My youngest was poorly the other day, all she wanted was to be nestled into my side on the sofa. So of course that’s what I did.
As a mum, we’ve all been there, scrapping our plans to take care of the kids. But when you also run your own business, how do you stop the inevitable sick days from derailing your business’s visibility? Because the bills still need to be paid, they don’t stop for illness.
There are a few things you can do to keep your marketing afloat if you have to step back.
Use social media to your advantage.
Remember you might not be online, but your customers are. Make sure you have some form of content posted on your platforms so that they can find you when they are looking for what you provide. (They might be doom scrolling at 3 am with a baby who won’t sleep, you never know.)
If you are someone who posts on the fly, (we’ll talk about that later) and you can’t create a post then there are other ways you can maintain some visibility on socials.
Go and comment on other people's content- They’ve done the hard work creating it so be social and leave constructive comments on their posts.
Repost (IG)/Share (FB)- Hit those buttons on content that you see that’s relevant to your audience. Make sure it fits within your brand voice and values in a complimentary way. It shows up on your timeline but boosts someone else too!
Visit a group- we are all in so many Facebook groups (too many usually) so pick one or two where your ideal customers are, pop in and join in a thread or conversation that someone else has started. It doesn’t have to be work related, its just about showing up and connecting with people in some way.
Balance batching vs posting on the fly.
Now let’s go back to the topic of posting on the fly, I am not saying you should never do this, infact sometimes it’s a case of inspiration strikes and you can strike while the iron is hot.
But if this is how you always run your social posting, then when life throws you a curveball it’s going to hit your online presence hard.
Luckily for me, this time the illness was short lived but if it had gone through the whole family. It could have stopped me from showing up for days. If I relied on posting content on the fly.
Which is why I recommend batch creating content at regular intervals. An hour in your diary once a week or once a month, whatever is manageable for you. If finding that protected time is something you struggle with or perhaps the pressure in that time leaves you staring at a blank screen. Then come and do a content power hour with me and lets get a batch of content done together.
Whether you decide to have help or DIY your content creation, there are two ways to use a batch of posts once you’ve made them.
Option 1- Schedule it to go out one post after another so that you’re covered for a block of time.
Option 2- Schedule it in a staggered way so that you show up less often but over a longer period of time.
There is no right or wrong here, it all depends on your personality and circumstances. Both scheduling options create slack in your system. Option 1 is great as long as you are disciplined enough to create the next batch before the scheduler empties.
If you would struggle to do that then option 2 helps you maintain consistency over a longer period but has slower impacts. (Algorithms prefer that vs short, sharp unsustainable bursts) and you can post on the fly in between.
I use both methods depending on what’s going on, option 2 worked well for me in the summer holidays, I will probably use it again in December because as I write this, we have entered November and the crazy social calendars are about to begin. After all it’s not just illness that can pull you away from content creation and marketing your business.
But if you can reframe content from a chore to a priority task, you can get bookings even when you’re not in business mode.
Like I said if you’d like a hand to make sure the time you spend on content is extra productive don’t forget you can book a content power hour with me for £75 here.