by: AskPat 947 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 947 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today and as always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.
All right. Now here's today's question from Jeff.
Jeff Campbell: Hi Pat. Jeff Campbell here from NewMiddleClassDad.com. Thank you so much for everything that you do, and I hope I'm not pestering you with too many questions, but I think of at least one a month to send your way and I hope you get to this one. Right now we're heading into the Fourth of July weekend, and I know if you answer this one it will probably be fall by the time it goes live, but that's okay. My question is pertaining to content and holidays. Thus far my blog is not quite a year old yet. I have avoided posting new content during holiday weeks or on holidays, if it's a small holiday, and I wanted to get your thoughts on that. I know it's important to post consistently and regularly, and I do post traditionally every Monday and Thursday with my own original content, and I wondered if that was okay to not post on holiday weeks. My thinking was just that people would be off of social media and not looking for things like that, because they'd be busy doing other things with their families. So I wanted to get your take on whether that was okay or whether that might hurt me in some way. So thanks again for everything that you do, and I look forward to hearing your answer. Thanks Pat.
Pat Flynn: Hey Jeff thank you so much for the question. Here's how I handle these holiday posts and podcast episodes personally. Typically, what I'll do is I'll create a piece of content for the holidays or for around the holiday time, and it's not going to be the normal piece of content. It's not often going to be even educational. It's going to be one that's more of a thank you, or just an inspirational piece that relates to that particular holiday. For example, around Thanksgiving I'll typically post some sort of thank you post of some kind that thanks my readers, and thanks the people who throughout the past year have really made a big influence on my life and in my business. That way people who do see it, they're like, “Oh, Pat's writing a post like normal, and it's a great one that relates to this holiday that we're experiencing.” Or, people don't see it and then they wouldn't have missed anything, so that's okay.
It's up to you Jeff. And I think it's up to you to set that expectation, it's up to you to post based on what you're comfortable with. What I mean by expectation is, if there's a holiday coming up, and you have the ability to let your people know ahead of time with your regular content that you're already posting, that you are not going to be promoting content or coming out with content at that time, then that's totally okay. I think it's one of those things that your readers will be completely understandable. And if one were to speak up and say, “Jeff what happened? You didn't post.” You can say, “Well I was with family and I wanted to respect the other families out there who were celebrating the holiday, so like I said in the post right before that one, I was going to not post that day. I'm going to continue to post moving forward and I hope you're going to enjoy those posts too.” So if that person gets upset, well then they don't belong on your blog or your website. That's how I would handle it.
Really Jeff, it's going to be up to you in how you want to do it. There's no wrong answer there. I think the only thing that can happen is, you don't set the expectation upfront and then something may happen, but even then with this particular question, there isn't really any worry there. The biggest worry to me, related to the holidays would be, if you are going to take time off on the holidays, making sure that when you come back out of it that you're going to be re-energized, re-focused, and excited to get back into the thick of things, as well as your audience is going to be … You're able to motivate them and get them out of the holiday sort of lull, if you will. You know, sometimes at the end of those holiday periods people just don't want to get back into things, and depending on what you're teaching, it's up to you to be that leader who steps up and helps them get motivated to kind of get back into things. That's all I got to say.
Jeff, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. And for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show as well, all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.
Thanks so much. I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day by Kenneth Grahame. “The strongest human instinct is to impart information, the second strongest is to resist it.” All right guys, take care. Cheers, and I'll see you on the next episode. Bye.