In today’s video, you’ll learn exactly how to take a BREAK from social media the
right way without ruining your online presence and stopping your growth!
I’m sharing a step-by-step process so that you can enjoy your time off and still get
enough reach and engagement during this time!
Ready?
Let’s do this!
Hi my lovely people, it’s Natalia and welcome back to my channel where I help you create
better content and grow on social media!
The summer is here, we’re all thinking about that long-awaited holiday, there are events
happening left and right and it’s the perfect time to take that break you’ve been planning
for a while.
But can you do it if you have so much to take care of with social media?
If you are a solopreneur, influencer, content creator trying to maintain a strong business
or personal brand online, you still deserve to take a full-on break from time to time.
Luckily for you, there is a way to do it so it doesn’t damage your online presence at
all.
Can you just disappear completely for a few weeks?
Yes, you can!
Today, you’ll learn exactly how to take a break from social media as a content creator.
I’m sharing a complete step-by-step process to switch off completely and yet keep your
audience engaged and informed!
So grab a cup of tea, pull out your notepad and let’s get you ready for that lovely
break you’ve been secretly dreaming of!
For a carefree social media break, you need to know exactly how much content you have
to prepare and as usual, planning is going to be your first step.
Start by counting how many posts you have to create beforehand.
Most people think about the whole period that they’re going to be off but your social
media break is going to be slightly longer.
My advice would be to also account for a few days before when you’re likely to be getting
ready, have some errands to run or be packing for your trip and for a few days after when
you may need a day or two to cool off, rest up or do some basic clean up around the house.
No matter why you’re taking a break, it’s super useful to allow yourself some buffer
on both ends so that you’re prepared for any situation and have more chill in general.
After all, that’s the point of taking a break too!
So let’s say you’re flying to Spain for two weeks and normally, you post 3 times a
week.
That’s 6 posts for when you’re away, two for before you fly and two when you’re back,
leaving you with 10 posts to prepare ahead of time.
Now, with the right tactics, that’s not that hard to achieve!
What you want to do now is to map them out on a calendar so that you know exactly which
dates you’ll be publishing on.
It can look something like this.
That’s how you stay organized and if you’re not already using a content calendar for your
social media, then you definitely have to!
I highly recommend you watch this video here to learn how to create a content calendar
that works for you.
Of course, we all know that not all posts are created equal and different formats have
different goals.
That’s why I always recommend you have a variety on your profiles so that you’re
touching on all the different needs of your audience and making sure you’re hitting
the targets in your business as well.
Now what you can do is to note what formats you’ll use for each of the posts.
Let’s say it’s one Reel, one carousel and one single image post per week.
This is what it may look like for our Spanish trip example, and of course remember you can
do whatever you like with your profile!
You can have two Reels and a carousel, publish photos only or do a different combination
altogether.
What’s important is that you stick to your overall strategy and create a posting schedule
that works for your marketing goals!
Now, back to our calendar, what this whole thing does is that it helps you batch content
ahead of time in a smart way because you’ll know exactly how much writing, designing and
recording you’ll have to do and plan all of your tasks accordingly.
Now, all you need to do is to populate your calendar with actual post ideas and you’ll
have your content plan sorted to enjoy your social media break.
To make things even easier, you can do it in line with your content pillars.
If you don’t know what content pillars are, these are basically the core topics you talk
about in your content that are relevant to your audience and your business.
If you’ve not identified yours, you can check out this video next that’s going to
help you do it and come up with a backlog of ideas.
This of course is going to be super useful for your content planning here too!
Ok, so we have a plan like this, but now, what next?
Well, you also have to decide whether or not you want to be active on your stories too.
And listen, chances are if you’re going away for holiday or you’re going to be super
busy with a speaking engagement for example, you may not have the time or want to spend
time showing up on Stories.
And that’s absolutely fine!
But, before you write stories off completely, I want to give you a cool tip that you may
not be aware of.
Did you know that you can actually SCHEDULE STORIES ahead of time to be automatically
posted for you?
Well, if not, I’m here to show you exactly how it’s done!
What you’ll need is to go to the Meta Business Suite which had a facelift and is a tool that
a lot of creators are still sleeping on.
From the planner panel which you can find in the left panel here, you’ll be able to
schedule all of your stories for the whole duration of your break.
Now, do you have to be as active as you normally are?
Absolutely not!
But if you’d like to maintain this connection with your audience through Stories, that’s
your option too.
In this case, make sure you map out your stories on the content calendar as well so that you
create them beforehand too.
And of course, if you don’t want to share stories at all during this time, it may be
a good idea to let your audience know that you’re taking a break and will not be active
on Stories for some time.
But more on that later!
Now that you have your full content plan and your tasks for content creation, it’s time
to batch them all!
