Hot Days in the Blogging Time

Here in the US of A, we're into the Dog Days of Summer (which has to do the stars and not with

From Wikipedia

dogs suffering in the sweltering heat). This year those days characterized by humidity and late day thunderstorms, run from July 3rd to August 11th. A great time of year to spend those hot hours inside and writing. Unless you're like me and love this time of year.

I attended a great writing conference in May. On the first day of the conference, participants are offered separate choices for the lunch time speaker depending on their status as published or not. The not yet published attendees usually have a speaker that fits their needs. The published authors' speaker is nearly always someone offering advice on promotion.

This year our speaker was Jane Friedman. Jane has a great blog with lots of information for writers of all levels. She's offering a  live webinar tomorrow, July 16th on How to Blog Meaningfully and Grow Your Audience. It's pretty pricey for me (about $30/hour) but I'm sure she has lots of good ideas.

But do A to Z 'ers need to take a class on how to be a successful blogger? I don't think so. There are so many terrific bloggers in this group, all willing to offer advice and lead by example. Haven't we all heard about SEO? Don't we know including images improves our posts and the dangers of including images we don't have the rights to?

I've also seen a few bloggers worried as they take breaks from blogging because of deadlines, vacations or personal issues. Will they lose followers? Will the WWW collapse or live on if a blogger takes a week or LONGER off? I believe a blogger can take a short break, especially if they let their faithful followers know they're going to be off line for a while. And if that blogger continues to visit and comment on other blogs while they're on break, they'll keep their connections alive. Check out some info Alex J. Cavanaugh shared on Monday about blogging frequency.

Would you pay for a webinar to help your blog grow? Are you taking a blog break this summer or do you take one during another time of year? Think it's okay to do that? Do you enjoy the dog days?