Summer has traditionally been the season for hitting the beach, running away to the mountains or just taking the phone off the hook and relaxing at home. Social media doesn’t go on vacation, however, and taking a break in your content marketing might significantly hurt the brand you’ve spent years carefully building up.
Without regular updates, your subscribers and followers gradually fall away, sales lag and you come back from what should have been a relaxing break to twice as much work catching up as you left when you bought the plane tickets. Fortunately, you have the option to use content marketing automation while you’re taking a break.
[ctt template=”4″ link=”7j2Xy” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Heading to the beach? Learn how to automate your #ContentMarketing when you go on vacation. [/ctt]
Craft Automated Updates
IFTTT stands for “If This, Then That,” and it sums up one of the simplest and most powerful tools you can use to keep your content flowing when you’re not available. IFTTT lets you create complex chains of “if-then” commands (called “recipes”) for online apps. If that sounds complicated, it’s okay; you’re basically using a really intuitive interface to automate a lot of the work your content marketing requires.
Say you’ve uploaded a new YouTube video while you’re on vacation, for instance, and you’re late for a luau and don’t have the time to update any of your other social media channels. If you’ve created a recipe in IFTTT, the system sees your YouTube update and automatically issues the necessary messages to let your Twitter, InstaGram and Facebook followers know what you’re up to.
This level of automation can shave hours off of your content marketing work, whether you’re on a break or in the office, and the only real limit to how complex your recipes can get is your own imagination.
RELATED: Why Putting Social Media on Auto Pilot Works
Pre-Load Content and Schedule It For Later
Automation is great, but it hits a limit where creativity is concerned. If you need original content published, but not while you’re in a cabin in the woods, it’s a good idea to write your next few updates in advance and just publish them at intervals during your break. For that, you need a scheduling app like CoSchedule, Buffer or Hootsuite.
Hootsuite, for example, is one of a family of services that can publish your social media updates for you on the schedule you designate and keep a seamless stream of content flowing while you’re away. The service can also track incoming messages and send back out pre-written replies to encourage engagement with your brand online.
Whether you’ve written a 3,000-word white paper for your company blog or you just need a few witty tweets sent out between midnight and 3 am, Hootsuite offers a really user-friendly interface to get it all scheduled before you catch your plane. Maybe even better than the scheduling, Hootsuite also offers sophisticated routing tools for sending messages to different recipients across your networks and illuminating analytics that help you track the impact your content marketing is having.
[ctt template=”4″ link=”7lI4g” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Don’t let your #SocialMedia calendar languish when you’re on vacation. Learn how automation can be your bff. [/ctt]
When In Doubt, Hire a Pro
Even if you’re making full use of automation and remote scheduling, there’s no substitute for outsourcing your marketing content to a professional and really enjoying your vacation without distractions. The major challenge with this is finding a content producer with the skill to represent your brand the way you want without your direct supervision.
By reaching out to an established freelancer network, such as Crowd Content, you can sift through potentially thousands of experienced online content creators who are eager to craft articles, tweets and other content for any of your brand’s social media channels.
Trusting your content marketing to professionals who can work while you’re away not only lifts a weight from your shoulders during what should be a relaxing vacation, the fresh perspective and original content ideas your freelancer generates may stimulate new ideas of your own and inspire you to take your content marketing in new directions when you get back.
