Vacation and road trip season is one of the best times of year here in the Northern Hemisphere. The smell of the campfires, the taste of the s’mores, the fresh mountain air, your toes in the warm sand, or the feel of the linen sheets at your 5-star resort. As an independent business owner, you want to experience all of the luxuries of summer as well. You don’t want to be typing away at your desk or on your phone to make sure that you get that day’s digital marketing post up and out to the world.
You’d rather be out and about seeing the sights, but you still have a business to market. This post is for all the DIYers of their companies digital marketing presence. To really enjoy yourself and get away to the places where the wifi is weak, you need to plan your content in advance, schedule it, and use a platform that will automatically post on your behalf.
To make this feat attainable, you need to think about your content in advance. One thing that I recommend is making a stop at the dollar store and purchase one of their monthly calendars. Each month decide on a theme and post content that is relevant to that theme. At my networking event talks and one-on-one coaching sessions, I get told a version of this all of the time, “I just don’t know what to write. I write something then delete it, I write it again, and then I delete it, I do this three times, and then I just get so frustrated that I don’t post at all.”
Planning a monthly theme will help you not only when you want to automate to go on vacation but will keep your entrepreneur brain sane not only during your DIY marketing time but when you are also ready to scale and hire out to someone like me.
A few of my favorite Instagram scheduling and posting apps:
Later (Free Up to 30 Posts) Later is excellent because it will automatically resize the photo when it is automatically posting on your behalf. I have worked with professional photographers and clients whose photo content comes directly from a professional photographer, and they say this aspect of it has been a lifesaver. Later will also allow you to publish to Stories, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook.
Planoly (Free Up to 30 posts) Planoly is excellent if you are into your entire feed having an individual feel. The benefit to Planoly is when you plug individual photos in you will see how they will look in the entirety of your feed. My word of caution on this is Planoly will not resize the picture for you when it automatically posts, in other words, it just won’t publish your photo at all if it is out of proportion. Planoly will only allow you to post to your stories and your grid.
Tailwind (Free 30 days then $15/month) Tailwind is more of a planning and scheduling platform for Pinterest; however, you are also able to schedule and post to your Instagram.
By planning ahead, scheduling and automating the publication of your digital marketing posts you will have the peace of mind to enjoy that vacation or the weekend off that you have worked so hard to earn.