4 Ways to Keep Your Blog Active When You Are Absent From Blogging

One of the things we must strive for as bloggers and content marketers is consistency. But we know it’s not always an easy piece to deal with given the complexities of life.

Starting a blog is one thing. Keeping it active with constant flow of content publication is another thing and this is where many of us fail.

Now, what inspired me to create this post is the fact that I was absent from blogging for something near 3 months. But the impact was not felt on my blog. That’s because I had taken some reasonable steps to make sure my absence doesn’t negate my online business growth.

What makes you absent from blogging?

There are many reasons you may take some breaks from your regular online business. Death is evident (Will happen at one point) but I’m not to talk about it now. As a matter of fact, in this post, I’m not referring to permanent absence as a result of retirement, incapacity or death. I’m talking about short-lived absences provoked by:

• Curable sicknesses
• Vacations
• Pregnancy and postpartum responsibilities
• Exams (for those studying)
• Burnout
• Some other offline opportunities
• And many other personal reasons.

Where ever you live and whatever you do, there are going to be moments people will feel your temporal absence. Your blog readers too will do and because we are in a very competitive world driven by information, any error by leaving your blog to relax could mean a lot in terms of losses.

Having blogged for over 7 years, I know from experience what happens when your blog becomes idle. It’s really a bad experience and you may not know until you go through it. Here are some tips to keep your blog booming even when you are away.

1 – Get the training required to blog professionally.

I have come to understand that many bloggers are simply dabbling and one of the reasons for this is the fact they don’t even understand the business of blogging.

There is so much online to learn about blogging correctly. But sometimes, this large sea of information keeps readers bewildered. One of the things I tell my blog coaching students is that they have done the right thing to themselves, submitting themselves to be coached by someone with a large surface of experience.

If you can’t find a coach, there are thousands (I believe) of professional blogging courses for you to pick from. While you may read randomly around to gather knowledge, it’s important to go through some sort of organized training. Take a look at this collection of blogging courses by Greg. It may help.

Now, how is this related to keeping my blog active when I’m away?

Blogging is a business and you must learn how to handle disasters and crisis in the business. Training will definitely position you as a professional with required skills to keep going despite tough times.

2 – Create Valuable Connections

As a blogger, you need connections. I have said it a hundred times that no one can succeed as an Island. But you need to be connected with people and marketers that can add value to your business.

A few years ago, I traveled to Nigeria and spent sometime there. I was completely disconnected from my blog. But it was fully active during my absence because I had some serious connections with some of my friends.

They created and published content on my blog as guest authors. These were not regular guest bloggers on my blog. They are friends who came in to give me the support I so much needed to keep flowing.

You should be able to have 2 or 3 friends who can show up to do the job for you in your absence:

• Create and publish your content
• Respond to comments
• Act as your Virtual Assistants
• Contact your host to sort out issues.
• They basically make sure your blogging business isn’t interrupted by your absence

3 – Create evergreen content

This is content that is relevant at all times. The ability to come up with evergreen topics for your blog keeps a constant flow of traffic if that content is well positioned in search engines.

I know competition threatens your position on SERP (Search Engine Result Page) but the more always-relevant articles you have, the more stable your traffic even when you are away.

The question often is how do you come up with evergreen content ideas? I have come across many bloggers who mentioned how difficult it is to more frequently publish timeless content.

Well this doesn’t have to be some rocket science. We live in a world of activities. In your industry, they are things that are constantly talked about or used.

Google Trend is a good free tool to measure how constant the relevancy of any content is. Simply enter your keyword and watch how it’s being search over time:

If you have an evergreen blog post that’s losing its position on SERPs, give it some more energy through refreshing and re-posting. Get some new ideas to it, add some graphics and videos. You also want to re-purpose it for traffic from different channels. I found an interesting blog post on 11 smart ways to re-purpose your content. You may want to check that out for more insight.

4 – Schedule content

Many Content Management Systems (CMS) come with a feature to allow you create content now and set to publish automatically on some date in the future.

You should be familiar with this feature within your CMS. WordPress for instance has it just near the content “Publish” button:

If you foresee your absence, you may want to create and schedule content to be published when you are away. While you may not be around to interact with your readers on the comment box (if enabled), this will help keep your content schedule active.

Conclusion

I hope this has been helpful. Blogging is a business to me. I make money from the activity so I make sure it’s not interrupted by my some of my unavoidable absences. That’s why I’m sharing this with you, hoping it’s going to help.

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