It’s that time of year…the holidays. You want to take time off from work. Maybe you want to go on vacation or visit family. That means time off from your blog. But your readers don’t expect your blog to go dark for two weeks while your computer is turned off. They are on vacation, too, which may mean they have more time to read your posts.
In fact, you never want to break your blogging schedule. If you occasionally publish a post later that usual, it’s not the end of the world. But you don’t want to skip days or weeks and leave your blog readers wondering why no new posts have been published.
This leaves bloggers in a quandary; I know. I don’t take many long vacations, but a few times a year I am away from the office for five to 10 days for business or pleasure. And occasionally, such as during the winter holidays, I family visits, and I have little time to write and publish posts.
I need to ensure my readers see new content on the regular schedule. I have to keep publishing posts despite holidays and vacations. But I want to enjoy myself if I’m on holiday or vacation.
How do you make that happen?
Plan Posts in Advance
The simplest solution is to write posts in advance. Typically, this is how I handle this issue. When I know I need to be away from my office (and my blogs). I increase the number of posts I write per week. In this way, I accumulate more content than usual. I then have a backlog of posts ready to for use.
Schedule Posts for the Future
When you know you will be away, you want posts appearing on your blog without you needed to hit the “publish” button. That means you need to use the schedule function on your blog.
Draw from your backlog of posts. Format the posts, add a graphic or photo, and then hit the “schedule” button.
If you publish on particular days and at certain times, you can schedule your posts to publish just as if you had done this manually. Your readers will never know you are out of the office.
Solicit and Schedule Guest Posts
If you don’t have the time to write additional posts prior to the holidays or your vacation, which is often the case, solicit guest posts. Featuring experts in the same subject area provides a variety of advantages:
- You affiliate yourself with other experts, which increases your authority or expert status.
- You expose yourself to a new audience, because you guest blogger typically will share the post with his followers on social networks.
- You develop relationships with other experts in your field.
- You create opportunities for reciprocal guest blogging, which means you then post on the guest blogger’s site; this gives you broader exposure to their audience.
Hire a Writer
If you have the money, you can always hire a writer to churn out some blog posts for you. You can then schedule these for use while you are out of the office.
Be sure the writer knows how to write online content and is well versed in your subject matter. Also, edit the pieces carefully prior to posting them.
Develop a Stable of Guest Bloggers
A blog can benefit from regular guest bloggers. In general, this gives you a break from constantly writing blog posts. And when you go away, you can schedule their pieces instead of writing so many of your own in advance to fill the gaps when you are not able to write and publish posts.
Do you have additional ways you keep your blog running smoothly while you celebrate holidays or take time for vacation? If so, I’d love to hear about them. Leave me a comment below.
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