The Wall Street Journal is running a story today in the online and print editions about the effect of blogger vacations on website traffic.

It seems that the most ‘popular’ bloggers are committed to keeping their sites alive during vacation breaks in order to maintain their considerable traffic.

Some continue blogging through their vacations while others recruit guest bloggers to post in their place.

In the short run it appears that you are likely to lose traffic if your blog goes quiet for longer than a couple of days. But does that effect really matter in the long run?

After all, the most avid readers of your blog are likely to be subscribed to your RSS feed. So there should be no question of them forgetting about you unless they take the action of unsubscribing. Readers who simply visit the site for updates should understand if you take some personal time away from the blog.

I recommend that you announce the vacation to your blog readers or subscribers in a post. This is supposed to be a conversation so the readers should be informed and then have a chance to reply via comments and trackbacks.

I like to think of my social media pursuits in terms of a marathon, not a sprint. I feel like I’m building relationships that will grow over time so I don’t worry about short term traffic or subscription changes.

I also happen to be a believer in balance. A healthy balance in life helps me to better frame opinions and analysis. That situation certainly benefits the readers of this blog. And it makes my family happy too.

So I say don’t worry about hanging up the vacation sign on your blog every once in a while. Just make sure that you let your readers know the status of your efforts and you will still have a healthy audience when you return.

[tags]Social Media, Blogging, Vacation, Balance, Wall Street Journal[/tags]