Leave your social media in safe hands this summer

Everyone deserves a holiday – social media managers included! And by holiday we don’t just mean time away from the office, we mean time away from doing, checking, or even thinking about work. Speaking from previous experience, it can be hard to switch off after handing your accounts over to a colleague or colleagues for safekeeping whilst you’re away. It’s not that you’re a workaholic or don’t trust your colleagues to follow instructions (although sometimes there is an element of this); it’s more that you’re worried that circumstances will arise that may throw less experienced community managers off and put the brand’s reputation (and by extension, your relationship with your client) into serious jeopardy. No one wants to return from a couple of weeks of bliss to a full-on nightmare…

If you yourself are a social media manager, you’ll know how hard it can be to commit your knowledge and intuitive practices and judgement calls into writing for a colleague to refer to. So maybe next time you’re planning an escape from the office, you should consider handing the reigns to a fellow social media manager rather than Jo in PR or Dave in Customer Service.

And relax…

We’ve had several instances now of social media or community managers coming to us for without-a-hitch holiday cover. We take a thorough brief, get to grips with their brand’s tone of voice, escalation policy and content calendar and for extra peace of mind, undertake a free trial ahead of the social media manager heading off on their holibobs. This way, any misunderstandings can be ironed out and additional questions raised ahead of time, alleviating the risk of a work text interrupting an afternoon lazing by the pool!

Is this terribly expensive? Not at all. Depending on the level of service required over the holiday period, we’ll quote for a set number of hours at our standard rate. If we go over this, that’s fine – the quote includes a 20% time flex. However if a crisis does occur and we exceed our estimate by more than the 20% we will add this to the invoice. However should a crisis arise we imagine your company will be only too happy to have an experienced social media manager at the helm to guide them through it.

If you’d like further details of this service or of our strong track record managing communities for a range of B2B and B2C clients across FMCG, retail, leisure, manufacturing, engineering, renewable energy and automotive aftermarket sectors, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.