To Blog or Not to Blog While on Vacation

Summer time... and the livin' is eeeeaasyyy... right? But we have just 2 short months in Norway that we call summer and kids are in vacation. The weather gets autumny (cool word, isn't it?) a day or two before the school year starts and that's it. But oh, how we make use of those two sweet months - boats in the sea, fishing, diving, swimming, sunbathing, long bright days and carefree clothes. I bet that here, in Southern Norway we could do just fine without the popular vacations in South Europe. 

As you already know, we've had an awesome trip planned to travel up North without a strict plan and long before we set on the road I started wondering what to do exactly with my blog while I was away. To tell you the truth, it didn't take much thought and I quickly figured out that I would be blogging on the way! I wanted to make you a part of this amazing journey and I love it that according to the survey going on in the past few days, you too want to know more about Scandinavia. Another thing I love is coincidences!

Anyway, this whole summer-trip-vacation got me thinking of possible options and ways to take care of your blog and here is a short list I came up with:

Give your blog a vacation

Lots of bloggers stop writing for the period of their vacation and resume when they return.

pros:

• as much as your readers love you they need some time off your "voice"; when you come back, time will have done its job and they will probably "hear" you in a different way

cons:

• your blog might lose popularity and followers
• your traffic will most probably go down
• you will have a lot of catching up to do afterwards

Write on the way

Some bloggers prefer to blog while on vacation and that is what I will attempt to do too.

pros:

• a refreshing way to update your blog with new type of information
• gives you the opportunity to change your tone and explore new topics, as well as to show yourself in a different light
• you can stay up to date and have less catching up to do after the vacation

cons:

• puts you under stress

Invite guest bloggers

I recently talked about guest bloggers and the way they can freshen up your blog and increase its popularity. Inviting guest bloggers for the time of your absence is a very elegant way to keep your readers attention while you are away.

pros:

• your readers will be amused
• new approaches and topics will be covered
• your active blog will be attracting traffic 
• you can even gain new followers

cons:

• you won't be there to promote the posts
• you won't have control over the content posted on your blog

Schedule posts

"If you want a job well done, do it yourself." Scheduling posts is a great option offered by Blogger and a vacation is a perfect reason to make use of it.

pros:

• you will have taken care of the content to be published
• your will maintain your traffic levels 
• you will keep your readers engaged

cons:

• you might mess up scheduling and not all posts might be published
• you will have twice as much work before going on vacation (to write all the posts in advance)
• you will have all the catching up to do after you come back

So, to be precise, I chose not only to blog from the road, but also to have some guest posts and several scheduled posts, so I am implementing 3 of the options. Some bloggers also run retrospective posts, which I don't recommend because of the recent change in Google's policy to consider duplicate content as spam.

Want to know more? Read all articles in the How to Blog Like a Pro series.

So tell me, what do you normally do with your blog while you are on vacation? Do you have other suggestions that you have tried out or plan on trying?