With the recent heatwave many of us are crying out to get away from the office and relax with an icy cocktails beside turquoise waters and white sands without a care in world. Most of us are still tackling the broken B &Q fan that only works when it rains, ticking off the days until we can jet away to paradise. But do we really stop when we are on holiday, and in a world dominated by “anytime, anywhere” can we truly get away from it all?

In a survey conducted this summer it was found that 67% of marekters will take a gadget abroad, with 23%  checking  emails every day  and 85% of us thinking about work 3 days before we go back. Not great if you’ve only got a week off.

This gets even more intense when you add social media into the bargain, with most of us checking Facebook at least 14 times a day. With the vast majority of us owning a least one mobile device we all have access to the internet at all times and we tend to use it.

It is important to get away, re-charge and relax but if you’re using social media to market your business and network it’s pretty unthinkable to leave it untouched for an extended period of time. Your social media accountants are a way for your clients to contact you and for potential clients to reach out to you as well. If they receive no response they’ll quickly lose interest, or worse if it is something that needs replying to quickly.

So what are your options? Make sure you’re not the only one who knows what to do with your social media accounts. Having someone in the business who can cover for you when you’re away will ensure that everything carries on smoothly until you return. That person doesn’t have to be an expert, just able to respond to any queries that come in.

Scheduling content is a must to keep up the hard work you’ve already put in. You can use a social media management tool, or free online site like Social Oomph to schedule tweets and posts to other social media sites as well.

And remember, if it sounds like too much work getting in an external social media manager is always an option. This person will be an expert, able to develop a strategy and high value content for your sites and also to manage leads and queries for you, wherever you are in the world. [image on next page]