With the holiday season fast approaching, it’s time to prepare your business and get that content ready! Check out my 5 tips to prepare your business content for the holiday season!

The Holiday Season will be on us in NO TIME, and for many brands, that means that your work/life balance is going to be off kilter for a little while.

I want to start by saying this: TAKE YOUR VACATION GIRL! Don’t stress about keeping up the same pace that you have been through the early fall. 

What you DO need to do, though, is make sure that you don’t go MIA for 2 months and leave your audience hanging while you take time off with your family. I know what you’re thinking… HOW do I take a vacation, but also remain present for my audience?

Here are my top 5 Tips to prepare your business content for the holidays!

Pictured Above: Ann Marie on the Shore

1. Create a plan for the days before, during, and after your trip:

Usually here at Jenn Marie Photography, as monthly members we plan your sessions around what is happening in the next month. HOWEVER, during the holiday season, it’s really important to make sure that if you’re taking a vacation, you have your content planned out PREFERABLY through at least the first trip you’re going to take.

Use these steps to get started:

1. Block out your calendar for the days you’ll be on vacation

2. Sketch out what you want to talk about for:

   1. The week before you leave

   2. The week you’ll be gone

   3. 3-4 days after you return

3. List the content you need to create for those days

2. Plan out your content using an app:

Once you have gathered all of your content, it’s time to put that baby on auto-pilot while you’re gone. Put all of your content, captions, and hashtags into a planning app like Planoly or Later. 

Once it’s in there, it’s totally up to you whether you want to set it to auto-post or if you want it to just remind you to hit post yourself. Personally, I prefer to take the 5 minutes to post it myself so that I am conscious of the idea that a post went out. 

This is also important for your reels and stories (more about that later!)

3. Set aside a LITTLE bit of time for social interaction:

After all, these are SOCIAL media apps, friends. They’re meant to gather you together and create conversation. 

I know… I told you that you were on vacation. BUT if you’re anything like me, I will always have my phone at some point during the day. Use the down time that you have (5-10 minutes) to interact with your audience. This is especially important if you’ve made posts that have gotten comments! Replying to people will build your community. 

This doesn’t have to be every day, but try to make a little time to keep yourself active on your platform. 

4. Create stories and reels:

I know who’s reading this, and I just said reels and you broke out into a sweat. 

STOP. Breathe. 

I don’t mean spend three hours trying to learn dance moves while you’re on vacation with your family. 

What I DO mean is to take small videos of your trip (or your staycation) and save them into a folder on your phone. That way, when you get home and you’re ready to STOP running on auto-pilot, you can break the ice with your audience with a cute little reel highlighting what you did over the break. 

If you follow me, you know that I batch-make my reels. If you spend time during your planning phase making a few reels to post while you’re gone, this will also help you stay relevant and in your followers feeds!

As far as stories go, do this to the level that you are comfortable with and what your audience is used to. Don’t post to stories a ton? (you should, but that’s a conversation for another day) NO WORRIES! But if your audience is used to seeing you each and every day, then try to post at least one thing in your stories daily to keep up the momentum. 

You can also plan your stories the same way you planned your feed above! 

5. Don’t stress about it:

If we’re all being 100% honest with each other, the world will not crumble if you take a week off and don’t post a single thing to social media (GASP!)

The most important thing to remember during this season is to relax, enjoy your friends and family, and take care of yourself. 

You can’t pour from an empty cup, and you can’t be a good representative of your brand if you’re mentally exhausted. So take these tips, use them to the extent that you are comfortable with, and have the BEST holiday!

Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Not sure you have enough content to get you through the holiday season? Let’s chat! I would love to set up your free consult!