Summer Slump Solutions - Blogging Survival Strategies
What is the Summer Slump?
The Summer Slump is a dip in attention and traffic. It affects many areas of life and business, not just blogging. Round about now our audience is thinking about vacations, slacking off, going to the beach, spending more time outside and less at their computers. The slump pretty much covers the whole of summer and only picks back up around September. Blogs are affected in many ways
- Less traffic
- Slower subscriber and link growth
- Fewer comments
- Lower earnings
It all comes down to our audience having other things to think about.
So what can we do about the Summer Slump?
You have to keep the following in mind
- Summer is slacking time - Accept that many your readers will be off to sunbathe, the lake or the coast and will not want to be stuck in front of a computer
- But some of us have to work - Also understand that they will not all be away, you still have to serve your readers with great stuff
- Don’t be absent - Which means you have to have a strategy in place to allow your own time in the sun!
The people who still read your blog daily even though it is summer will be your hard core loyal readers. You want to keep giving them what they subscribed for, don’t let them down.
One solution is to make use of the fact that it is your core group sticking around and talk directly to them. Ask for reader submissions, do carnivals, surveys, ask questions, host guest posts, and generally interact.
If your traffic really tanks then it is also an opportunity. While nobody is looking you can do all the housekeeping, redesigns, long term projects etc that you might put off at busier times. Anything, such as moving hosting, where there might be unavoidable disruption. You want this to happen with the least amount of audience. It’s never good to mess your audience around but if its inevitable its best to do it with a smaller audience of core loyalists rather than a big audience of first-timers.
Think Long Term
If you have free time now you could be building your flagship content and posts in draft ready for when you don’t have the time.
It takes some time to rank for competitive phrases. Right now you need to be thinking about future seasonal posts such as Halloween, Christmas, Skiing, etc. While it might sound crazy in summer to be talking about Christmas you do need this lead time to get up there in the rankings.
Invest the time now to reap the rewards later
Bottom line: Don’t slack off, the work you put in now will pay off later when the bulk of your traffic does come back.
Over to you, what are your Summer Slump solutions?
What do you do with your blog in summer? Are you seeing a drop off in traffic? Let me know in the comments …
Posted on August 01st, 2007 by Chris Garrett in Blogging
Chris- thanks for sharing your ideas for the slow down that the summer brings in readership. I will reflect on your ideas and consider my strategy. Brian
I’m seeing a lot more interaction with readers in Australia, actually - since they’re into winter now. Great fun people, but of course not enough in numbers to make up for slumping in the Americas + Europe. I’m “carrying on carrying on” much as usual, but also doing a good bit of that housekeeping and long-range stuff that’s so very easy to keep putting off…
I have never really taken good advantage of the summer slump. Right now, I am in the beginning phases of creating a product, which is keeping me really busy. So, I guess this year I am taking advantage of the summer slump.
On the other hand, I haven’t seen a huge drop-off in traffic this summer on my blog. I have seen a drop-off on my other sites, but I am not putting much effort into them at the moment.
Good tips. Another you thing you could do to get a little boost in traffic is to run a summer contest.
I’m fairly new to blogging, SEO, traffic tactics, so even though there is a slump, it’s all fascinating to me; especially SEO. My girly blog discusses anything from make-up to blackhat - lol!
Hi Chris,
Much needed tips and very good timing. I just noticed that we fell behind on our post schedule. Everyone is very relaxed. I am forwarding your blog to everyone!
And we should always remember is not summer all around the world. In the south half of the globe is winter right now.
Even though winter may vary (I’d bet winter in central Africa is not the same that in Patagonia) unless you want to miss a hemisphere, there are plenty of readers to care for.
Hey Chris,
I actually wrote a post a couple of days ago (at the URL I entered) giving my solutions to keeping a blogs momentum while being off on holiday.
For me the summer means more ‘extremes’ of work and play. I.e. to maintain posting frequency I have to write twice as much as usual in order to have spare posts to use when I’m away; but when away I do absolutely nothing.
While it is more stressful, it is very rewarding to come back from holiday to find subscriber numbers are up, traffic is stable and I’ve been earning while lying on a beach!
