How Social Media Managers can Unplug Over the Holidays: 5 Tips From an Expert
[Originally published on the Dash Hudson blog.]
Social media managers are all too familiar with the holiday race, as they rush to maximize their time hoping for some kind of respite come end of month.
If you’re stressing about your social responsibilities putting an anxious damper on that well-deserved yuletide interlude, we’ve got just the thing for you. We enlisted Charlotte Parker, social media manager at One Kings Lane, to share her top tips on how to actually unplug during the break. 🎊
Spoiler alert: the Internet never sleeps. Like, ever. Not on weekends, not for you to take a holiday break, not even for Santa.
If it’s your job to keep your brand’s social channels running smooth, it’s likely that you’re currently feeling the December crunch. You very well know that while all your colleagues are completely checked out and spending quality time with their loved ones, you’ll always have work on the brain. Ouch.
Unfortunately for all social managers, people don’t stop consuming content over the holidays. Au contraire, they’re likely scrolling even more than usual — cause you know, downtime. Social media don’t have a vacation policy, and a company’s channels can’t just abruptly stop their flow because someone is “off the clock”.
The constantly overloaded social editor nary catches a break. While Dash Hudson’s all-encompassing social media scheduler makes it super easy to get organized and plan everything in advance, it’s still a bummer when you have to pause your Christmas movie marathon to keep your brand’s channels running.
To help you make sure it all goes as smoothly as possible, we tapped a pro and asked her to share her wisdom. Charlotte Parker, social media manager at #homegoals retailer One Kings Lane, is three years deep in holiday social responsibilities, and she’s racked up some staunch pointers on how to navigate the break while preserving some sanity.
“I know how much stress it can be for those responsible,” she confirms, continuing: “no matter the type of content you post, the length of the break, or the amount of DMs you receive from your followers daily — planning for a holiday is an extremely daunting task.” Girlfriend knows her stuff.
Below are her top five tips to help you manage your time and set the stage for some choice unplugging. Leave for the break with full peace of mind and a plan for your plan, natch.
1. Plan Your Biggest Days First
“Always make sure you have your Christmas, New Year’s, and any other important holidays 100% ready before you go on break. These posts are ones that you might need a creative team to review or have upper management to approve so it’s vital they aren’t done last minute.”
Do it all from our recently upgraded Dash Hudson Scheduler, where you can directly access your approved assets. Just set it and forget it, like magic.
2. Don’t Set Yourself Up for Disaster
“What I mean by this, for example, is don’t plan an important Instagram story takeover on a day you know you’re going to be traveling and have spotty wifi. If you know manning your phone that day won’t be easy, avoid yourself the stress and pick a time when you know you’ll be at home with a full connection.”
Get all of our influencer marketing tips to avoid all undesired scenarios.
3. Double (and Triple) Check!!
“There’s nothing worse than being caught off guard in the world of social media. Sure, you’ve set your Instagram to post for 7pm, but what happens when you’re out with family at dinner, get the push notification, and realize you didn’t write a caption for it? It won’t be as easy coming up with one on the fly when the festivities have started and you’re three glasses of wine deep. Make sure all scheduled posts have the proper links connected, accounts tagged, and captions ready. Otherwise you might feel ho-ho-hopeless.”
Include your LikeShop URLs in advance through the scheduler to connect all your Instagram posts to apropos web pages.
4. Don’t Try to be a Hero
“There’s a fairly high chance that you’re not going to be able to fully schedule out content for the entire break before it starts. That is OK! If you try to set unrealistic expectations for yourself, it’ll only make you more stressed. Plan what you absolutely need, and fill in the rest while mom is cooking dinner and you’ve got some time to kill. You’ll worry a lot less if you segment your work.”
Grab our content scheduling tips and do your best, champ!
5. If You Have to Be on Social, Limit Your Personal Social
“This tip might not work for everyone, but I’ve found that if I want to limit my screen time, I scale back on my personal feed first. It’s a bit of a mind trick, but if you’re only on your brand’s account an hour a day, tuning out your personal channel will seem like a vacation. With that being said, you might not want to miss what is happening with your friends, but it’s something I do and have found to be effective.”
You probably need the hiatus, and you’ll feel great about it.
Seeing as all we do year-round is give marketing tips, we figured that human advice would be welcome. ’Tis the season, after all. We’re well-aware of how hard you guys work, and you’ve very much earned the privilege to just chill and be merry — glass of eggnog, anyone?
Head into your holiday week knowing that you’re ahead of your game, and come back fully rested in 2019. 🍾
Header image: @charlodussault
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