All of us, at some time during our busy careers need to recharge. Whether it’s working a full time 9-5 job, stay at home mom or an entrepreneur, life just gets in the way and stress levels go through the roof.
We need to take some time to pause and take a break.
So, in about three weeks, me and my family will be heading out for a one week vacation on a Disney cruise, again.
Our first cruise was two years ago and I absolutely fell in love with the atmosphere and the experience and I decided back then that I wanted to go on on another one.
When we think about vacation there are a few things we need to keep in mind.
Your family wants to spend time with you but you’ve just been so busy between work and building you side business that you haven’t had time for them.
Internally you feel like you need the time off to relax and not worry about your side hustle for a while but are afraid that if you stop working on it that things will fall apart and you you’ll run behind.
If you’re working a full-time job, that’s fairly easy, you just put in the request with your boss for some time off and your other department peers can cover for you or source out a temp to fill your position while you’re out.
This is pretty easy when you’re working for someone, but what if you’re building your own business?
If you are like most of us, the beginning is usually where we put on the hat of “jack of all trades”.
We are the consultant, the administration department, the human resources department and the marketing department.
For the purpose of this message, let’s focus on the marketing.
Naturally, without marketing how would your customers and clients even know you exist?
If they see you posting on social media consistently and all of a sudden drop off the face of the internet, you might lose them, they’ll forget about you and your want me top of mind when they may need your services or products.
Pre-Planning your marketing
Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance – you may have heard this statement before and it still holds true for your business as well. If you’re planning vacation, chances are that you have planned for it.
Why not plan for your social media marketing while you’re gone?
You don’t have to hire someone to do your social media, unless you can afford to.
But if you’re just starting out you need to keep costs low and handle it yourself.
Ask yourself a few questions:
- How often should I be posting on social media?
- Which social media channels will I be marketing to?
- What types of posts should I be posting?
- What times of the day should I be posting?
Chances are you may already have the answers to some of these questions if you are currently managing your social media now.
But how do you post consistently and focus your precious time with your precious family that needs you too.
Have you considered that your vacation spot may not even have wifi? Hmmm???
Using social media automation tools as your personal assistant
Here is where the technology comes in.
Using online tools that are currently available can act as a personal assistant for social media.
Tools like BufferApp.com and Hootsuite.com can make our lives so much easier when you automate and pre-schedule your posts for social media automation.
I personally use Hootsuite to schedule out my posts and to manage any interactions I have with my followers. With Hootsuite, you can load up the app with all the tweets, Facebook posts and Google+ posts you want and schedule them to automatically release during the pre-scheduled times you set.
This automation will give the appearance to your followers that you are active on social media and haven’t skipped a beat while you’re on vacation.
Using tools like SocialBro.com you can determine the best times to tweet and when the optimum times your followers are online for the most impact.
Using Facebook insights, you can also determine when most of your followers are online and using that information schedule your automated posts to go out during those time as well.
Some things to consider
If you do have wifi access, you could perhaps schedule 30-45 minutes a day for your business to check on email and any responses that you may have received from your social media followers.
You could use Hootsuite, as an all in one dashboard for your social media channels and view and respond to them in an organize way.
Using a dashboard like Hootsuite, you’ll cut the time and distractions of logging in to each one of your social media accounts and wasting valuable time that you could be using to focus on relaxing and your family.
Proper planning ahead of time and setting up the right tools and services can make a difference while you’re on vacation or not.
If you’re working a full time job and working on your side hustle, you deserve a vacation.
Give yourself some time to relax and spend time with the family without having to worry about marketing your business and yourself while you’re gone.
The technology is available and doesn’t have to cost much to keep you sane.
When you are on vacation, you should be on vacation. You’re family will thank you, your mind will thank you and your business will thank you.
Let me know in the comments below if you’re going to give this tips a try the next time you are on vacation.
I would love to hear about it.