After a much-needed blogging hiatus, I wanted to say hello again! I’ve been writing a weekly blog article for over a year now. I’ve experienced a huge increase in traffic to my website, which is awesome, and email list growth. It does take a lot of effort, though. That’s why I decided to take a few weeks off and reevaluate my blogging efforts. Here’s what I determined.
5 Insights from a Blogging Hiatus
- It’s difficult to write a book and a weekly blog at the same time. Many of you know that I’m in the process of writing a book on how small business owners can create a credible online presence that attracts customers and generates leads for their company. While I’ve tried to take a lot of content from the book and repurpose it as blog articles (and vice versa), it’s definitely still challenging to write all of this content.
- It’s okay to take a break from blogging when you are stressed. Nothing is as important as your mental health. Your numbers will rebound. Your followers and subscribers will forgive you. Taking shorter breaks are better than several months of being MIA because you had a serious breakdown.
- Not everything has to be created for an SEO purpose. I became tired of writing because I was focused so much on keywords and ranking in search results. This took the fun out of content creation. When I look at the posts that receive the most traffic, most of them are ones that actually had zero keyword research. It was merely something I wanted to write about. These posts educate my clients or stir up traffic from social media. There’s more to writing articles than search engine optimization.
- Writing each week should be beneficial to the business. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s a huge effort. It takes time to determine the topic, what to say, create any graphics, and add it to the website in a timely manner. Identifying the goal – what I’m trying to accomplish with these efforts – is important in order to keep me motivated. My initial goal isn’t being accomplished, so either the goal needs to change or the strategy does. Taking time off helped me think through this and I have a plan for a new course of action.
- A virtual assistant would give me time back in my day. Have any recommendations? I started keeping track of all the things that an assistant could take care of – that administrative work that needs to be done but doesn’t need to be completed by me. If you know anyone, reach out to me on Facebook.
Conclusion
Taking time off from blogging every week has given me a new perspective on why I write in the first place. It’s also helped me realize that I could hire someone to help me with other tasks so that I don’t get burned out doing things that I don’t even like. There is probably someone out there who LOVES tidying up an inbox.
Will you take a blogging hiatus? Let us know in our private Facebook Group, where we also talk about marketing strategies that generate leads for your business.
