Do you worry about keeping up with social media for your business when you’re away for an extended length of time? Well, you’re not alone. I just finished a vacation. When you’re self-employed and manage your own marketing it’s rather hard to devote entire days just to fun. But I did manage to stay away from my computer for nearly the entire vacation. How did I do it?
Before I took time off I pre-scheduled all my social media updates (and I even pre-scheduled a blog post) using my favorite three social media tools. There are a ton of terrific tools for managing social media available these days, and I’ve tried nearly all of them. But what I find works best for me are the ones that keep things as simple as possible and that I am certain will be working for me while I’m not online.
Here are the 3 social media tools that I love:
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a fantastic tool for pre-scheduling my Twitter and LinkedIn updates. It’s easy and intuitive. I use it every day not just for scheduling but also for engagement and finding great content. Hootsuite offers a mobile app and a nifty “Hootlet” which lets you share content right from other websites without even opening the platform. Here’s what the scheduling platform looks like:
2. Facebook’s Scheduling Tool (built into your Facebook business page)
Since Facebook is über important for business (71% of Internet users consider it “home base”) I want to be sure what I post there is perfect. You could use Hootsuite for Facebook, but I recommend that you use the native scheduling tool so you can see what your update will look like in the newsfeed before it is live. It works great and is completely reliable.
3. Mailchimp for getting your content out there.
Before my vacation I pre-scheduled my weekly Tuesday Tips email blast and also a blog post. It worked like a charm. How does this relate to social media? I use Mailchimp’s social feature so that my subscribers can share my content right from the email. Most email services out there offer pre-scheduling and social sharing tools, so if yours does, use it!
It’s a given that in today’s world in order to build a business you must be visible on the web. That’s what I preach and it’s the name of my company, so it’s especially hard for me to feel invisible for any length of time. I am very grateful for these tools so I can take some time off every now and then. Was I able to resist taking a peek to make that everything was going to publish as planned? Nope. I checked! But, if I’d been in a location where I had no Internet access at all (if there is such a place these days) everything would have worked perfectly.
One more thing: If your website is built on Wordpress you can pre-schedule blogs, too. Just click “schedule” instead of “publish” then choose the day and time that you want your blog to go live. Works like a charm!
The bottom line is this (as spoken so eloquently by my dear friend Patty Stern): “Online marketing isn’t easy…but it’s manageable!”
