If you’re going on vacation soon and you’re anything like me, you want to create all the content in the world but also enjoy every moment and feel 0 stress. So how do you find the happy medium of being on vacation but also keeping up with your online Influencing self?

Step #1:

A month before your trip, create a list of everything you need to do before you leave. I know this sounds insane, like Millie…is this really necessary? YES. IT IS. Believe me, when I adapted this to my travel prep, oh my goodness, I felt the most prepared I’ve ever been! I created a checklist (with due dates because I’m extra AF) of everything I needed to do before leaving for my trip. This included: Getting my nails done, shooting any/all brand collaborations that are waiting on me, buying items I needed for the trip at least 2 weeks before, preparing all my content, wrapping up any work tasks/meetings I needed to finish before I left, etc.

Step #2:

This one travel-prep task alone was a game-changer for me. It doesn’t even have to be this “formal thing” either. Just throw on Netflix, sit in bed with your laptop, and write everything down. Think about it, have you ever had a trip planned that came up out of nowhere!? All the sudden you have 2 days to get everything ready, you’re spending extra money on next-day shipping for items you forgot you don’t have, you’re stressed out trying to pack and usually end up forgetting something. With everything thought out and written down ahead of time, you know exactly what to clear off your plate so everything about your trip, from packing to unpacking, is stress-free.

• Over prepare all posts/content before you leave. If you want to keep up with, or even be ahead of, your Instagram, blog, podcast or any online platform while you’re enjoying your vacation, this is so so important to do. Before leaving for my trip I had an extra blog post ready, 2 extra podcast episodes edited and scheduled, and 5 Instagram posts ready to go (this includes captions and hashtags). This way I wasn’t spending my vacation time on my social platforms 24/7 AND I didn’t have to come back from vacation feeling like I was behind on my blog or other platforms.

  You can schedule your content to auto-post using Tailwind or other similar tools. However, I prefer to post Instagram myself and spend 30 minute engaging.

  I would also like to mention this is best to do before you pack. I noticed if I still had posts to schedule my mind wasn’t fully focused on packing. You don’t want to be mentally distracted by anything else while packing so you can fully focus on not forgetting anything.

• Do your research. Yes this sounds like a no-brainer, or maybe you’re thinking “I already do this”, but think back to your last vacation: How much time did you spend looking up places to stop for food, cute places to shoot or transportation options to get to your next stop? These are all things you can do before your trip!

  While there can be so much fun in spontaneity, there is also a lot of time saved in preparing. Look up all the places you want to visit while you’re traveling, how close are they to each other? Can you knock out multiple spots in a day? What food places are around there in case you get hungry? Write all of these down and get a general idea for some of your days. You can even schedule a day as the “no plan” day, where you just explore and be spontaneous. At the end of the day, a little research never killed nobody.

• This is a bonus tip for those of you who work on collaborations or closely with brands. You know I’m constantly advocating for Influencers to pitch to brands, no matter what their follower amount is. Did you know that going on a trip is literally the BEST bait when pitching to brands. With a clear concept and timeline provided, brands are more likely to say yes. I’m not going to go over how to pitch, because that is in another blog post BUT I will give you these pointers for collaborations while on a trip:

  • Don’t overdo it! You are going to have a miserable time if all the content you’re creating on your trip is for other people. Depending on how long your trip is, only agree to 2-3 partnerships so you’re not overwhelmed

  • Know exactly what you want to shoot, where you want to shoot it and when. I had a collaboration with a hotel I was staying at where I had to post 5 photos on my feed and create 10 photos for them to post on theirs. Before the trip I thought through each photo concept, wrote them down and saved a list to my phone. This way, when on my trip, I wasn’t trying to “figure out” what to shoot. Yes, of course things will come up that may result in you altering your plan but I was able to capture at least 75% of my shots EXACTLY as anticipated and this saved me so much time and stress!

If you can think of any other trip hacks for Influencers, share them with me in the comments!

Xoxo

Millie