Community Discussion: Do You Take Time Off Your Blog at the End of the Year?

Sleigh bells are ringing, Christmas lists are being written, plans are being made – there’s an unmistakable buzz at the end of the year, and thoughts often turn to getting together with family, having some time off to recalibrate (and if you’re in Australia, spend some time in the very warm great outdoors!) and start afresh in the new year.

But hold up – we don’t have employers or people telling us when our holidays are. We work for ourselves on our blogs and social platforms, don’t we? (Well, mostly!) – who’s going to run this ship while we’re on the couch watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation/out on the back patio with a beer?

You might be the kind of person who shows up, rain or shine, on your blog. No matter your belief or social conventions, it’s your pride and joy and you like being there. You might have a more commercial situation where some well-written earlier posts can be re-floated over the holiday season, posts written and scheduled in advance, or just some radio silence after a final “we’re taking a break” message. Or perhaps a bit of both!

We usually do a mix here at ProBlogger – some super-useful posts are rounded up and repurposed, and there are a couple of days between Christmas and New Year where we take our ProBlogging hats off and put some Christmas cracker paper crowns and wide-brim shady hats on instead. We always advocate a balance, and to get off your blog sometimes and into the real world, otherwise how else would you have a life you could ever possibly write about?

So for this fortnight’s community discussion, we thought we’d dive deep into the Holiday habits of our readers. What do you do? Where do you go? What happens to your blog when you’re doing it? Are you a repurposer? An avoider? A creator of brand-new content to tide you over? We’d love to know!

If you are thinking of taking a break, you might like to wander through the advice we’ve given over the years on doing just that: