Add column break and space to using paragraph using styles

I'm going to design a fairly large festival programme and wish to make use of XML to ease the process.

But I need to be able to make column break after each entry, and also add spacing after certain XML tags.

I know how to make the XML tags connect to specific styles. But there seems to be no option other than Search and Find as to adding invisible characters.

I used the method of search and replace styles last year and the big drawback is that once you have done it, there is no going back – if you were to find out you did a mistake. Which is why I want to make use of XML to be able to make alterations to the structure afterwards.

Has anyone got any experience in this matter?