With the holidays coming up, many of us will be taking a little time away from work for vacation, to focus on family and friends.

While this time is important – in fact, many of us started our businesses to have more time with loved ones. Sometimes it can be hard to truly step away from our work.

After all, with having an online business, we know it’s essential to stay visible.

Part of you might be wondering if it’s even possible to take a truly work-free vacation.

The good news is that with some thoughtful planning and preparations, you can set your business up to thrive while you relax and enjoy your vacation.

Ready to learn how? Follow these four steps:

1 – Give yourself time to plan ahead for Vacation time.

Planning for vacation time sounds simple enough, but thoughtful planning well-ahead of your time away really is essential to making sure your business can thrive and you can completely step away while you’re gone.

Begin by making a list of all of the tasks that would normally be done while you’re gone. Ideally, this would be already be listed in a project management tool such as Trello or Asana, but you can still do this even if you don’t have that setup.

Make sure to give yourself time to write down every task you’d usually be doing. If you have a team, it can help to talk this over with a team member, as they might catch things you’re overlooking.

Once you have your list, you’ll want to divide your tasks into groups:

• Which tasks aren’t essential and can wait until after you return to work? Make a note to check in on these after your time away.
• Which tasks are essential, but can be delegated? Make notes and start handing these tasks over to your team so they’re prepared in advance.
• Which tasks are essential and can be done in advance? These are the tasks we’ll focus on completing before you take time off.

2 – Use what you’ve got – repurpose as much as possible.

Even though you’ll be on vacation, you want your business to stay visible and this means you’ll need consistent content to share with your audience.

Begin by figuring out what content you’ll need for when you’re gone. Ideally, you’ll also want to plan content for the week after you return. That way, you’re already prepared and have a bit of breathing room before needing to create more content.

You’ll want to focus on types of content, number of content pieces, and the subjects you’ll be focused on.

Once you know what you need, you can begin by looking at the content you’ve already created. You’ll have previous content stored in a content library/system that allows you to come back to it and repurpose it.

I know a lot of business owners feel as though each piece of content needs to be new. The truth is, that the online world is a noisy, fast-moving place. Even your most adoring fans aren’t likely to remember something you wrote 3, 6, or 12 months ago.

If it helps, you can think of repurposing content as a way to share that value with people who hadn’t yet found you when you originally posted it. Plus, you can always revise what you’ve written. Having content that’s already created can give you a solid starting point.

Look through your content. Choose as many pieces as you can to fill the content needs you mapped out for your time away.

3 – Make the most of your vacation time and batch create in advance.

Once you’ve figured out what content you can repurpose, it’s possible that you’ll still have some gaps in your content calendar.

So how do you make sure that this content is created before you leave? And without taking up too much time in your already busy schedule? The answer is batching!

Look at your content plan and the content you still need to create. Start grouping similar tasks together.

For example, social media graphics that need to be created would be grouped together. Blog posts that need to be written would be grouped together. And videos that need to be recorded would be grouped together.

Once you have your tasks grouped, look at your calendar, and block out time for each set of tasks. For example, you might take time one day to write your social media posts and then take some time another day to create the images for these posts. By focusing on one type of task at a time, you’ll simplify the process and will likely get more done in less time than if you did a variety of tasks needed to complete one piece of content.

For blog posts, you might outline your posts one day. Write your rough drafts another day, and then revise them on the third day. With this process, it might take you a few days, but you can complete several posts all at once.

4 – Schedule everything in advance.

After your content is created, all that needs to be done is to schedule it to be shared while you’re gone.  If you have a virtual assistant or team, they could do this for you, but even if you’re a one-woman operation, there are plenty of scheduling tools that can support you.

Select which scheduling tools you’ll use for each platform. You might find one that meets your needs for all of your platforms, or you might find that you prefer different tools. Either way, set aside a bit of time to make sure you schedule all of your content (social media posts, blog posts, emails, etc.) in advance. With this last step, you’ll make sure your business stays consistently visible, even while you’re away.

It’s absolutely possible for your business to thrive while you enjoy time away with your loved ones, it just takes a bit of extra planning beforehand.

And if you are ready to hand over more of the backend parts of your business so you can enjoy more work-free vacations, let’s talk. My team and I excel at taking care of the daily tasks. So that your business runs smoothly while you relax and enjoy time with your loved ones. Sign up for your free Business Lifeline Call right here.