Yes, you are on vacation. Yes, you are enjoying a time out. Yes, you left work at the office. Well, that is the ideal. However, in reality, particularly for entrepreneurs, marketers and customer service leaders, social media never sleeps. Time management is the key to successfully blending beach chair time  and social media time. Here are tips on how to max out your social media and vacation activities.

Timing is everything

When do most people post?  When do most people read? A little research can go a long way to taking the stress off. You can lie by the pool, plan your content, map out the promotion strategy, and when there's calm between the social storms, post wisely for top ROI. Early morning is one of the worst times to post. Late afternoon works best across most platforms. And, weekends, rather than weekdays have some great advantages. Social Marketing Writing's research is a great resource on when is the best time for each social media platform.

Which platform when

When planning any business activity - a meeting, a conference, an announcement - you want to pick the perfect time. This also applies to posting on social media. Qucksprout recommends you follow users' leads:

• Facebook users peak on Fridays.
• Tweets on the weekend generate the best B2C activity.
• LinkedIn users love Tuesday mid-morning to lunch.
• Pinterst pinning is most popular Saturday 8pm-11pm.
• Instagram interaction is tops on Mondays and off-peak hours (evenings).
  
  

However, I've had excellent luck with LinkedIn on a Sunday!

Follow in Richard Branson's Footsteps

Voted the best social media CEO, Richard Branson likes to keep things simple. He completes the social media circle: posting, reading comments, and using feedback to generate new posts. People love a story, and a little humour can go a long way. And, today's audiences are pretty savvy: be truthful, sincere and clear.

There's a reason social media browsing is called 'surfing'. And it's most successful if you follow the ebb and flow of your clients. Everyone gets the most out of the experience, and we can all be 'happy campers'. Set that beach chair up just how you like it and relax.

I recently worked with a client delivering training sessions over one month. The client participated in each workshop. And, after each one they gathered participants' feedback. Based on what the client heard, saw and read, we massaged the workshops to meet participants' and the client's needs as we went along. The benefits were immediate and inspiring.

For the participants
Feedback was real and responded to. Each workshop became like a live focus group. They could have instant impact on
the improvements for the next group, and for theirs. Now, that's quality in motion and empowerment.

For the client
Being with the workshop groups, hearing their feedback and observing their tasks, gave them incredible insights into what they were offering and what they could do to make it more valuable in the future. It greatly increased the quality.

For the trainer
I felt so much part of the organization and the team. Instead of coming in, delivering  and leaving, I was getting ideas, receiving encouragement and  becoming better informed to meet goals and needs. Training feedback usually comes in a printed document, emailed at a later date and may – or may not – have any bearing on future training. This live feedback had so much more impact.

sIf you have multi-day training, ask your client for continuous feedback. If you are doing single day training, build in three opportunities
to get live or written feedback. And, be prepared to act on it, if it is important for the majority of learners.  Either way, ask the client for time afterward to go over the feedback together – so everyone can benefit.