How to Blog On When You’re on Holiday

It’s the holiday season, whoooo. I don’t know why I’m saying woo because I don’t have any holidays booked yet. Apart from one in August 2017. Which seems like BLOODY YEARS AWAY.

But while I’ve been blogging daily and running a few websites, I’ve been on two 2-week holidays and several short breaks.

While getting organised for a holiday and working full time up until the day before, I’ve always managed to keep my blog schedule up to date without much impact on my blog stats.

I’ll be honest though, stats have fallen in a bit, due to me not being on top of scheduling social media posts in the past – though I think I have that covered now. I would still expect my stats to drop a bit if I was to go on holiday again as I won’t be Tweeting as much, but I doubt it would be as impactful as before.

Sooo let’s see how I organise myself so I can still get my blog posts out during the holiday months.

Of course, some bloggers prefer to schedule less posts than normal, or some will declare a break and not schedule anything while they’re away. Any way is fine, as long as you’re feeling happy with your choice! 

The blog posts.

So currently, I blog every day on this site, 3-4 times a week on my fitness blog and once a week on my tech blog.

Last time I went on holiday, I wrote and scheduled 15 blog posts for this blog, I scheduled some quick posts for my tech blog but the fitness blog, I left with nothing scheduled. I did write two fitness updates while I was away talking about my gym sessions in the hotels gym – at the time, my fitness blog wasn’t a massive priority for me, I’m sure going forward things would be a bit different.

15 blog posts sounds like a lotttttttttttt. But if you plan it out, it’s perfectly doable.

I started about a month out. My usual blogging pattern is to write content in advance on my days off work, and then add the finishing touches a few days before on an evening after work. What I did differently was fully write my posts on the days off and schedule them as normal. Then on an evening, when I’d usually be proof-reading and adding images, I would write a post per night about 4 or 5 times a week.

A few days before my holiday, I then made sure everything was scheduled for my holiday so I didn’t have to worry.

I ensured the type of content I published varied, having a few posts about blogging, a few reviews. I also had a few guest posts from some of my friends that are also bloggers. Here’s my schedule over my September holiday which ran from 2nd September – 16th September:

To break it down: 

• 3 of the 15 posts where guest posts.
• 3 of the 15 posts were posts that were a series – really quick and easy to write
• 2 of the 15 posts were reviews
• 2 of the 15 posts were blogging related

Now you might notice something here:

• 2 of the posts were #socialbloggers posts, which is a round up from the Twitter chat.
• 3 of the posts were holiday updates, that I wrote while I was away.

When I set off for my holiday, I did have posts written and scheduled for those dates. I had intended to write the #socialbloggers posts if I had time, and maybe blog about the holiday if I had time – but not put pressure on myself to do so.

Well, I did have time – but more on that later.

In the end, the 5 posts that I didn’t publish while I was away got moved into the 7 days I got back. This meant when I got home from my holiday, I wasn’t stressed out thinking I needed to write lots of blog posts, as I already had 5 done.

You blogged on holiday?

Am I crazy? Yes. I am crazy.

But also I love blogging. So I never feel like I need a break from it, or need to shut off. It doesn’t make me feel exhausted, it makes me feel uplifted. It makes me feeling like I’m doing something valuable with my time. To have a day off where I sit and watch TV all day feels like a waste to me. To have all that free time while I’m on holiday – I want to spend it doing the thing I loved.

So naturally, when I had any down time, I blogged.

Because my holiday was a sun holiday, it wasn’t like we needed to get up at set times and go places, I’m sure this might have been harder on a city break – although when I went to Florida, I still managed to spend time online. I didn’t have time to actually blog but still visited blogs and commented in an evening and used the 9 hour plane ride to write blog posts there, and the 9 hours back to edit photos!

I’m typically not the type of person that needs loads of sleep, especially if we’re not doing much during the day. On the average day, I’d wake up at around 7am, make a coffee and then go online. I then spent an hour or so reading blogs and commenting. There were a few days I even managed to go to the gym and still made it to the pool side by 9:30am!

We stayed around the pool until around 5pm. We then went back to the rooms. Most of the times, I showered first and got ready for the evening then had another 30 mins – an hour until we met up with everyone again for dinner. Again, this time I was online and that’s when I uploaded most of my photos, edited them and put them into blog posts to update while I’m away.

All this while I’m in the hotel room chilling.  There wasn’t any pressure on me to do this, I just did it when I felt like it!

Social Media.

Social media can be hard. I used Buffer to schedule Tweets and could easily re-schedule from the side off the pool, as we had wifi all over. But I have to be honest here and say that I wasn’t on it as much as I am now. Partly because I only had the unpaid version of Buffer, and partly because it was before the light bulb clicked and I realised how I could triple my traffic from Twitter.

On my list of priorities at the time, it just wasn’t important to me. Next time though, I’ll be filling my queue up to ensure all my Tweets go out!

One way I did insure I was sending out Tweets was using a different scheduling tool called Twuffer. Though there’s not as many fancy options as Buffer, there’s no scheduling limit so it was handy for sending out the generic ‘check out my recent blog posts’ or ‘follow me on bloglovin’ Tweets.

I could then schedule a handful of Tweets like this for every day I was away.

In regards to actually using social media, I was most active on Instagram, sharing holiday snaps. I used Twitter from time to time when around the pool or bored – but most of the time when I wasn’t in the room, I wasn’t online.

Quick Posts To Write

Here are a few quick posts you might want to write coming up to your holiday, schedule for while you’re away or write while you are on holiday.

• What’s in my hand luggage.
• Holiday essentials.
• Holiday makeup.
• Holiday clothes haul.
• Favourite swimwear.
• Sundress wish list.
• Things to do where you’re going.
• How to holiday on a budget.
• Reviews of resturants you visit.
• Review your hotel.
• Staying active on holiday.
• Your favourite photos.
• Photo diary of a day.
• What I ate in a day on holiday.
• Suitable footwear for holidays.
• Sunglasses/hat wishlist.
• Places you want to visit.

What do you do with your blog when you’re on holiday?

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