I like to start with writing all of my captions and scripts for Reels so that I set the mood
for every other task like designing graphics or recording.
This allows me to focus on one activity at a time which is a bit easier than creating
a whole post and then moving on to another.
Of course, if that’s your preference, then by all means, go one by one like this, but
in my experience, it’s just easier on our brains to focus on all the writing, then all
the designing, then all the recording separately.
Once the captions are fleshed out, you can start designing…
whether it’s Twitter-style quotes, or single image Infographics, carousels or Story graphics
- you know exactly how many you have to create and what they’re about so it should be much
easier for you!
After you’ve designed all of your posts and stories, then you need to plan for your
recording day.
Make sure you’ve outlined all your scripts for original Reels and saved any audios that
you’d need for those trending ones.
Apart from that, you can set aside a few outfits so that your Reels don’t look like they’ve
been batched and you ring some variety on the feed.
Plus, don’t forget about a bottle of water to stay hydrated and clear out the surroundings
so that you don’t have any distractions.
Now that you have all of your content batched, it’s time to schedule it all!
Here, you have a few options too!
My favorite scheduler is Later because it’s very intuitive and has many cool functions
but you can also go for the Meta Business Suite which allows you to schedule posts through
the same planner as the stories.
A few things that I want to mention when it comes to scheduling is what you’ll actually
be able to set for auto-publishing vs what you’ll need to post manually.
With the Business Suite, you can schedule Stories, carousels and feed videos and they
will post automatically, however, you won’t be able to schedule Reels at all.
With Later, you won’t be able to auto-publish stories or Reels and you have to have a paid
plan to be able to schedule those as well.
What happens when you schedule Reels or stories with Later is that it sends you a notification
on your phone and you then have to go in and manually post it.
It’s still a fantastic way to stay on top of your content on a break because everything
is ready for you, you just need to publish it.
It serves as a reminder on steroids and you don’t have to worry about missing anything!
Alright, once you’ve chosen your options and scheduled all of your posts and Stories,
it’s time to set an away message.
And I’m sure I’m not going to surprise you that it’s done in the Meta Business
Suite as well - told you it’s a powerful little tool!
The first thing you need to make sure of is that you allow access to your Instagram Messages
which can be done from the IG settings, then Privacy, then Messages and allow access to
messages here.
Once that’s out of the way, you can go to Meta again, and from here, you’ll have the
Messages panel, then you have to choose the Messaging Settings and you’ll access the
Automated Responses.
You can type out your away message that’s going to be sent as a reply to anyone who
DMs you and select if you want IG and Messenger to send these.
Then hit add to schedule, choose the days of the week and you’re sorted!
There’s one other thing that I’d recommend you do now and that’s actually announcing
your break.
Now, announcing sounds very serious and big, but it really doesn’t have to be!
You can choose to jump on your stories and explain how long you’re planning to be away
for and if you want to, you can even save this to your highlights so that after the
24 hours have passed, other people who visit your profile may find out about this break
too.
It’s a clear sign to your followers that you will not be responding to comments or
messages during this time and I’m sure they’re going to appreciate it.
If you’re completely overwhelmed with content creation and need a full break where you won’t
publish a thing, then I would definitely post about it so that your people know exactly
what to expect.
I think it’s such an important thing to normalize because we all go through burn out
phases, we get tired, or we just need some time to rest, replenish our energy and get
back inspired and refreshed.
If we as entrepreneurs don’t talk about it, this whole myth about not being able ever
to take a break is going to keep perpetuating and that’s neither true nor healthy for
the community we serve.
And in this spirit, one more thing that you can do before you go on your break is to mute
all of your notifications from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and any other platform you’re
on.
With all the steps you’ve taken so far, you’re more than ready to let go and enjoy
your break fully.
I know it’s tempting to check if everything is alright, to reply to comments, to answer
DMs but it’s more important to set healthy boundaries in your business and that includes
this bit too.
Just as you (hopefully) wouldn’t be expected to reply to work emails and answer phone calls
on your trip to Spain if you had a regular job, you shouldn’t expect of yourself to
be switched on during your time off from your business.
You may not agree with me, and trust me, I know business has its own rules, but I firmly
believe being able to take breaks is going to make you a better business owner in general.
I’m curious what you think about taking breaks on social media?
Have you ever tried it?
Have you been afraid of taking one yourself?
Comment down below - I’d love to know your perspective!
If you don’t have a content calendar yet, I have two videos teaching you how to set
one up for yourself and use it efficiently so you can check them out now and if you’re
struggling with organic growth on Instagram, I know this playlist is going to help you
a ton!
If you’ve enjoyed this video, it would be amazing if you gave it a thumbs up and subscribed
to my channel for more useful content like this!
I’m super grateful to you so thank you for being here and I’ll see you next time!