We all love a lifehack. With a little dose of genius, we can steal back snippets of our precious time and use it for more important things. Like refreshing holidays, like personal development, like all the things that bring smiles to our faces. In the pre-Christmas time crunch, a little automation genius can help maximise our holidays.

Forget the stress of letting work intrude on your break. Say hello to your well-deserved freedom - while your tech does the hard yards for you!

While counting down to your endless days spent at the beach, invest some time in these easy-peasy pre-holiday wins. With careful planning, your business’ online presence can continue to flourish through the New Year and beyond!

Bulk scheduling = social media genius

Social media is a fast moving beast. One of the most important elements for success is consistency.

"Success isn't always about 'greatness'. It's about consistency. 

Consistent hard work gains success. Greatness will come."

— Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

It’s sure great if you’re there for the lazy afternoons when your audience is browsing Facebook (procrastinating). But if your social output is at a standstill during those crucial moments, then you’re missing out on opportunity to be present.

Consistent and relevant content is all about building trust, loyalty and awareness. Whether your company is B2B or B2C, there are still real people on the other end of the screen (who are probably on holidays too) that you should be trying to relate to. Real people want to see the human side of your company, and holidays are a great time for it.

In your pre-holiday countdown, prepare social content to last you through December and at least midway through January as a buffer. A bulk upload template, like the one below, is awesome for:

• Planning large quantities of social content
• Ensuring all social messages are the right character length, during the creation process
• Uploading and scheduling hundreds of posts at the same time

Try this free template for making bulk social scheduling a breeze:

In the post Christmas and early New Year season, there’s a whole lot of goal-setting, habit changing madness going on. People are looking to pursue personal and business development and are ready to look for new alternatives to propel them forward or excite them. Consider how you can use this chance to position your brand and products/services as the bringer of New Year opportunity.

Set up a calendar for better content consistency

While consistency is a great motto for social and site content, it’s easy to lose track in the flurry of pre-holiday activity. Once you’ve set your goals and ideal frequency, use a visual calendar to check for any missed opportunities.

For Hubspot users, the “Content Calendar” on the left panel of the dashboard leads you to an easy visual calendar.

Ensure no specific platform is neglected, by checking consistency of content across your channels. Hubspot’s filter lets you view specific campaigns and messages that are scheduled.

If you aren’t using Hubspot, other social media scheduling tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite also offer handy calendar functionality.

Wield some workflow magic for better lead nurturing

The brilliance of modern marketing technology is in the ability to nurture leads without ever picking up a phone or turning on a computer.

Marketing automation tools (Hubspot, Pardot, Marketo etc.) allow you to set up workflows for guiding future customers along the buyer's journey. With some workflow magic, you can turn scenario 1…

• Business Owner Barry visits website
• Reads through 2 blog posts
• Downloads offer
• A week later, after no additional contact with business, forgets about it all

• Business Owner Barry (BOB) visits website and browses blog
• Downloads offer
• Receives a series of emails, offering helpful information, over several weeks or months
• Sales team reach out to him
• Barry becomes a customer

A workflow is simply a set of automated actions triggered by certain events.

The goal might be to:

• Nurture a lead, belonging to a particular buyer persona segment, into a sales qualified lead
• Promote an event for a specific buyer persona
• Provide helpful content to convert leads, belong to a particular buyer persona segment, into customers

Whether you’ve already got some workflows in place, or you’re starting with a clean slate, the pre-holiday period is a great time to whip some workflows into shape. For your website visitors who happen to drop by during the late parts of 2015, you don’t want to leave them hanging. If you’ve got a festive-themed content offer, set up a workflow exclusively for the holiday period. If you’re gearing up for an exciting launch next year, why not start building anticipation early on, through your email marketing and social channels?

It’s also important to consider the frequency of your contact during the holiday period. While consistency is important, no one wants or needs a tidal wave of emails to return to when their holidays end.

Where to now?

Automation sure is a lifesaver for everyone. Summer’s here to stay, so it’s time to spread more love on socials, build long term awareness and whip your workflows into shape! Try this trusty scheduling template to get the ball rolling. Once all that hard work is done, simply celebrate those wins…

Image credit: Giphy