I have announced on Twitter that I am going to be out on vacation for a week in Florida and I really won’t be online to do much of anything online, including blogging. I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to think of ways to keep Blogussion going strong without me being here at all for a whole week.
Luckily, I have a partner to do work here while I can’t, so that makes things way easier for me. But not every blogger is fortunate enough to have a partner like I do, which is why I thought I would write this post.
I am going to cover the three most important things that are absolutely essential for you (in order of urgency) to make sure are under control on your blog while you’re away. Those things are content, traffic and your community. Those three things eat up the most time on your blog, and those are the things that can’t be left alone for very long without suffering some pretty bad consequences.
1. Keeping Fresh Content Flowing
Obviously without fresh content on your blog, no one will read your blog. In some cases (like mine) you will not have any chances to write on your blog. As nice as that may sound, it has a terrible effect on your blog.
So how do we keep fresh content flowing dealing with the challenges of “wanting to get away from it all” on vacation, or the fact that you have no time or no way to write on your blog?
Write posts before you leave and have them auto publish
If you use WordPress, then you have the ability to post while you’re not even on your blog. This is insanely useful, because you can write posts beforehand and then have them publish by their selves on your blog. It’s like you never left your blog if you write enough.
The only challenge here is actually writing all of those posts. So many of us are accustomed to writing a post, publishing it and then going off to another blog task. Try writing more than one post a day, but only publishing one post.
Once you’ve stock piled up these posts, you can put the Timestamp on them and have them publish their selves. Easier said than done, I know. But it just has to be done.
Guest Posters
Try to get some guest posters to publish articles on your blog. It’s always great to have different authors on your blog, but more importantly you are trying to get your days worth of content posted onto your blog.
Depending on your authority as a blogger, it may or may not be hard to find people who want to guest post. If you are a few weeks into your blog, it’s likely you aren’t someone who would have people jump at the chance to write on your blog.
You may need to offer some incentives at first, such as money for example. If you can’t offer money, then find something else that can be very valuable to someone.
Freelance Writers
I talked a little about hiring someone in the above point, and this is something that I don’t think is usually considered very much by bloggers who are going away. I have used a freelance writer before, and I was very happy with my results. If I didn’t have a partner here to write posts while I was gone, I think I would have hired a freelancer for some articles.
If you’re going to hire, hire them about a week in advance before you leave. That way, it gives them to write and gives you time to revise anything and set it up to be auto published on your blog.
2. Keeping Your Community Happy
This is a tough situation, as the most important thing in building your community is interacting with them. And doing that isn’t easy if you are under the circumstances where you have no computer access.
Issue #1: Comment Approval on your blog
If you’re like most people, you will have to manually approve new comments on your blog. Obviously this can’t be done if you have no computer access, so that leaves you in a dilemma doesn’t it? You can’t stop discussion from happening on your blog for any amount of time, it’s just terrible for the community
How I would solve this
Turn off manual approval in your options panel. You can do this by going to Settings → Discussion → Uncheck “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”. Now any new comments posted to your blog will automatically publish.
If you do this, ANY comment will be posted including spammers! Make sure you have a plugin like Akismet, or some other spam fighter plugin activated or you may get spammed heavily!
Issue #2: Who will reply to comments?
Hopefully you reply to your blogs comments when you can, but who will be there to reply to comments when you’re away? You can’t just leave readers hanging, especially if they have questions or concerns.
How I would solve this
I am a very lucky blogger, because I have readers who will reply to other readers replies and answer any questions they have if I didn’t already. That is definitely not the case for other bloggers, so the only advice I can give you is that you reply to comments as soon as you return to your blog.
3. Keeping Up With Traffic
Luckily, traffic may be less of an issue if you have the right stuff on your blog. As long as you pump out quality articles and have a few frequent visitors to your blog, then I think you should be alright with traffic. Of course, with common techniques like blog commenting and forum posting out of the picture, you may see some drops in traffic.
Using Plugins like ShareThis increases your chances of your readers doing the promotion for you
Basically, any plugin on your blog that will automatically let someone spread the word about a blog post is a plugin that’s worth having not only when you can’t be at your blog, but when you are there too.
Here are some plugins you may want to look at to help you get your readers promoting your posts:
Do you have any plugins you want to add to that list?
How do you do it?
If you have ever left your blog before, what did you do to ensure as less damage as possible would be done to your blog? Share your tips here, I would love to know any last minute tips before I leave on my vacation!
Photo by Rob Carlson
30 Discussions
When I last had to step away from my blogs for over a day I fortunately only had one at the time. The auto publish feature was used for the week I was gone and through the marvels of cell phone technology I was able to remotely approve comments from those who hadn’t previously commented on the blog.
The next time that happens I may throw guest blogging into the mix on one of the blogs now though the majority will still be writing ahead of time and using the auto publish option.
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Approving comments through your cell? Now that would be handy indeed, was it a special connection/program or just via the mobile internet?
Mobile internet on most networks (in Australia) are pretty slow, unless you pay out of your head for it. To load Google takes a good 20-30 seconds; imagine reading/approving AJAX scripted comments.
Hey Alex, what are you doing in Florida?
Great post, I think it is always good to have unpublished posts available so you can post them if you are sick or going away without discomfort.
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Alex needed a well deserved break, with the many hours of work on the theme! Haha, nah I wouldn’t be surprised if that was partly the reason, but moreover I think it’s just a holiday
Just like you’ve mentioned TeenWebGuru, it’s great if you can have 3-4 unpublished but drafted posts cause you never know what might happen – that ultimately prevents you from posting that day.
