So I Didn’t Blog Every Single Week During Summer. Get Off My Case Already.

I grew up at the Jersey Shore, where the best part of summer begins after Labor Day. Weekend visitors, who we call “bennies,” return home for good, and locals are able enjoy our beaches and boardwalks unfettered.

For most people, summer ended on Labor Day. Using that definition of summer’s end, I have to admit that there were four weeks during summer when I didn’t publish a new blog post.

It’s extremely rare for me to not post four times in what was actually a 10-week span. I looked back at the calendar and discovered that I skipped the following weeks, none of which were consecutive:

I’ve been blogging weekly about content writing and marketing for more than three years. Not coincidentally, my business has grown quite a bit in that time.

I’m usually pretty religious about it. I’ve always managed to post something new, regardless of how busy I got, how sick the kids were, or how much I just wasn’t feeling it.

This past summer, I took more breaks than usual. And here’s why you need to chillax about it.

First of all, I don’t have any delusions of grandeur about the importance of my blog posts. While I like to think some people find them valuable or helpful, no lives will be changed if I suddenly stop publishing.

Except for mine because I wouldn’t make much money.

Second, I’ve been blogging every week for several years. When you publish consistently, you create the impression that you’re pumping out content all the time.

Think back to the famous Master Lock TV commercial with the pad lock on the target. Even after a bullet was fired through it, the lock didn’t break. I could have sworn that commercial aired non-stop when I was growing up.

Actually, the commercial ran exactly once per year. During the Super Bowl. For 21 straight years.

Consistency is critical. It helps you maintain top-of-mind awareness with less frequency.

I recently spoke to a colleague who asked me to collaborate on a blogging strategy for an accounting firm. In addition to ramping up before and during tax season, we discussed the value of continuing to blog and market after April 15 instead of hitting the breaks.

Think of the competitive advantage that could be gained by continuing to market while your competitors go on hiatus. Think about the connections CPAs could make with people who are looking for a new accountant after a bad experience.

It’s one thing to scale back slightly. It’s another thing to completely stop and lose your momentum.

Think of marketing like training for a marathon. If you stop training for a month, it will take you a month to get back to where you were before you stopped. You pretty much lose two months for the month missed and the month playing catch up.

And you might just miss out on some new clients.

I scaled back slightly. I didn’t stop. So get off my case. Jeez.

During the weeks that I didn’t publish new blog posts, I landed two new clients. One found me through Google. Another came through a referral from a person who originally found me when she read one of my blog posts on LinkedIn.

Again, consistency is key. By blogging consistently, I’ve been able to not only stay top-of-mind, but also maintain a high search ranking. That won’t disappear because of a one-week publishing hiccup.

Also, the vast majority of business blogging leads come from older posts. In fact, when HubSpot conducted a lead generation analysis of its own blog, it found that more than 90 percent of leads produced by its blog came from posts that were at least a month old.

I would never go more than one week without publishing unless there was some kind of family emergency. But long-term consistency, not short-term frequency, is essential to business blogging success.

And speaking of family…

To be clear, my jobs as a father and husband would get a hell of a lot more complicated and stressful if I decided to ignore my jobs as content writer and marketing consultant. But you get my point.

Priorities, people. Are you really going to give me a hard time for not publishing a blog post while I was on the best family vacation ever?

Especially when I provided you with a marketing-related photo recap ?

Sheesh.