It’s that time of year again when we’re all jetting off on our holidays (hooray!) but the dread of a chaotic lead up to annual leave may be starting to creep in. To avoid any unnecessary stress, now is the time to start thinking about how you can make sure you’re prepped to take some well-earned time off from work.
You may have heard the cliché phrase that ‘consistency is key’ time and time again when it comes to the world of staying relevant on social media. One of the golden ways to optimise your social media pages is to regularly publish engaging content that is targeted to your audience. This means that your channels should continue to run as normal when you’re away, as if you’re still beavering away at your desk, rather than laid on a beach somewhere sunny.
There are many fantastic social media scheduling tools that can be used to stay ahead of the game, especially when you’re away from the office. We’ve compiled our top scheduling tips to get ahead for the holidays so that you’re ready for a hassle-free, blissful break:
Get brainstorming – Have a think about the type of content you want to go out whilst you’re away. Start by noting the topics and ideas that you want to cover – take into account any upcoming events, important awareness days, milestones, anything you want to shout about and any generic content you can weave in to break up your feed. Consider what assets you’ll need – whether it be still images, video or a graphic, the format of your content e.g. a story or post on your feed, and what you want to achieve from each post.
Make a plan – Creating a content calendar can be a great way to visualise what posts you want to publish and when you want them to go out on socials. Simply grab a paper planner or create an Excel spreadsheet and record what content you want to go out on which day. This will help you to spot if there are any gaps in your plan and can be used as a template for future use.
Update your to do list – Jot down what posts you need to create and whether you need to shoot any imagery, video or create a graphic to accompany your text. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by an increased workload before taking time off, so breaking tasks down into manageable chunks can help you to stay on top of your to-dos.
Embrace time blocking – Set aside a chunk of time dedicated to getting your content drafted and scheduled in. This is your time to focus and be productive. Be realistic and try to minimise any distractions for your chosen day. Get creative – draft your copy, create your graphics and shoot your images/video.
Take advantage of scheduling tools – The majority of today’s social media platforms now have great built-in scheduling tools which allow you to upload and schedule your content ahead of time. Your posts will then be automatically published for you at the specified time… almost like magic!
Creator Studio is great for scheduling Facebook and Instagram posts and Twitter’s built-in tool works well too – both are free tools that are simple and easy to use. We’d recommend using an additional paid tool to assist with LinkedIn and Google My Business scheduling. Popular tools include Sendible, Hootsuite and Buffer – you may want to give a free trial a go and see what you think. Once you’ve scheduled all your posts in, sit back, relax and watch your content go out.
If you’re on the look out for some support with social media scheduling or anything else related to social media, get in touch with us to find out more about our training or content management packages.
If you have any tips that help you to get ahead, we’d love you to share them with us on social media!