Bloggers take unnecessary breaks from blogging when travelling. I was on a trip last week and with a bit of planning I was still able to keep the blog alive and active.
Going away on holiday can result in lost momentum for your blog. The blog would be inactive, the latest article would have been published some time ago and there would be no recent comments. This will not give a good impression to new visitors or to the potential advertisers, and it might scare them from subscribing or contacting you.
It is a good idea to take a break from blogging to travel and get new inspiration but it does not mean that you need to let your blog die because of inactivity. Following are the steps I have taken to keep my blog active while I was away.
Write your blog articles in advance
You know how long you will be away. You know if you will have an internet connection and time to get some writing done while you are away. Analyse these factors and plan in advance. Write the needed amount of articles, style them and keep them ready to be published.
Schedule your blog posts to be published automatically
Schedule the articles you have written to be published automatically according to your regular blogging schedule. WordPress TimeStamp feature makes it easy to publish your blog articles automatically.
Set your blog comments free
Comments are the lifeline of your blog. I prefer to manually approve comments, but as I did not want the discussion to die out I set Akismet WordPress plugin to do all the work.
In Wordpress settings in “Discussion” I usually have “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” checked. By removing this you let Akismet automatically approve comments.
There is a risk that one or two spam comments will go through the filter but I find Akismet generally does a great job.
Automate your blog promotion
- Having a large RSS / email readership is a great promotional tool. Your loyal readers will not only read your article, they will comment on it, they will Tweet it, they will Stumble it and more. Make sure to setup your FeedBurner to include different social media bookmark links in the feed to let your subscribers easily share your content.
- Help your blog visitors do the promotion for you by including a Tweet This plugin to your blog articles. “Tweet this” now supports Digg, StumbleUpon and other social media sites as well.
- I also schedule TweetLater to automatically send out a couple of tweets announcing my new blog articles. It results in clicks to your blog from your followers, and it also helps the promotion as people do retweet interesting tweets.
These simple steps can assure you that your blog is not asleep why you are away on holiday. Your visitors will read fresh content, comments will be moderated automatically and you will be able to relax and recharge your batteries.
Image by Wili Hybrid
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Fortunately for me I think I do all the things you stated there.
I learned that lesson way long ago. Before, I really used to leave my blog and thats even for close a month. I never cared about my visitors then and has never really done scheduling articles. Now I see the value of it and I think it pays to do those things…
Thanks for all comments!
@Shirley – Strange. As Gerald Weber I find Akismet to work perfectly. It caught some 250 spam comments while I was away, did not slip any spam, and did not put any real comment into spam.
When I go to Florida for a month in August, I will not have a computer with me to blog. Luckily, I have a partner on my blog, but I wouldn’t leave them the burden of writing 30 day straight. I probably would write 10-15 articles and either timestamp them, or just have my partner publish them. It will be hard to do because that is a lot of writing, but it is something that just HAS to be done.
I would have never considered turning off comment moderation either, which I find kind of funny. But I think I will be thinking twice about that now.
Very good tips. But as far as trusting Akismet, I am definitely not in agreement. Lately, Akismet has let me down. I regularly find spam comments that ’slip through’. For me, it shakes out to about 5-10 spam comments that beat Akismet every day. So, if you go on a long trip, the spam can definitely accumulate to a point where it is discouraging legitimate visitors from participating.
Good idea for going on vacation. I used to manually moderate all of my comments but after while I just let comments post automatically with Akismet still running in the background of course. If a spam comment does slip through (which rarely happens) I’m actively manage my blog enough that’s it’s caught pretty quickly.
Great ideas! Another that I keep saying I’ll do but never make the time is to have one or two posts on reserve for when I get sick or little emergencies pop up. Luckily, this is very possible for the niche I am in – I just have to get off my behind and do it!
PS I did not know it was possible to go on vacation where your computer couldn’t reach you. Please somebody tell my husband this!
I only hope that some day I can travel again, so that this can be a concern.
Well done, Marko.
George
Nice tip Marko, I hope I have read this blog before I take my vacation last week. Well in any case, I’m in the progress of gaining momentum..
Regards,
JeD Chan
This the best style to keep blogging on while my vacations.