Happy holidays everyone!
It’s easy to get in the mindset of posting less because traffic is lower during the holidays. But I encourage everyone to maintain their normal cadence or even take things up a notch!
The first reason to post more when there is less traffic is to counteract less traffic. The main reason to post more during slow times is to prepare for the inevitable slingshot effect that happens in the new year.
Take Advantage Of Seasonality
Web traffic is usually highest during first quarter, not bad during second quarter, fades during the summer as kids get out of school, and bounces back a little in September and October before fading again during November and December. If you’re a new blogger, you probably won’t see as much seasonality as you’re rocking and rolling to ever higher traffic levels. But if you’ve been around for three or more years, you’ll probably start to notice more seasonal traffic patterns.
Being a new blogger doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of the slingshot effect in 1Q. Being a new blogger just means it’s harder to tell how seasonality impacts your traffic. Therefore, new bloggers should also look to amp up their writing before and during first quarter as well.
For veteran bloggers, I recommend you figure out what percentage of your traffic comes from 1Q, 2Q, 3Q, and 4Q. Do the same for your revenue as well. Once you see the numbers, you will become more motivated to keep up the good work.
The first half of the year is when it really counts because that’s when most people plan to fulfill their new year’s resolutions. As a result, you should write about topics that not only address their concerns, but topics that also solve their problems. One easy example is writing about the decision to attend a private university since early admissions letters are sent out by many universities in December, and regular decision letters are sent out by April. Having a post discussing the merits of private university and public university is top of mind for many parents and high schools.
Some bloggers get lazy because they’ve missed their normal publishing time slot. They look for whatever excuse not to publish! If you’re smartly writing evergreen content to rank well in search, then it doesn’t matter if you publish your third article at 10pm on a Saturday versus your normal cadence of publishing first thing Friday morning. The third article still counts as your third article for the week. And your article will likely get indexed by Google and potentially rank.
Here’s my recent almost lazy story: I’m currently on a 10-day business offsite in Hawaii. We were in the middle of some fun team building exercises at the beach on Wednesday, December 14 when I started feeling too guilty about not publishing anything on Wednesday after the Fed raised rates. It wasn’t a surprise the Fed would raise rates, but I felt it was my duty to still publish something about the rate hike since it does affect millions of Americans. Originally, I was going to just slack off for the week and just publish two posts, but a sense of responsibility brought me back from the beach an hour early to keep my normal cadence.
Make It Count When It Counts The Most
I’ve never been more bullish about blogging as I am for 2017. There are so many opportunities to grow your audience, build your brand, and make more money.
Companies, small and large, are hiring bloggers to do more freelance marketing work. Private companies out of Silicon Valley and elsewhere are raising more funds to spend on content marketing partnerships with bloggers in their field. And the general public continues to shift away from old media, towards individual publishers with a brand and an opinion.
Your blog could very well be your highest performing asset in your entire portfolio! I know Financial Samurai is by far. In a low interest rate environment, cherish and grow your income producing assets. Keep on hustling folks!
Looking to learn how to start your own profitable website? Check out my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog. It’s one of the best things I did in 2009 to help earn extra money and break free from Corporate America! Bluehost is one of the best web hosting companies for WordPress bloggers today.
Updated for 2017 and beyond.
It is interesting how so many things are cyclical. My site usually has slowdowns in summer and then halfway into Q4. I’ve been good at staying consistent with my publishing schedule though even when traffic is slower than normal. It really helps to get into a regular rhythm and stick with it.
I love the imagery of the blogging slingshot effect! :)
I’m too new to see any seasonality yet, but am looking forward to passing the six month mark soon!
Man, if you consider posting twice a week instead of three times a week as lazy, then I’m super lazy! I swear, I don’t even track when I post. I post when I have something to say or share, but other than that, I don’t keep track anymore. I still post because I enjoy blogging, but no longer stress over a schedule. ;)
Ah, lazy is all relative! It’s lazy for me to post 2X a week when I’m used to posting 3-4X a week b/c that would be a 25%-33% decline in production. But for someone posting only once a week, 2X a week is great! Fight on.
I find having multiple blogs help me keep the creative juices flowing, even during slow seasons. Slow growth is just an excuse to go work on some other blog I have while I wait, so it works out well for me.
Good stuff. There is seriously an ENDLESS amount of things one could be doing online.
I need to update a couple of my ebooks for 2017 and work on another, for example.
Just got to also pace ourselves so that we don’t burn out.
Thanks for the motivational words Sam! Over at the Biglaw Investor, we are about to take our annual retreat to the U.S. Virgin Islands. I look forward to the inspiration the islands provide every year. It certainly motivates me to keep up content production. Cheers!
Enjoy! Such vacations during work always motivate me to work harder, save more, earn more, so I could retire earlier.
I’ve also noticed my traffic going up and down, depending on the time of the year and niche, since not all niches are the same. But, constantly pumping up great content and promoting will help you increase traffic and exposure every year.