In the book I published this month, I emphasized the importance of regular blog updates.
And then… I took an unexpected hiatus. Blame a combination of health problems and trouble at work. I don’t want to get into the details, but when I was feeling down it was way easier to look at anime as a solace than as source material.
However, taking time off really turned a lot of what I’ve always believed about the necessity of regular updates on its head. Here is how it went for me.
Traffic levels out
I assumed that when I stopped blogging for the better part of a month, I could expect my daily visits to plummet to zero. I checked every couple of days, but that never happened.
Instead, traffic has simply leveled out. Gone are the MWF traffic spikes I grew to expect following regular updates on those same days. I’ve been pretty vocal about not updating, so regular readers aren’t checking. What remains is search traffic for terms like “my little monster,” “romantic anime,” and “anime is dead,” to name three of the top 10 this month. As long as I have a relevant archive, that traffic will never die.
The ideas come back after you stop worrying
At first, I felt extremely guilty about not blogging. My schedule hadn’t exactly been accurate when I was writing Build Your Anime Blog, but now it was nonexistent. I panicked and tried to think of things I could write, but that just made me more resistant to the idea of writing at all.
Finally, after days of finding anything and everything to procrastinate on blog writing, I decided to end the madness. I blog for fun, and if blogging wasn’t fun anymore, I just would stop. I spent some time doing other stuff… and found myself continuously jotting down ideas for future blog posts. When I stopped treating blogging like a job and more like a hobby again, I knew I was ready to go back. Now instead of feeling reluctant about writing, I’m excited to share all the ideas I’ve thought of while I’ve been away.
But really, nothing happens
So I broke my updating streak. So I lost some regular readers. The world didn’t end. My blog is still here where I left it.
This is really good news for bloggers, I think. If you need that hiatus, take it. A few weeks off doesn’t spell the end of everything.
My experience taught me that the biggest enemy to a productive blog was my own feeling of inadequacy and guilt. Nothing else held me back so much. So let me make that mistake for you. In an age of distraction, falling off course sometimes is inevitable. It just means that any time you decide to post in spite of everything is itself a success.
10 Comments.
I have very similar traffic numbers no matter if I update or not, and it is always low :)
I had a long hiatus between December and April, and the only change is that my friends and regular readers were happy with the return :) I still have to figure out some ways to promote myself better, seems like.
As I already mentioned in my e-mail, your book inspired me for many things, regular blogging is one of them, although right now I do mostly weekly summaries (this week it is delayed because work, though ;_;). So, it is a bit funny to read something on the opposite of that view, especially here :)
The section on stressing about it is similar to what I’ve been going through trying to write the first draft of my book. For the past couple of years I’ve found that I’m in a mental place where writing posts is a piece of cake; I can churn them out in large numbers with minimal free time, because the ideas for them are always sort of in the back of my mind being worked out.
When I started drafting my book, I said to myself “OK—no more than one post a week, the rest of your energy should be spent on the book itself.”
Only then it became like a _job_, and it was impeding my ability to write other things, and I found it extremely hard to write anything. Once I gave myself permission to write whatever I want even if it isn’t relevant to the book, I started finding it easier to make progress on the book, too.
@AdamGurri:disqus that’s great that worked for you. I wasn’t sure how to respond because when I wrote BYAB, I made a list of all the writing I’d be allowed to do AFTER I finished. And now that I have finished, I’m all burnt out X_X
So I think there is a better approach than black or white. Next time I think I’ll allow myself more leeway the way you did. P.S. Can’t wait to read your book!
Thanks! And hey, don’t give me too much credit here—at the end of the day, you’ve written TWO books and I’m still working on the one :)
That’s why I like RSS feeds. Then I’m not camping on a page, but looking for updates that seem like they’re worth reading. Although with my local blog, the local blog aggregator pushes a lot of my regular traffic. People are i the habit of going there and reading the latest posts, so it’s very easy to recover lost traffic.
@chrisbachmann:disqus what RSS feed reader do you use? I am still mourning Google Reader, and use Digg now.
I suspect that regular posting is more important when you’re still establishing yourself. I never pressured myself to post at the same time every week (like you said, it’s a hobby and shouldn’t be stressful), but after a year and a half of weekly posts, my readership definitely went up—both regular readership and, of course, Google traffic (and Google traffic can create regular readers, so the cycle continues). I had to change priorities after I became a writer at Beneath the Tangles. Since I posted less on my own blog, readership eventually went down. But my archives definitely help maintain traffic.
Sometimes, when a blogger posts too regularly, I actually have a hard time following them. I can’t catch up on all their posts, and I end up procrastinating on reading them even more than I procrastinate on writing my own posts. XD
@annalynalexis:disqus there are some bloggers who just make me feel like “what am I even doing I should be blogging” because they update not just once a day, but sometimes MULTIPLE TIMES. It is amazing and inspiring.
And usually, this is why I still adore RSS. Always let me know hen you update again. I do think regular posting (although it doesn’t have to be every day) is important in the age of algorithms. By the way, I’m using Feedbin as my RSS reader. How about you?
Just a small caveat about the search traffic:
After about 4-6 months with zero updates, you would normally start to see a decline in your search traffic. Google’s algorithm prioritizes outfits that provide consistent content, and will start to reduce the priority of a source that it deems “stale.”
But that does take a long time to kick in, as I mentioned before. Regaining that status in the SERPS is easier than losing it, usually. If you need a hiatus, take it. :) Health is more important than a few users