Boosting Traffic During the Holidays

The holiday season is a crucial time for bloggers. During this time, you may be tempted to blog less to spend time with your family. However, there are some individuals who go with business as usual and don’t make changes to their blogging schedule.

Both are ways that can hurt your blogging traffic because a drop in blogging will be coupled with the normal drop in traffic that we expect. So, how do we reverse the norm and not only keep the same traffic we have, but also boost it during this season? There are multiple ways that we will look at today.

Become Generous

Providing incentives to your readers is a great way to increase traffic. This doesn’t mean, “if you read my blog, I will give you ____”, but have your readers work for their incentive through giveaways. Why is that important? Because if you offer an act that they have to do to be entered (sharing on Twitter or commenting below), this increases engagement and gets readers a bit more active.

If you are just starting out, you may have to purchase the giveaway prize yourself and keep it a bit small. However, if you are a bit more established, it may be a bit easier to officiate a giveaway through another company’s sponsorship. Giveaways are best when they begin at least two weeks before you are wishing to choose a winner. This allows time for publicizing the event.

Plan Accordingly

Another secret to boosting traffic during the holidays is to prevent a posting slump by planning your posts in advance. By creating a calendar and choosing to dedicate November to Thanksgiving and holiday shopping and late-November and all of December to holiday tips and the New Year, you are increasing interest in your posts because individuals will be increasing their online search on these subjects.

Depending on your blogging frequency, it may be wise, however, to plant a couple of “investment posts” in between your holiday posts. No, I don’t mean anything financial. By investment posts, I’m speaking of posts that are unrelated to the popular subject at the moment, but in the long run and facilitate steady traffic. For example, on a tech blog, you may have tons of posts relating to tech and the holidays, but a couple of posts on, say, Mac tips or app/product reviews unrelated to the holidays will ensure that they will grab the interest of readers well after January.

Take Advantage of Referrals

Individuals are beginning to now understand the benefits of online shopping. The deals and ease of purchasing makes it a popular option for busy shoppers during this holiday season. For this reason, it may be a smart idea to get your blog associated with website referral programs like Amazon. This is a seamless way to make a bit of extra money.

Enjoy the Holiday

Best of all, it’s important to just enjoy the holiday season. If you aren’t enjoying what you are writing about, readers will sense this. It is also important to not sacrifice holiday time with your family and those commitments. This can be accomplished by scheduling your posts in advance. You can write out the posts in Microsoft Word a couple of days before your planned posting date, and put it in WordPress on a scheduled posting time. WordPress will then publish the post on your behalf.

What are some ways you are boosting traffic during the holidays? Let us know in the comments below.