A Drying River, Representing The LullWinter seems to be releasing it’s cold grip on the Northern Hemisphere, and the sun has returned to bring plenty of warm weather and beautiful plant life. On top of this people are generally happier and, despite the obvious problems, the world seems a better place for everyone. However, this is also the time of year something big happens across the blogosphere, and there’s only one way to describe it: The Lull.

The Lull is a time of year when net users in North America and Europe remember that there’s an “outside” and begin to spend less time infront of their computers. At the same time, bloggers in the Southern Hemisphere are just starting to get into the Fall/Winter period, but it hasn’t yet gotten to the point where they spend more time inside and online. Because of this, most bloggers will notice a rather dramatic drop in visitors and, by extension, online revenue.

Is this a problem? Only if we want it to be.

Although some of my best work has come out in previous Lulls and received zero or little traffic. It’s a shame, really, and such events can make a blogger question whether they should even be posting during this time, but there are some advantages to this online slow period. That said, how do you use The Lull to your advantage?

New Projects

After seeing a noticable drop following the Spring Break period until the start of June last year, I started thinking about some ways that I could continue to flex some creative muscle without wasting too much time. One of the best options would be to start a new online project.

Starting a new project can be as simple as making a new blog about another subject, working with others to provide content, or just about anything that people can do online. With the Lull slowly building in strength, our regular readers will almost be expecting us to slow down our posting schedule. The advantage here is almost too good to be true. Slowing down one blog, while recording blog ideas for later publication, and strengthening our potential readership by getting our name and site (or sites) attached to other pages.

I’ve done this myself, starting TheCarbonBlog (a bit prematurely, I think), and I fully expect it to take off this coming fall after I’ve supplied another fifty or sixty posts. It’s already ranked number one on Google for a number of unexpected search terms, so I will not drop that project anytime in the near future. On top of this, I’m also working with other bloggers to supply content, as well as helping some others build a new site which will use a very different type of blogging. Exciting times, indeed.

Multi-Part Educational Postings

One of the hardest things to do with a blog is to write a high-quality multi-part post that deals with something complex or otherwise interesting to people. I haven’t yet done anything like this, but other bloggers that have would often see a pretty good boost in readership after the Lull as readers started looking for things in Google again. An example of this would be Nick’s Google Speed-Search Lessons. He breaks down the main points that matter to people, and presents simple and easy ways to find the things we’re looking for with the mega-search engine.

Guest Posts

I love doing this! Over the last eight months I’ve had the opportunity to have my articles published on twelve other sites. The advantage to doing this is the ability to bring readers from all over who either agree or strongly disagree with my position on a given subject. Only once has this backfired and resulted in a ridiculously small amount of traffic, but it is worthwhile for the most part. Just do yourself a favour and make sure you’re not giving a post to a site that’s about to expire … there’s nothing worse than writing for someone that’s “going out of business” as it’s a waste of your time.

Comment on New Sites

This is, in my humble opinion, the best way to make use of The Lull. Not only do we have the opportunity to explore new sites but, by leaving an intelligent comment, we have the opportunity to drive quite a bit of traffic to our sites. This works similar to guest posts, but takes much less effort. Another advantage here is the potential to make another online friend. Expanding our personal networks is, by far, the easiest way to accomplish difficult tasks in the ever-changing Blogosphere.

The last suggestion I’ll make is aimed at people who have blogs with no standard theme:

Find Some New Topics

Most of us are interested in dozens of things, yet we only discuss a few of them online. If we have an “everything” blog, why not discuss everything? Talking about some of the other subjects that interest us is a great way to increase our reach through organic searches (people looking for something through a search engine), while also keeping our content coming. If the general reaction turns out to be pretty bad, don’t worry too much, because the posts occurred throughout the online slow period. That said, you’ll want to pay close attention to what your visitors are reading and how long they’re staying. If the numbers are too low, chances are it’s time to change back.

It’s This, or a Long Vacation

One aspect to avoid during this Lull is the avoidance of writing. We often hear the typical “I don’t have anything to write about” excuse when the weather is nice, and often times we hear nothing at all as a site goes silent and the author is never heard from again. Unless blogging is just a winter passtime, we should never let this happen to our sites.

That said, when the weather is nice, and our friends are out having fun, being inside at the computer is often the last place that we want to be.

How do you use your time during this online slow period?