When you have not updated or engaged with your blog, you do lose some traffic. If you go on vacation or your life offline might be a bit more busy than usual, this can be frustrating. So what can you do? How can you keep your blog growing when you are too busy?
Here are some tips to help with that:
- Have back up posts or write posts ahead of time and schedule them evenly throughout the time you may expect to be away from your computer.
- Consider accepting guest posts. Make a regular call to your followers and friends that you need guest post because you are uncertain if you are going to be away from your computer. This will help keep content flowing and your readers’ interests. MyBlogGuest is a great place to seek guest writers. Other places to seek guest writers are on Twitter, a public annoucement post from your site, or even your site’s Facebook fan page.
- Make sure you have Tweet Old Post if you use WordPress. This will share articles that are older, but still great to share. Because there are so many people on Twitter, the first time you tweet a post, it might be missed. This plugin helps get that word out and you do not even have to lift a finger after installing it.
- Ask a good online friend to come by your website and engage with your readers who leave comments. This will keep the conversation alive and it also becomes a win-win as your site stays active and your friend who is helping out may bring in readers as well. And remember to return the favor when they are absent from their own blog.
- While you are away, create a poll or survey for your readers to fill out and give feedback about your website. This is great if you are trying to improve your site, but a perfect time to deploy some type of survey.
What do you do to keep your blog growing when you are too busy?
Some great suggestions here, Nile.
I have found the WordPress plugin 'Tweet OldPost' particularly helpful, as it gets retweets of your posts without you even having been on Twitter.
I also create several blog posts at a time and pre-schedule them over a week or so. That means I don't have to be thinking every other day what to blog about.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks Valerie! I have done a review on Tweet Old Post a long time ago and it really has been helpful. For some months the plugin was broken due to Twitters revamp of their API, so when the developer got it fixed- I was so happy.
I too also schedule posts when I can, so I am glad to see others doing it too… makes things so much easier. 😀
Agree! Especially about accepting guest posts – it makes my job easier!
Yeah.. sometimes we can't afford too much time on blogging so these are the best ways to keep it running. Some fellas advised me to use autoblog plugin but for me it could bring a total mess to my blog so I prefer to update it through a systematical and disciplined way!
Unfortunately, auto-blogging is about to get a rude wake-up call according to Google. I will be publishing about this on Monday. I blogged about auto blogging in the past and discourage it because it is republishing and also considered duplicate content. A lot of autoblog sites fail to give credit to the original owner.
Guest blogging is a great way to keep adding good quality content even though it doesn't come from yourself, in case you are too busy writing articles.
Thanks for the tips. I never heard of "tweet old post" before and want to check it out. Do you have any suggestions on the best settings to use?
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I have all time some articles prepare for that time when i will busy with another stuff. Someday i will try to create a poll to see what visitors think about my site, i'm curios.
To be honest, I am highly guilty of letting my blogs languish while I am on vacation. I should definitely have followed a plan and had some scheduled posts ready for The Blogging Addict but I ended up not doing so. :/
Great ideas. I forget about my blog a lot. These tips will help alot.
We are going to have a tough time during the exams as we all of our writers will be busy in their xams,but hopefully we will have some backup before.
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If I'm away from a computer for an extended time, I'll have some posts scheduled to publish while I'm away. But usually, I'm able to log in and check on the blog and publish something even if I'm away from home. I also allow for guest posters, so it helps when I'm generally busy.
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Great stuff as always, Nile. If I was not using Joomla for my site, I would be using WordPress' Tweet Old Post. Hmm…I wonder if I can find something that works just like it for my site.
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I wish there was a Joomla importer plugin. Then I would say… hey, come on board…lol 😀
Thanks for the tips,I definitely follow at the critical time when I have no time for blog works.
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Hi Nile,
you are providing some great tips in your post.
Tweet old post is a great plugin which automatically tweets as many posts as you set it to in the frequency that can be adjusted, and you can set it to exclude posts or categories.
Your poll and survey suggestion is interesting.
A friend of mine has made a music CD. I wonder what questions she could use in the survey.
Thank you so much for sharing this helpful article.
Cheers,
Yorinda