write the content, find the pictures and schedule it! 

Scheduling tools will be your best friend for this to work! My favourites are Buffer, Co-schedule and Meta Suite directly on Facebook. You can read about how to schedule here. 

Some tips when pre-scheduling your content is: 

• Engagement is key. Make sure to schedule your posts during your peak engagement times for your audience. 

• REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW what you’re scheduling. It’s best to double-check what you’ve written and make sure there are no spelling mistakes but also ensure that your audience will understand and engage with the content you’re posting.

• Remember to check in on your posts if you’re stepping away from social media for more than a week. Just because you can schedule your posts doesn’t mean you can forget about them. Make sure to hop in and check on them if anything huge comes up—global crisis, large political movements, tragic events, ground-shaking industry news—and adapt if required.

Announce A Social Media Hiatus 

Don’t want to worry about checking in? Tell your followers you’re going to be stepping away and post an occasional picture of you enjoying your time off and tell them when they should expect you to be back! 

If you don’t post without any warning, potential new customers may assume that your business has closed so let them know that you are still in business but simply taking a break. 

Safety Notes: Avoid too many specifics about your vacation, as you don’t want to tell your audience that your house will be empty on certain dates or where you’re going to be travelling in the world. And always make sure to cover personal information when sharing selfies with your passport/boarding pass/hotel keys. If in doubt, wait it out. You can always post behind the scenes once you’ve returned to work. 

Unplug!

This is tough to do, but try to unplug while you’re away. Consider removing your social media and email apps when you set your Out Of Office reply so you aren’t tempted to check your business profiles while you’re away. 

Some ways you can make this easier: 

• Hire a social media manager for longer-term vacations. I myself am contracted to a few places to help them with their rotating holiday breaks. Get in touch if you’d like to hire the responsibility out for a short-term contract. 

• Identify a main point of contact to check on things while you’re away. This could be a team member or, if you’re a solo entrepreneur, you can ask a friend to check your feeds for comments the same way you’d have them check on your cats.

• Create a crisis plan. If something goes terribly awry while you’re on vacation and you don’t want to risk coming back online early, come up with a document that lists the procedures you would use if anything negative came up online and hand that off to your short-term manager/point of contact.  

By planning effectively and using the scheduling techniques we’ve talked about on this blog before, this is one task you can fully take a break from with enough pre-planning. 

Want to make planning even easier? Download my 50 free content ideas worksheet and get planning and grab your copy of The Social Media Content Planner.