It can be difficult to maintain your social media strategy and efforts while at a conference, out of town, or when visiting a client site. Here are a few tips to help keep things organized and running for the days you're away from the office.

1. Utilize Apps: There truly are apps for everything these days and several will help you stay productive while you're away from the office. If you use a service to schedule and track your social media posts, check and see if they have an app. Like we've mentioned before, eImagine uses Hootsuite and their iPad app is convenient, easy to use, and makes life easy while on the go.  If you don't use a service like this, then just the basic Facebook and Twitter apps are still beneficial. No one wants to keep logging in on a browser or trying to squint to read everything. These apps keep your screen organized and information easy to read, post, and edit.

2. Plan: Business trips aren't always planned in advance and your schedule isn't always set like it can be when you're at the office. Figure out when you'll have some free time and plan to work on social media during that time. If you need to, schedule it on your calendar as a meeting so you have a set time to work on it. Otherwise, between catching flights or bouncing through meetings you'll never find the time.  I personally think the morning is the easiest. Before you head to an off-site, conference, or where ever you may be going, take a few minutes and schedule some posts.  Evenings are usually difficult because it's late, your day has probably run later than expected, you may have a dinner or event with other out of towners, or you may just want to relax.

3. Minimize: Don't feel like you have to keep up with the same volume of posts that you do while you're in the office. It may not be feasible if you don't have internet connection, are in meetings all day, etc. Figure out what is the most important in your social media strategy and focus on that. If your priority is to always thank followers or welcome new ones then just do that for a day or two. If the strength of your social media is the promotion of your blog or other company content, then focus on that instead. Taking a break from other topics within your strategy will help you stay organized.

4. Take Notes: It may seem strange but the change of pace or scenery when you're out of the office may provide you with some new content for blogs or social media posts. As you think of these things make sure you write down or record your thoughts so you can come back to them later for a post or blog. Maybe you want to tell your followers where you are and cover the event your attending. Keeping track of what you want to post can again help keep you organized and provide you with lots of great extra content!

With just these few small hints you can be tweeting and ready to hit the road in no time!

It's that time of year again... People are taking vacations, heading on Spring Break with their families, or calling in sick from those lovely Indiana springtime allergies. How do you handle your social media strategy with those key 1 or 2 people out of the office? Do you have enough resources to fill in the gap? It can be difficult in small businesses to find a way to bridge this gap especially if only 1 or 2 individuals run all your social media. For one, there's a lot to learn for someone who may just be stepping into the role for a short amount of time. For another, having someone else step in may disrupt the consistency or the voice of your regular social media efforts.

If you know that your 'social media guru' will be out of the office you can fill the gap in a few different ways.

1. Schedule posts. People schedule posts throughout the day anyway, so why not have your social media posts schedule for the entire time that people will be out of the office? At eImagine we use Hootsuite for scheduling, but there are many other options that can help if you know someone will be out ahead of time. If no warning of absence is given, then consider adjusting your strategy to always schedule posts a day ahead. That way if someone is out at the last minute, you aren't silent for a whole day!

2. Notify your followers. There's no reason you can't have someone else step in, but letting your followers know who is posting can help. This way if tweets become more infrequent, your social media voice changes from informative to being humorous, or posts start focusing more heavily on certain topics than they normally do, your followers will know why.

3. At the very least, do the bare minimum - REPLY. If you are known to have high interaction with your followers and you consistently answer questions, thank followers, or have any other dialog it is key to continue these communications. Even if you don't have any other type of posts, just a simple reply like "We're working on your problem/question and will get back with you soon!" is better than nothing. This will buy you a day or two of time until the social media person can then answer the questions or interact with the followers.

Happy Spring! Look for my next blog on ways to travel and tweet - for those of you who are out of the office or travelling for business and are still responsible for social media.