Elliot Swan says:
I’ve never really had that happen to me before (i haven’t been blogging long enough for that to happen to me yet), but another option could maybe be:
revive posts
Which, in less dramatic terms, would mean recycle old posts. Find some good ones you’ve written that would still be interesting in today’s context that your readers either wouldn’t remember or haven’t seen before (if it’s a really old one), and post one every once in a while when you don’t have time to blog.
Don’t know how well that would be received, though, but just a thought.
EngLee says:
You have a very good suggestion here. I’ll consider to do that in the future, simply because I don’t have many posts YET. 😉
Felix Leong says:
Like any publishing content, it greatly depends on the type of content and how “time critical” your content is to be.
Let’s say for example, if your blog focuses on the news item that can’t afford any sort of delays, say, exclusive news piece/gossip, then probably you cannot afford any sort of haitus of any kinds. Imagine your newspaper isn’t delievered daily or the news item is pretty much “old news”. On the other hand, if your blog focuses on delivering lengthy tutorials and articles, and doesn’t go stale for a long period of time, usually you aren’t expected to post every single day. Imagine a magazine or sorts.
So it was a good idea to evaluate what kind of content that you wanted to share in your blog, how much resources you have (in terms of contributing authors, time and technological factors), and your overall direction of your blog (i.e. the big picture/vision/long-term goals).
As much posting frequency and time consistency contributes the most to your loyal reader/subscription base, it’s OK to be a little bit late (on a haitus) in posting but always delivering high quality posts.
P/S:
Speaking of which, I personally don’t believe in guest posting. It’s more of a partnership affair between you and other contributing authors.
As for advance posts, it literally means that you have typed several entries in one day, but releasing them one at a time with a certain time gap in between. That’s what I usually do, since I pretty much scrapbook my content and develop them over time before I actually do a review and post them up.
Use revive posts and “announcing you are away” very carefully because it’s much easier to make yourself look unprofessional (it’s perfectly OK if it’s a personal blog). Revive posts is a good tactic to use if you have some new updates to your old content, or that there’s some sort of relationship between what you are “reviving” and what you are going to post.
Leo Kent says:
I would say the most important thing about blogging, is don’t let it rule your life. Yes it is good to post as often as possible but it isn’t the end of the world if you can’t!
Regular readers will probably have subscribed via rss so will see any updates you make. Many other visitors come from search engines so it doesn’t matter too much if the site isn’t updated daily.
EngLee says:
Felix,
You have a very insight thought there. For my case, part of my contents are time critical, some are not (this post). It’s really fun to post about new technologies on the net as soon as I’ve tried it out. Though some are not time critical, I’m still trying to post everyday so that I’ll read more and learn more!
It’s great to have you dropping by. 🙂
Leo Kent,
You have a good point too. I’m not going to let it rule my life! I’m trying to examine which option is the best way to handle hiatus, with hope that more reader will subcribe my rss! 😉
The Digital Blue Wave » Blog Archive » Blog Haitus says:
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