9 Recipes to Manage Social Media and your Blog During the Holidays

On vacation, you would probably want to disconnect from your online activities like manage your blog and social networking. Yes, but if you manage a blog that supports your business, or your audience expects your publications every week, how do you continue to manage your web presence? If you face this problem, here’s how you can manage your online work while enjoying your vacation and time with family.

How to manage social media during the holidays

You probably have some relatives who appreciate seeing your nose on the screen of your computer or your smartphone all day while you are on holiday…

However, you cannot afford to break any form of communication for several weeks, either for your blog (your content) or on social networks that allow you to continue to develop your audience.

You will probably notice that the pace of publication on most of the blogs had not slowed in recent weeks. And yet, people take vacations in the summer!

1. Give yourself time

When you are on vacation, you should give yourself very specific time to attend to your web activities: one hour daily in the morning or evening is enough to power your social networks and reply to received messages, reply to comments on blogs and process the mails.

To manage social media you can use Hootsuite, with the mobile version on the iPhone. Hootsuite allows you to delay sending messages, and it seems that you are online all day, but actually you can set everything for a few minutes. For comments, you can use Disqus via.

2. Write, write, write…

The holiday period is favorable and you spent most of your time in your home – the essential step back compared to your regular activities. You will think things differently because you are not in the mood to grindstone all day. Lots of ideas that go through your head that you do not want to lose. For this you can use Evernote iPhone app for taking notes. It’s so easy to make, most of the people around you will not even notices, but you know that everything important for you is stored.

You can also use the enormous task management tool Nozbe, which allows you to store all that you have to do in return.

3. Plan, plan, plan…

The article for your blog should be written in advance and published automatically. More over, you also have settings in your the theme that you are using to automatically manage social media for the post (e.g. tweeting it). If you are not able to prepare everything, take an hour of your day to isolate yourself and write.

4. Use email!

During your vacation, you will have more frequent use of your email. Not because you want, so you will probably want to read your e-mails later, but probably because you are managing several services that you do not want to access via the web during this period.

Many tools allow you to receive notifications by email. This is the case, for example for managing Disqus comments on your photo blog.

Rather than having to connect to your usual services, you can centralize everything in your mailbox. You will lose less time by not having to access multiple sites, and you are not distracted by what is not essential and you will not miss any of your important messages.

If you get a message to be processed upon your return, you can send it to the email address of your Nozbe account and a job is added to your list.

5. An immediate response is rarely required

An email is never urgent. And if you use email properly, you know that it is not mail being treated as emergencies. Your correspondents should know how to reach you by phone, so they send you an email and know that it can take up to 24 hours to respond. If you check your emails once a day, you can probably extend the period to two or three times per days depending on your activity.

6. The others are on leave

Tell yourself that taking time off is a normal activity (if not healthy…) and that others do. Needless to mope in front of your screen wanting to treat all messages received, it is likely that your answers are not read before several days or weeks.

When I have to make a response that will ask me the time, then I send an acknowledgment to say I got the message and I’ll treat him upon my return. So my party is reassured and I save time.

7. The smartphone is your friend…

The smartphone is the tool that can save your life. This is the best way to access most of the services you use. It is a lightweight, compact device that fits in any pocket. It is easy to connect to all the free Wi-Fi networks (hotels, restaurants, etc.) when you do not have 3G access.

I personally prefer the smartphone to the tablet because it does not fit in a pocket.

8. The world can keep turning without you…

You know that during the holidays, a lot of content pass under your nose, you will miss information that may seem important (but probably not) and many exchanges on social networks will escape you. So what?

Your web content curation system continues to run without you, so you know you will find everything published when you return. The rest is not essential so you can simply disconnect.

9. Show your loved ones that you are in control!

The complex periods you often experience are mainly because you poorly organize your time. That is why you have to set up these best practices and constantly improve them to have more time for your family while continuing to manage social media and your business.