Christmas actually starts on the Internet in just a few weeks. If your optimization for Christmas is not already done then you are a bit late and will be quite far behind the people who started a few months ago.
Early shoppers begin hitting the web for Christmas ideas and gifts by about August 15.
Halloween is a shorter season so there may still be hope for hitting most of that and Thanksgiving in the US and Canada is so short on the web that there is still plenty of time to work on that now and get good results.
It helps if your blog caters to slacking off, I guess!
In Europe, many people take much longer vacations during the summer than Americans, so I would imagine that if a significant portion of your audience was on holiday in Europe, you’d see a drop.
Great points about hitting for the upcoming holidays now! This post is going in my weekly link blast. Thanks, Chris! Your content is consistently good stuff.
Hi Chris, excellent article, especially for those of us who are fairly new to this. Years ago, I ran a small handyman company, in which we experienced the reverse. Summer was an extremely busy time in which I would often work 14 hour days. In the winter, I was lucky to get 4 hours a week paid work. Consequently, in the winter was when I really focused on marketing (mainly through classified ads). It paid off. People would see my ad in January, clip it, and put in on the fridge. When the spring season started revving up my 2nd year, I became one of the top handyman outfits in the city.
I think the key to dealing with a seasonal slump is to think long term. It is too easy, especially if you are just beginning, to get caught up in the “now”. If you want to survive over the long term, you have to think long term. Thanks for the awesome article!
Cheers, Marc
Chris, as a new blogger (June 1, 2007), I have nothing to compare my stats to yet. My visitors to my blog have been jumping by 20-25 a day for about 2 weeks now. Today’s stats show almost 60 visits more on my site yesterday alone over the day before. I attribute that to the Blog Carnivals I have participated in this week. Some of the visitors subscribed to my blog. My last article which I did as a writing exercise for Clean Cut Blog at http://cleancutblog.com/group-writing-project-what-is-your-first-rule-of-writing/ now has 15 comments. That is my all time record of comments so far. This is from a subject that isn’t even really a topic of discussion in my niche. I didn’t expect to receive any reactions even though I did pose the question, “How am I doing?” at the end of the article. Thanks for your articles. They are helping my blog grow.
At one time I thought that it would not matter what you wrote in the first 60 days of a blog - hardly anyone visits during that time. It seems like you are sayig a similar thing about the summer.
I have since changed my mind on this subject. I now see more and more referrals from Google searches than I did in the first month. What I take from this is that as your visibility rises, more people will find you because of things you wrote in the past not just what you are writing today. Therefore, you need to write today what people will discover from now on.
Perhaps with the greater leisure time one could spend more thought and less typing when creating a post.
Aha… so that’s why my AdSense earnings have plummeted this summer. This is my second summer blogging, so I guess I couldn’t tell last summer. Thanks for the info.
Well, I had suspected that I was not alone in experiencing a summer slump. Traffic hasn’t dropped, but growth has leveled off.
Since I haven’t been at home much, though, for the past couple of weeks, I actually appreciate the fewer comments (I try to participate in my own comment section quite a bit). It kind of amazes me how, as soon as I posted the words “I’m home”, comments picked up again. But realizing that it is my friend readers who are still around explains it.
Oh yeah, don’t forget about us antipodeans (cheers Jen) there are at least 20 million of us down here (including the dangerous wildlife) and some of us have heard of the internet
Thanks for the tips Chris - started a question of the week thing today.
I think you made some wonderful points. I like the fact about redesigning your site. This is a great chance to make your site look pretty. Also I like how you can write some great content and get it ranked!
Mabye change is good?
Hi Chris,
Some great points there. I hadn’t even realised there was a summer slump (I’m Australian, I’m living in China and my blog is new).
I think your point about housekeeping is a very important. Any outages or disruptions should occur when a minimum of your audience is disrupted. I used to work for a software company with a lot of school clients and taking advantage of holiday time is essential.
Chris;
Can you explain the concept of carnavals??
Mike
Great advice! I have featured this article on today’s links on my blog. *=)
I agree. I also find that there is a weekend slump as well. Thank goodness this one is a lot shorter.