I am not sure if you noticed, but it’s been a little quiet here on Secret Bloggers Business so far this year. You might have also had a serious case of deja vu if you are also a regular reader of my other blog, Drop Dead Gorgeous Daily.
You see for the last 4-whole weeks myself, and my team have been on what I call a “blogging break”.
And no this wasn’t one of those blogging breaks where you just lounge about watching Netflix and drinking wine in your PJs… that’s what I call a weekend (although we did take time off over Christmas and new years, and I did impose a very strict computer ban on myself in that time).
No, my annual blogging breaks are actually crazy productive. It is my “get shit done” time, my “obliterate my to-do list and set-everything up for the new year” time. Just without the added distraction and on-going daily time requirements of actually maintaining your blog.
You see at the end of each year I like to sit down and make some big goals for the year ahead. And once I have these goals, I then start looking at what needs to happen to actually turn these goals into a reality. I also like to list out all the little admin things I have been avoiding doing (and make sure these all get done and don’t just follow me into another year!)
And usually there are a few big, time consuming tasks that have to be done. Whether it’s updating your blog theme, creating an eproduct, creating an email series, re-doing your media kit. Whatever.
These are always that things that we KNOW will actually make the most impact on our blogs, but these are also usually the things that get pushed back to the ‘do later’ list, because we spend all our time doing the day-to-day blogging stuff.
This is called working IN your business, not ON your business. And this is also called how you stay stuck exactly where you are, because those “do later” tasks just never get done.
Seriously, you can be so productive when you are not actually writing blog posts, answering emails or updating social media!
So, this is why I started having blogging breaks.
Personally I like to do mine at the start of each year (so do my planning in December, and then start making it happen first thing when I am all pumped up and excited in January). This works well for me because it’s normally a bit quieter around that time both on my blog and socially.
And normally these breaks are only a week or two, but this year I have really upped the ante goal wise, so I needed a whole four weeks of dedicated get-shit-done time. Which has been just amazing!
How do you have a blog break without breaking your blog?
I know a lot of you are probably hyperventilating at the thought of “stopping blogging”. It goes against everything that you have been taught about blogging, right? Because you have to be consistent or your readers will abandon you forever…. right?
And yes, I agree, just stopping completely, for a lot of blogs really isn’t an option. Or is it?
To be honest I probably shouldn’t have “just stopped” like I did, and I did intend to actually get some blog posts pre-prepared and scheduled in, but the end of last year was pretty manic and I was crazy burnt out, so it didn’t happen.
On DDG we were a bit more organised though, and set up daily “refreshed” posts (so took previously published posts, just updated and polished a bit and then scheduled it to republish), and also a daily, reduced, social media schedule.
And our stats have pretty much stayed the same, and no one has complained, AND we have now got all those big, game-changing tasks out of the way so we are ready to totally crush it in 2016!
Sounds pretty good right?
And just think, how much faster could you grow, or just how much easier would your life be if everything on your to-do list right now was done, and you were starting this year with a total clean slate?
It’s pretty bloody liberating.
And there is still time. All you need to do is pre-schule a couple of weeks content and social media posts, whack up and email auto responder, and create your master list and plan (which I can totally help you with) and you are ready for your blogging break!
