Are you wondering how to prepare for maternity leave when you are a blogger? Chances are there is no one to pick up the slack for you. You know that letting your blog tasks go can lead to a decrease in page views and profit.
I recently took some time off for the birth of my sweet baby girl. My blog traffic stayed pretty consistent while I spent time snuggling up my new baby. Read on to find out the simple ways I prepared for some time off to enjoy my new baby!
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Prioritize Your Blog Tasks
Depending on how long you have had your blog and how stable it is this could be different between bloggers. I had been blogging for about a year when I took my “maternity leave” so for me the number one task was promotion. If you have lots of content then that should be your number one priority as well.
Most of my promotion takes place through Pinterest. I use manual pinning so I decided that would be the one task I would continue as it takes me minimal time and the return is worth it (read about manual pinning here.)
Let as much as you go can for at least the first few weeks and just enjoy your little one. That time is precious and you will never get it back!
Write Content Before Baby Arrives
The big focus I had leading up to baby’s arrival was writing and getting out some new content that I could continue to promote while I was off. Batch write some posts and get them out there! I averaged about 2 posts a week before baby arrived.
Now that baby is here I am getting out 2 posts a month. I am glad that I did the work before baby because I don’t feel stressed about getting content out as I have plenty to promote.
My little bundle of joy was born on February 9th…and as you can see there was no dramatic drop in traffic. Really the only thing I did was continue to do some manual pinning on Pinterest. All other social medial took a break as well. No twitter. I may have posted to Facebook…but not much!
I had two new posts go live during my maternity leave but they were written and ready to go ahead of time. All I needed to do was promote them.
Get Your Emails Ready
Write your emails ahead of time! I wrote a couple ahead but not enough to cover every week while I was “gone.” I ended up missing one week completely and writing one while I was off. If I could go back and do it again that is what I would prepare more for.
Further Your Education
Let’s be real for a second. Even though life is crazy busy with a newborn…there is actually a lot of downtime. I had a csection so there were times when baby was napping and I felt like doing something other than watching a million episodes of Nashville on Hulu.
My brain felt a bit mushy. To be completely honest..I missed blogging! So during these times of late nights trying to keep myself awake while I breastfed I turned to learning more about blogging.
This worked well for me because I don’t always have time to take a course or read an e-book when I am working full time on my blog.
My big present to myself was joining the Billionaire Blog Club. Run by Paul Scrivens this club provides you with information on blog traffic, affiliate marketing, SEO, and pretty much everything you could ever want to know about blogging. If you are looking to invest in your education this is a great way to go about it and I highly recommend it. You can check it out here.
I have taken quite a few courses and the ones that I truly feel are AWESOME I have listed on my Blogging Resources Page (you can check that list out here.) Any of those would be worth your time and money.
Disconnect
Trying to disconnect yourself from your blog during your maternity leave may be the biggest challenge of all. Leave the email and Google Analytics alone and just spend time with your new family.
I was pretty good at doing that…however I did still find myself checking in a few times. I think that is ok..just don’t let it ruin your time off!
Now go get to work so you will have more time to snuggle and cherish that new baby! Enjoy your time off…you deserve it!
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Kayla O’Neill has a master’s degree in education as well as a bachelor’s degree in special education with an emphasis in early childhood education. She has been working as a developmental therapist with babies and toddlers in early intervention since 2012. She is also a mom with two young children.