When you head out for vacation, are you the kind of person who forgets about all of your mundane requirements and lets the sand and sea take you away or do you drag your laptop along and think about everything that you’re responsible for?

Every October I look forward to vacation time.  For years that was the only month that I wasn’t committed to big events and so taking off work when the leaves were changing colors became a pattern – and I do love the beach in the fall time.

Last October, I headed to the North Carolina coast with my entire family to enjoy a week and a half of early morning walks along the seashore, shelling with my siblings, fresh seafood dinner gatherings, late evening conversations, and letting it all go with the tides.

In years passed, when I was in a community relations position with my former company, I set everything up to be completed before I left for vacation and had someone in place to cover anything that needed to be done while I was away.  I recall telling one associate that I would throw my phone in the ocean if they called me (and, I think I meant it).  I went non-stop all year and my October vacations let me recharge so that I could go back at it upon my return.

Now that I am in digital marketing, things are a bit different and I feel like my computer bag is part of my person (my chiropractor would probably agree).  I almost always have my laptop, iPad, and iPhone with me.  Social media never rests and my gadgets make any account accessible and any issue fixable within moments.

So when I went to the beach last October, of course, I took my computer bag along too.  Sure enough, I had to pull out the laptop and adjust something that was very time sensitive which happened to coincide with the coastal hurricane evacuations as well.  Now, that’s not saying that my office crew doesn’t cover me while I’m out because they’re pretty awesome about jumping in and taking care of anything that comes up.  But, in this field, the mind never ceases in the awareness that anything could pop-up that would require immediate attention.

As a business owner or brand manager, you probably aren’t able to stay out of pocket for too long either.  If you run your own social media accounts, then you certainly don’t want to have to think about posting content while vacationing.  So, scheduling tools prove themselves to be very helpful, especially when you’d prefer to be enjoying that much needed time off.

Facebook has a feature that allows you to pre-schedule posts, and that in itself is very useful since consistency helps maintain those algorithms that determine who sees your content and who doesn’t.

There are a plethora of social media management tools available to accommodate the needs of individuals and small business owners as well as massive corporations and organizations and social media agencies.  You’ve probably heard of Hootsuite, Buffer, and SocialOomph through which content can be shared on multiple social channels at once. TweetDeck is popular and exclusive to Twitter and allows you to schedule and manage your tweets.  SproutSocial and DashBurst are other popular monitoring platforms that provide more extensive management solutions, features, and reporting.

A Google search will provide many options that you can research, or if you’d rather not worry about the details, contact The High Road Agency and we’ll be happy to manage your social content so that you can not only enjoy your vacations but focus on daily operations for growing the success of your business.