I’m just on vacation for my Spring Break. There is such nice weather here, I couldn’t pass the opportunity down.
Kewl post Alex.
I made the mistake of making my blog stagnant while away once.
Farrhad A | The Dollar Diary’s last blog post..The Money is in the List
How we missed that
I remember that period of time Farrhad, it was when I still had TeenProBlogger and Alex was rockin’ with KolaKube right?
You were active on twitter though
Writing all the posts beforehand is good, but it really is a big challenge. Its almost impossible for me to write 5 or 6 posts altogether. However, hiring ghostwriters can solve the problem. Nice article.
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Ghost writers do wonders, but it still needs that touch of editing. It’s surprising how closer-followers on your blog can easily pick up on writing patterns and what-not
Still, buying content for that period can be a really good way to solve the problem-o
I haven’t left my blog untill now.. But all I’ll do or I suggest is having already written posts for Auto Publish. If you don’t have even time to write them and can spend some $$$.. Try getting ghost writers. Though, I’ve some friends who can write in the mean time for no $..
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You have some cool-as friends! I doubt anyone will write “proper” content without any incentive behind it.. maybe you know nicer people than I do
Personally I think I’d rather write the posts myself and set them on auto publish… that way you know exactly what you’re getting. The only problem I face is keeping the comment average up whilst I’m away, but I suppose you could hire someone for that, too
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Finding Ideas For The Next Article
Hey Alex I hope you’re going to enjoy your trip to Florida!
Meanwhile regarding the post, what I did was indeed to write posts in advance, now I have to admit that I didn’t thought of the auto publish function of Wordpress; like you said, I’m kind of used to write and publish right away… I’ll keep this in mind for next time, it will save me the running everywhere looking for an internet cafe to publish my post daily…
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Awesome post Alex. I wonder is there any plugin to auto publish the posts or how can we do that? and the idea of guest post and freelance writer is great. Interesting post keep up your work.
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It’s built right into your admin.
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It’s a default feature that comes with Wordpress. Just before you publish a post you can set a schedule time for each post
If I get a guest poster, that person has to be very reputable. You have to really trust that person. I think autopublishing is your best bet. Have fun on your trip!
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I strongly advocate having a “post arsenal”; stored posts ready to go at a moment notice.
Personally I do not like the idea of relinquishing the comment approval controls. It is far worse in my opinion to have readers show up to find a multitude of spam and crap, then to have to wait a bit. A simple “I’m going away; will approve/reply when I return” message is good enough for me (and my readers).
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Blog Readers or Twitter Followers – What’s YOUR Preferance?
Great Post! Why can’t I subscribe to your feed? it seems there are a problem. thank you
Sorry about that, sometime’s Google’s Feedburner crashes out on us
Every now again, the RSS feed count + subscription completely goes off. Even we’ve complained relentlessly; doesn’t seem to be stable.
I’m a bit of a noob so if this is an awful idea then I’m sorry, but how about creating a new account with a new feed? Send an email out to your subscribers informing them of the change, and the ones that actually read the feeds will pick up on it
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Finding Ideas For The Next Article
Cool post, Alex.
I’ve just been on holiday for 4 days, and as I usually make a post every two days, this wasn’t really ideal and I didn’t want to leave my blog just hanging there. What I did was schedule a guest post after 2 days and then my own post on the day I got back. Let me just explain to you why I did it in that order
One of the unwritten rules of guest posting on my blog is to reply to all good comments, as that’s a tradition I uphold on my blog. That means that even when I was away, the comments were still flowing on my blog and, while the comment count wasn’t as high as usual, there were still some comments on there. I think the problem with this is that you’re losing out on traffic, and therefore the guest poster isn’t getting as much traffic, therefore making them less likely to post back
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Finding Ideas For The Next Article
Oh, and another quick point. When you get back, you’ll no doubt need to reboost the comment average or traffic again, so you should definately do lots of link building and even hold a contest. Personally, I’ve only been home for 2 hours and I’ve already left loads of comments on others’ blogs and should be launching a contest in the next few hours
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Finding Ideas For The Next Article
Now a days you will be able to get dongle of net connection and can get internet anywhere if you got the facility of mobile connectivity. So now a days thats not a major problem.
But however things which you have discussed here is quite useful. John Chow is on vacation to China and I think his blog is getting guests posts and also he is able to post few posts as well.
Quick Reply: Sorry about the name change, was arranging all our latest commentators into their real names – accidentally edited your screen-name instead on the admin panel. Apologies mate
Most handy advice is –
“Write posts before you leave and have them auto publish”
I think I am going to use this one. But here is one big drawback and that is you are not going to publish on those issue who is hot at that moment and your visitor would love to hear your opinion about that.
but what if you pre-write a blog and then something changes, and it makes you look out of touch? youd have to pick some generic topics.
That’s going to happen no matter what you write 99% of the time anyways, so I guess you would just have to write about something you know won’t go outdated for a while.
Good tips.. you might also want to checkout my site to help throttle your existing blog posts throughout the days you are on vacation.
I haven’t tried to be away from my audience on my current blog, but the last blog where I was I just auto-published a couple of articles.
Then a very good friend of mine was given $20 and he kept it up with comment moderation and writing great comments in reply. Which definitely is something I would do again.
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