A friendly place to find help & encourage one another |
I mentioned last week that I was a trainer in a 3 day sales seminar this last weekend. It was, as usual, amazing. We changed more than a few lives, gave our all, and now are just feeling d-e-a-d :: each night the seminar went until 3:00am!!!
The reason I tell you this is because I have some advice for you in times like this. I’m running on 5 hours of sleep for the last 3 nights, on a detox diet that is playing around with my intestines, I’m fried and I want to go to bed.
But I am a blogger. So the blog must go on!
I used to have a few posts written saved to my drafts to pull out of my back pocket for days just like today. But alas, they are all gone and already posted! And I could go take a nap and post tonight, but I have found there is a big drawback to that: traffic peaks after I post. If I am posting at midnight, or on the weekends, when my work at home parent cohorts are in bed or with their families, they aren’t around to stop by to read the latest at the blog. They sometimes come around and read later, but I would rather not miss the golden opportunity to invite them now to my site at a time that makes it easy for them to drop by and visit.
So what am I doing? Writing this post even though I think I would rather be cutting my eyelids off to keep my eyes open. So the moral of the story is:
- Post during the time of day that most of your readers are at their computers. Someday when I am feeling really digital-minded I’ll crunch the traffic numbers to tell you just how much the traffic increases by doing this.
- ALWAYS have backup posts handy so your readers don’t have to think about you sans eyelids
I love your “show must go on” attitude, but don’t over do it. I know I can sometimes. Our bodies seem to know when they need to rest, so sometimes they throw us a little “knock you on your bottom” cold to make sure we do.
I think your advice about having a backlog of drafts is great. I’ve been trying to do that, but keep swiping from it
I’d love to hear your stats on the increase based on timing. I’ve tried to time my posts towards the late afternoon. Since many of my target audience are winding down their days, or are looking for home-business tips after working at their day job, I thought that would be a good time. But I’m making it up as I go along, so who knows.
I agree on the whole burnout thing. Sometimes I just need to take a day off (usually on the weekends lately), but I always have this bug in my brain telling me I have to post.
I usually jot down quick ideas as they come and keep them in text files in an unposted articles folder on my computer. Then I at least have a seed for a post and don’t always have to come up with something entirely new.
While I agree that regular posts build traffic, I also think that if you truly have nothing to say, you can pass. Better to have a really good tip or thought to run with then write fluff for fluff sake.
Take care and get some sleep!