How to Plan Content for Your Vacation Days

Buongiorno! I’m off wandering the streets of Rome right now - celebrating Holy Week and Easter in the Eternal City. 

While I am sharing stories and posts on my personal account of my travels, I’m not actively posting to my business accounts while away on this little pilgrimage vacation. Many people will tell you to have social media success you must be posting daily - no breaks, no stops, no vacations. 

I call that a bunch of nonsense! 

Let’s work smarter not harder, and set ourselves and our businesses up for success even while leaving the computer at home and not logging into our social media accounts! 

Here’s how I navigate posting consistency and travel:

Step One: Think ahead.

If you want to be truly present for your vacation or even a business trip, that will mean planning far in advance. In my case, I knew I would be traveling for nearly three weeks between client visits and this trip, so I put myself three weeks ahead in content creation. That’s a lot of work, so the sooner you start, the better! 

Begin by brainstorming content that will be relevant while you’re away. In addition to your regular content routine, are there any special holidays, milestones, Catholic feast days, or celebrations that will need to be recognized? Are there any sales you’ll want to run, or products you’ll want to promote? Write it all down.

STEp TWO: Create ready-to-post content.

Once you know what you want and need to say while you’re away, get to creating! Don’t skimp on the details! Plot it all out - the caption, hashtags, images, date it will go live. With the deadline so far out, it can be easy to gloss over little imperfections by telling ourselves we’ll fix it later. But you’re not going to want to look at it later. 

While planning be sure to keep in mind the type of content and how easy that is to schedule. For instance, not everyone is able to schedule Reels yet. If you don’t have that capability, putting a Reel into the rotation while you are traveling isn’t the best option. I only create content that can go live without me there to tap a single button.

step three: Schedule your posts.

This is the easy part. If you manage a professional account on Instagram, you can go to the  publishing page for your post and then select Advanced Settings > Schedule this post, and select the time and date you want it to go live. 

Do yourself a favor and schedule ahead for both Facebook and Instagram at once through the Meta Business Suite. Your post will get published at your desired date and time without you having to lift a finger. An added bonus is that you can schedule individual content to either platform or schedule the same content to post on both platforms at once.

step four: Allow yourself the break.

After all that work, it can be tempting to log on and do one more thing, make one more post, or to get on just to check comments and messages. If that fills you up, great - go for it. But if it’s a break you are really looking for - I promise the world and your account is not going to fall apart in the few days you take to really fully immerse yourself in vacation.

What about when you don’t have time to work ahead?

I’m a firm believer in taking a full tech break - at least one week per year. I usually do this the week between Christmas and New Year. And, since that is right after a particularly busy season personally and professionally that often means my accounts just go dead for those days. And that’s okay. More than okay, in fact. 

I’ve never hopped back on to a major tragedy or a significant drop in followers or engagement. I have re-entered the space feeling more energized, creative and alive!

So if you don’t have the time or the energy to create and schedule content for your time away, it’s okay to also just take the full break and pick it up again when you return. No guilt or shame required.