Here at Plann, we love social media just as much (okay — let’s be honest, a little more!) than the next people. But, even we understand that sometimes you just need a break!
Maybe it’s because you’re going to a tropical island and are going off the grid (jealous!) Or, perhaps you just need to take some time away from the online world for your mental health.
Either way, we’re total advocates for a good ol’ digital detox from time to time! It can be a great way to hit ‘reset’ and come back refreshed, reinspired, and ready to take your business to the next level.
That said, we believe that just because you’re going offline, doesn’t mean your business has to. By taking a few simple steps before you head off on your well-deserved break, you can ensure you can keep thriving on socials grow your biz on autopilot. People won’t even realize you’re not online!
Whether you’re taking a 24-hour social media detox or going on vacation for a few weeks, here’s how you can use Plann to keep your socials running without you.
Batch your content
Naturally, you don’t want to pull several overnighters scheduling social media content, just so you can take a break. That would defeat the whole purpose! But, you’d surprised how much content you can create if you dedicate an hour or two of focused time to it. You could get days, weeks, or even months ahead with your content!
Inside Plann, you’ll find loads of tools that make it easy to batch your content (ie. create a bunch of posts in one go) Firstly, there’s our new and improved media collections, which allows you to seamlessly sort and organize your images. You can tag them by color, location and theme so you can easily find exactly what you need, and even add labels with things like caption ideas or collaborators you need to tag. That means, when you go to find the perfect image for your post, you can quickly locate exactly what you need.
Our content prompts tool is also super handy for batching content. Found inside our strategy tab, these are like your strategy in a box — with suggested content themes to post about. We have suggested strategies for 50+ different industries and occasions. So, all you need to do is pick the one that is most relevant to you (or, you can mix and match) and drag the strategy tiles to your grid or stories. Then, you can just quickly fill in the blanks with your own images and captions to fit the content theme.
Need a walk-through on creating your content in batch? Check out this tutorial!
Repurpose like a pro
Want to make people say ‘Wow, I didn’t even realize you took a break — you were everywhere!’ Then, it’s time to work smarter, not harder with your content. By repurposing one key piece of content across multiple platforms, then it creates the illusion that you’re omnipresent… when in reality, you’re nowhere (apart from lying next to the pool, or deep in a nap) Plann’s Recreate tool makes it super quick and easy to customize and cross-post your content across multiple platforms.
When you’ve created your post for your main platform (for example, Instagram) in our create tab, navigate down to the little blue button that says ‘create post.’ Click on it, then select ‘recreate for Facebook’ or ‘recreate for LinkedIn’ from the drop-down menu. Voila, that post will appear in your LinkedIn and Facebook create tab, ready for you to repurpose and schedule.
Put your social content on autopilot
Don’t fall into the trap of saying “Oh, I’ll just manually post the content I’ve planned — it will take me five seconds.” We all know that once you’re inside the platform, it can be hard to break out of the infinite scroll vortex… and all of a sudden, it’s hours later and you’re still down the rabbit hole. Give yourself a proper break by setting the content you’ve planned onto auto-post. That way, it goes up automatically without you even needing to be on your phone.
ICYMI, Plan now officially supports auto-posting for Instagram business accounts (as well as Facebook and LinkedIn posts) You can now schedule and automatically publish both photos and videos to your Instagram grid (unfortunately, the Instagram API doesn’t support stories auto posting yet) Need help setting up auto posting on Plann? Check out this guide.
…and your growth, too!
There’s no point spending all this time planning ahead your content, if nobody is ever going to see it! It’s important to continue the growth and visibility strategies that get eyes on your account, even when you’re away from your screen.
Luckily, we’ve got amazing automation tools to help you do just that. You can now auto-post the first comment at the same time your post goes up. That means you can automatically add up to 30 hashtags to get your content discovered. You can now also tag accounts automatically, in both your post and comment — and the people you’ve tagged wil see it when your post goes live. This means conversation can start flowing around your content, even when you’re miles away!
Pick your battles
Let’s be honest — your digital detox probably isn’t going to be the time that you start posting 5 times a day on every platform, or creating long, complicated videos. It’s important to not put too much pressure on yourself, and be realistic about what you can achieve.
Pick the things that are actually going to make a difference for you, and commit to that. For example, you might decide that you’re going to post on your Instagram grid three times. As you can’t automatically post stories (so, you would have to go into the Instagram app and manually post it yourself) you may choose to skip that for the week. Something is always much better than nothing… and you can always post it your stories later.
Consider outsourcing
You didn’t start your business so you could work 24/7 and never take a break, right? So that you can enjoy some well-deserved rest, you might choose to outsource part of your social media process to a social media manager — even if just temporarily. Afraid of letting go of control? Plann’s tools make it super easy to collaborate and make sure everyone is on the same page with the vision. From the calendar tool that gives a birds-eye view of your overall content strategy to our strategy tiles (which you could use to tell team members what content themes to stick to), we’ve made it so anyone could step into your account and see exactly what it needs to be done.
While Plann can’t run your socials for you while you’re on holidays (yet!), we come close! Start trying out our content creation, scheduling and automation tools today, so you can plan that much-needed holiday for the near future.
