Beach Sunset
This very much depends on the role your blog plays within your business.
If your blog is “your business” then taking a break whilst on holiday or vacation may not be an option. If it is a part-time affair then taking a few weeks out a year may do no harm.
Sometimes you cannot beat good old pen and paper
When I left for a trip to France last week I had the intention of writing every day, needless to say the act of being away with family took priority over the normal day to day activities, as it should have. Not only that, staying in the remote French countryside, Internet access was haphazard, and with data roaming charges prohibitively expensive, access to the web for research, Twitter and other normal online activities were severely restricted.
On the few occasions I did attempt to write neither the iPad nor laptop were up to the sun’s glare around the pool; sand was not going to get a look in as far as either were concerned on the beach, and evenings held more family fun-time.
The effect of little conversation on Twitter and no blogging for a whole week?
My site traffic dropped like a stone. There was little effect socially, Klout accepting I may take a break, and people on Twitter still finding me interesting enough even though I wasn’t engaging much.
Based on previous week:
- Blog traffic -50%
- Twitter +30 followers
- Klout score down 1 point
My traffic from search based results held up, but due to a lack of new posts I had virtually no traffic from subscribers or social media sources.
For me this was not disastrous, my blog is not my main source of income, but if it was this could have seriously impacted my bottom line. As I have outlined previously, blogging daily really can have positive effect on your site traffic. In contrast any slow down in your output can have a negative effect.
If you run a blog as part of your business you need to plan for those breaks, by either writing more beforehand or having others produce content whilst you’re away. Don’t let the thought of lost site traffic, and possibly revenue, effect your family break this summer!
How do you plan for those unavoidable gaps in your blogging schedule?