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Coming Back After a Blogging Break

Whether your blogging break was planned or not, when you come back to blogging after being away for a while, it can seem very overwhelming. Over the many years I’ve been blogging, I’ve taken a few breaks. Some were because I lost internet access at home for a while. Some were vacations, some were from illness and sometimes it was just blogger burnout. My breaks ranged from one week to almost a year.

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged since June until now. This time, my break was because of pregnancy. Early pregnancy makes me very sick and tired and even when I’m not actually sleeping, I just feel like resting or watching TV. Sorry if you missed me!

Where to Start After a Blogging Break

The longer you’ve been away, the more daunting the task is to get back into it. Here are some tasks you might want to consider to get in the swing of things again and get up to date:

  1. Back up your blog BEFORE you start.
  2. If you use WordPress, update any plugins and/or themes that aren’t up to date.
  3. Check your sidebars. Do you have a list of current events or giveaways that are now past? Do you have blog buttons for past events? Is everything up there still current?
  4. View the whole blog and check for images or widgets that are not showing correctly. Widgets from external websites sometimes change their coding and if you haven’t been around to know that it may be showing as an error to your visitors.
  5. Check your social media accounts to make sure they weren’t hacked while you were absent.
  6. Take some time to view some of your favourite blogs and check your social media feeds to see what others have been up to while you were absent.
  7. Start brainstorming posts you want to do or make a list if there are ones you have to do that you need to get to. Visiting other blogs should have given you some inspiration as well.
  8. Write one or more posts! If you’ve been gone awhile and especially if you have a good number of loyal visitors, you may want your first post to be a “I’m back” type of post but you don’t have to. Also don’t feel you have to explain where you’ve been, especially if it’s a personal reason. A generic sorry I’ve been gone but I’m back now post is fine.
  9. Promote your new post to help bring in some more traffic. The longer you are away from blogging, the more your traffic goes down. You want people to know you are back and have new content!
  10. Talk to your blogging friends if you need some support during the process.

Well I’m off to take my own advice, I hope it was helpful.

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Karri

Friday 2nd of October 2015

Very good article! We will be linking to this great post

on ouur website. Keep uup the great writing.

neeljohns2013

Wednesday 27th of November 2013

Very nice Post with great tips

Ashish

Thursday 17th of October 2013

Welcome back, Kathleen. I think many bloggers missed you. And your blogging break points are superb. It would help those people who have to go on break. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Gillian Pearce

Thursday 5th of September 2013

Interesting article. I'm having a blogging break myself at present. What did you mean by "Promote your new post to help bring in some more traffic." ? Has your drop in traffic been very noticeable?

Kathleen Garber

Tuesday 22nd of October 2013

Yes it has. Every time you take a break you lose some of your traffic as people keep coming back to find you haven't posted in a while so they stop coming back. So promoting your current post brings back some of the people who used to check in and perhaps some new ones.

Ashley Montgomery

Tuesday 3rd of September 2013

Welcome back Kathleen!

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