When the weather outside is frightful, your holiday vacations are delightful! Whether it’s time for a little R&R in another city, state, or country, it doesn’t mean your marketing should go on a two-week hiatus as well. After all, people still open their smartphones and laptops, keep up with the occasional email, read their social media streams…well, you get the idea.

Here are 5 quick and easy tips to maintain your marketing presence even as you head out for the holidays.

Have your social calendar filled out BEFORE you take off

Social media calendars are extremely useful, even when you aren’t going on vacation. They help map out what and when you are going to post to each of your social media accounts. The internet is swimming with social media calendar templates that are easy to use! Fill out the information for the days you will be gone, including the message you are sharing, links you will use, image to be included and the time it should be posted. Don’t forget to specify which social media platform that each post is for. Then, schedule your posts using your social media managing tool of choice. That way, you won’t have to worry about it at all while on vacation. 

Link your business Twitter from your personal cell phone

Assuming you already have the free app on your phone, you can link your personal and business account on your cell phone. To do this, pull up your Twitter account and tap on the profile image. There is a little blue arrow by your profile name, tap it and tap “Add an existing account.”

Once your accounts are linked, you can switch back and forth by tapping the profile image at the top of your screen. Send tweets, retweet an interesting article, or update followers with your experiences on vacation. Follow the calendar you created before you left, and your vacation will be a breeze.

Word to the wise: just be careful you’re in the right account before you tweet a personal opinion to your business account. It’s an easy, but avoidable mistake if you take the extra second to check which account you’re in.

Utilize Facebook’s “scheduled posts” feature

If you don’t subscribe to a social media distribution service that allows you to schedule social media posts, Facebook has a scheduling tool that is stress-free. Gather the content from your calendar and head to Facebook and enter each post, link and image into the post generator. Once you are ready, click the little arrow next to “Publish.”  A drop-down box will appear that has a few different options. You will select the “Schedule” option. From there, you can choose the time and date that the post will publish to your followers. It’s as easy as that!

Choose “topics” for Twitter

When inputting the information into your social calendar, coming up with specific Twitter posts is nearly impossible.  The goal is to deliver accurate information that happens at the drop of a dime. Instead of putting the exact message, image, and URL into the calendar, focus on selecting various topics instead.

Some examples would be:

• Retweet an interesting, industry-relevant article
• Share a new blog post
• Tweet a picture of your travels
• Share an old, but still relevant blog

Use your social media calendar to keep ideas for what you want to post and when. Additionally, the search feature on Twitter allows you to find articles or tweets on the topics you choose right from your cell phone since you now have linked accounts. The person you left in charge of the campaign will also be able to easily locate and publish tweets with a guide for what topics to cover and when.

Repurpose relevant blog posts

If you know you already have quality content that can be reused or repurposed while you are away, don’t be afraid to share it again! Be sure that if there is any data in the blog, it’s updated, and the topic of the original blog is relevant to today’s audience. What’s the point of having all that information if you only share it once? If a certain article really captivated your audience the first time, it may reach new followers that you’ve acquired over the recent weeks or months. Change the headline slightly or use a different message and photo when posting to social media. Even though you are using content you already have, make sure to tailor it slightly to match current wants and needs of your followers.

Those were our five easy tips to help you keep up with the campaign while you are on holiday. Vacation should be about relaxing and spending time with the ones you love. Don’t let the pressure of maintaining your holiday PR campaign stress you out. Plan ahead, make posting accessible, and share quality content you already have. Most importantly, enjoy your vacation!

About Alyssa Bowholtz: Alyssa is a marketing and communications intern at Swyft. She writes for the PR over Coffee blog and also helps with everything from managing social media activities to helping grow the company’s Austin Startup over Coffee map. Swyft is an Austin marketing agency for tech companies seeking rapid, sustained growth. Some of the services provided include content marketing, social media strategy and PPC, email marketing and media relations.