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Did you know that web traffic and usage often dips during a holiday season? Whether Easter or Thanksgiving, it’s often very usual for web users to take a break away from their laptop or devices and focus on spending time away from the screens.
After all, the holidays are a time to be spent with our nearest and dearest, not glued to a screen! Plus, as many people take this time off work, they would rather fill their days off with fun activities and quality time with others. And this dip in the amount of web traffic is always biggest over the Christmas holidays, as it’s the biggest holiday season of the calendar.
This is good news for everyone (after all, I’m sure we could all use a little less screen time in our lives! Unfortunately, though, it is very bad news for your blog as you will find that your number of readers drastically reduces over the coming weeks until the beginning of January.
This is especially bad news if your blog is monetized as your revenue will reduce as a result.
But don’t worry, though, there are a few things you can do to help your blog survive the Christmas lull.
Here are just a few tips and tricks that you can use.
You probably thought of doing this for Christmas Eve and day, but did you know the last few years I’ve scheduled ALL my December content? This way, I know I won’t go MIA and can enjoy the month stress-free.
It gives me the opportunity to enjoy the month stress-free and do little work.
And the best thing? I work in the cloud so I can easily work from a cafe from any laptop, something that adds a little mood to the whole thing. I absolutely love getting this done with a pumpkin spice latte on the side and Christmas songs in the back 😉
I start with writing blog posts, I can schedule them with the WordPress plugin Editorial Calendar.
I then create Pinterest pins with PicMonkey and schedule them with my Pinterest scheduler.
I suggest you use the official Pinterest Partner to schedule your pins, Tailwind.
I use Tailwind and if you like you can use my $15 credit so you can try the pro program for a month for free (grab it here!).
Tailwind can create a ‘smart schedule’ for you, which means, they sent out the pins when your audience is online for more success!
With the new smart loop option, you can loop your December content in the set period of say, November-December, so you really don’t have to do anything and you can easily set it up waaaay before.
Please note, I do get into my Pinterest scheduler to schedule Tailwind Tribes, read more about it + my pin strategy here and I give you full access to my Pinterest Playbook here.
Next, I come up with an editorial calendar for my Instagram, decide on optional sponsored posts by pitching to sponsors or going through the emails I receive and schedule some posts with my Instagram schedulers.
I both use Planoly and Tailwind for Instagram, as I own multiple accounts all with their own needs.
I craft newsletters from the previously created content, like podcasts, Instagram captions, video training, and blog posts, and with my newsletter software, I can easily schedule ahead.
I have already set up my automated evergreen webinar/ video training with this software, and it makes it very easy to entertain new subscribers.
I usually get a lot of new subscribers on auto-pilot thanks to this strategy.
These are just a few of the things I do to automated my December, learn more here.
If you haven’t worked on your website’s SEO for a while, now is the time to do so. Because you have left it for a little while, there is a very good chance that your website will have dropped down through the search rankings. And, as a result, there will be fewer clicks onto your site from the likes of Google and Bing. But don’t worry, there are ways you can improve this.
For instance, it’s worth taking a look at Unbounce to see how you can improve your landing pages. If you don’t already have some landing pages, the online guide can show you how to set some up. You should also check your site’s metadata and make sure that it is all up to date. Posting some new blog posts with updated content can also help give your SEO a little boost too.
When you are thinking of the kind of blog posts you could add over the next few weeks, try and keep them Christmas-themed.
Not only will this ensure that your loyal blog followers’ attention is kept on your blog throughout the next few weeks, but it can also help your SEO as well. That’s because lots of people will currently be searching for Christmas keywords and phrases.
If your blog posts have some of these keywords and phrases in the titles, then the search engine should pick up on them. And then, as long as the rest of your site’s SEO is in order, your site should land near the top of the list of results whenever anyone does a Google search.
Another way to hold your followers’ attention is to hold a competition. Blog competitions come in many shapes and sizes. For instance, you might want to carry out your competition on your social media platforms.
When you do this, you just need to get all your followers to share a post or tweet and then, at the end of the week or the day, you just need to pick one to win some goodies. As you can tell, this is a great way to spread your blog through word of mouth as well.
It’s also a good idea to have some competitions on your blogs. For instance, you might want to get people to comment on a particular post with their favorite Christmas tradition, and then you can pick your favorite to be the winner!
Some bloggers choose to take a bit of time off from posting over the Christmas holidays. It’s perfectly fine if you want to do this too. However, you should try and keep up with your social media as much as possible.
That’s because social media never really take any time off!
You might find that if you have a week or so without posting to social media, your followers might think you have left. So, try and keep up with your Facebook and Twitter even if you do take some time off blogging.
Don’t stress about blogging during the festivities – the above tips can help you carry on and continue to make a success of your blog and website!
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