How to Get Your Blog in Shape for Summer

7 Tips to Summer-ize Your Blog

It’s Memorial Day Weekend. Is your blog ready for summer? Before you head to the beach or host your annual barbecue, assess whether your blog needs be summer-ized. By making changes to your blog for the summer, you show that someone’s home and in touch with the times.

Here are seven tips to help you get your blog in shape for the summer.

1. Get your blog ready for summer. Since Memorial Day Weekend kicks off the summer, many people use this weekend to check that their homes are ready. This includes washing the patio furniture, cleaning the grill, and filling the pool. For your blog, this translates to making sure that every thing is in order. Here’s a blog checklist to ensure that yours is on track.
2. Change your wardrobe. Just as you change heavy winter clothes, coats and snow gear for bright colored, light weight clothes, spruce up your blog. Specifically, change your photographs that are wintery in feel (including your header and those of your offices and writers), incorporate summer designs or images, and/or touch up the colors (Be careful regarding your branding.)
3. Find out your readers’ summer plans. In order to continue to develop content that meets your readers’ needs, find out what they plan to do this summer. Ask them via a survey, your comments section, or an email.  Determining how you can assist your readers can help you plan your editorial calendar. It’s also good for overcoming Blank Blog Post Syndrome.
4. Serve seasonal content. Just as summer’s bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables changes our menus, is there special content that you can offer to reflect summer’s influence on your niche? Even if you don’t have a topic that’s seasonal such as technology, you can still incorporate summer into your posts. Use summer themes such as the beach or blockbuster movies to lure readers in. (Even business-to-business blogs can be fun to read.) Alternatively use photographs that have a summer backdrop.
5. Keep summer hours. Some companies have shorter summer hours, what are your plans? If you post to your blog every day are you planning to cut back on the number of new posts you write each week during the summer? If so, how and when will you announce this to your readers?
6. Invite people over. Schedule some guest posts, especially if you’ve a vacation planned. This can be a win-win since they get exposure to another audience and you have one less post to write.
7. Make vacation plans. Since summer is a popular time to get away. How do you plan to handle your blog? Your options are: to write and schedule your posts in advance, write them while your away if you have wifi, or you can just let your readers know that you’ll be away and not post. Additionally, decide how you’ll manage comments while you’re gone: by tracking them yourself, having someone monitor your comments while you’re gone, or closing them. Your decision should take into consideration the amount of spam comments you get and your appetite for checking your blog while you’re away.

Regardless of the type of blog you have, these tips are useful to get you to look at your blog with a fresh set of eyes to ensure that it’s in tune with the times. Just as you get your house ready for summer fun, you should do the same for your blog.

Do you have any suggestions that you’d add to this list? If so, please include them in the comment section below.

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Photo credit: StevenDepolo via Flickr