Here are 6 ways I kept our communications and marketing going during my maternity leave.
Last November, I left for maternity leave to welcome our first baby, Olsen Jack, into the world! It was a sweet time full of lots of baby snuggles ... and Netflix (let's be real). But before I could float off into mama-land, I had to make sure my responsibilities at Fishhook would keep running.
In many ways, my job was like my baby. I was the first to really focus on marketing at Fishhook. Before me, they, as Evan says, did things in the margins. I got to invent something new! I got to put systems and priorities into place. And I took it pretty seriously. The thought of not checking our analytics, making sure the blog posts went out successfully or responding to social media posts each day made me feel a little queasy. To make sure we would keep reaching people with our message, I went to work to prepare.
Now there's something you should know about me: At my core, I'm not the most detailed person. If you're familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types, I'm a serious P (perceiver), which means while the J's are organizing their lives and sticking to a plan, I'm improvising as I go. Thankfully, I've been able to grow in my project management skills while at Fishhook, and I've learned to adopt some J tendencies, so I can get stuff done. And these lessons, taught to me by other J's on the team, helped me as I was making my maternity leave plan.
Here's what I learned: When leaving for maternity leave (or a long absence of any kind), you cannot be too prepared.
Here are 6 ways you (or someone in your organization) can plan for a personal leave:
- Utilize a content calendar
We use a content calendar daily, so this wasn't a hard choice, and it was the core of my maternity leave organization and planning. I started by plotting out every piece of content we needed to produce to keep our marketing moving while I was gone. I decided the topic, author/designer and publish date of each piece, and then we used it to start production.
- Scheduling/automation
Once each piece of content was produced, I used our marketing software, HubSpot, to automate literally everything. We scheduled every blog post, downloadable resource and social media post during my leave – everything. This was a pertinent part of our plan because it meant that our marketing would keep moving, even if someone wasn't focusing on it every day.
- Delegate
This part was difficult for me. Admittedly, I did not want to hand over my responsibilities, but it was completely necessary! Obviously, I wasn't going to be there, so we picked one person to be the go-to for questions (Shayla) and one person to manage the tasks we didn't automate (Katie). Together, these two continued making progress in our marketing without it taking away from their other roles on the team.
- Social media admins
If you are the person who manages your church's social media, this is one of the most important things to do before you leave. You must make sure to give someone on your team access to your church Facebook page(es) and leave the login information for your other social media accounts. I left Shayla with the keys, and she kept up with questions and messages. If you don't do this, it might seem like your whole organization went on leave ... not just you!
- Prioritize what's done and not done while gone
It's going to be almost impossible for every part of your daily tasks to be covered while you're gone, and that's okay! Make a list of priorities, and don't be afraid to let some things go. For us, it was our analytics. Typically I keep track of our analytics daily. I measure where we are, what's working and what's not, so I can tweak things. However, this wasn't something our team had time to do, and it wasn't really necessary. I was only gone for six weeks, so we decided to measure analytics when I got back.
- Make plans for transitioning back to work
This is something I could've easily overlooked. Luckily, other leaders on the team brought it to my attention, and it has been so helpful! When you come back from a long absence, there's going to be some ramp-up time. You'll need to ease back in without feeling bombarded, so it's good to plan beyond your return date. Make sure if you've automated content, you schedule enough to last you a few weeks after you return to work. And think through how you will sync with your team and take over your daily tasks again.
How did you prepare for a personal leave? What did you learn that might be helpful for others?
