When your site has been half asleep for an extended period of time, it can be a struggle returning to the bustling community you once were. Thankfully, there are a few suggestions and ideas which might just help your site return back to the good ‘ol days.

We have all faced it – and extremely bad case of bed head…

Opps, wrong article.

But that is what it can feel like when you try to put your own site back on its feet after being off for an extended period of time. It is not something you can just shake off, and even loading on the gel (such as useless content) will only temporarily fix the problem (especially if it is not super hold strength). Everyone from the casual blogger, to large resource like this faces downtime at some point in their online history, and it can come from a vast array of reasons – from personal issues, to having a craptastic host that simply “misplaces” all of your files – whatever the case, chances are you lost at least some readers, and even more are at least slightly annoyed with a large lapse of new content, even if you gave them fair warning about the situation at hand.

After not writing for a while, it can seem very awkward trying to come up with topics that your visitors will find interesting. While if you run a personal blog, you could probably just talk about what your cat did over the past two and half months and all your visitors would come running back to you (yes, they seem to love that), but it is not always that simple.

You find yourself with questions running through your head that, when you were frequently posting, you never even consider. And the larger the resource, the more on edge you are with what you plan on writing. You don’t want to come out with an extremely pointless post that will only drive people further away, but you want something interesting that will catch their eye in those long list of feeds and bring them back. How exactly should you do this? Here are some posting suggestions for that first “I’m back” post.

1. Be comical – Avoid a flat out serious tone in your first welcome back post, because readers don’t want that. Instead, add some comedic flair to your post to get people laughing. Whether that means throwing in figures of speech you may never use in an actual post, or over-exaggerating the story about why your site / blog / etc may have been closed for so long. Whatever you have to do, make it funny.
2. Hit a Controversial Topic – Don’t be scared to jump the gun and bring up discussion on a hot-topic issue. Chances are, it will spark responses from your visitors, especially depending on the topic being discussed. This is always good, because it drives readers back, and if they comment, chances are they are going to return to read others responses and possible respond again. If you’re going to say, “Hey, I just got dressed today”, don’t expect a bubbling of activity.
3. Give Something Back – Another smart way of getting your traffic back up to the top of the mountain is to give something back to your readers. Of course, if you are a designer or developer, now is your perfect opportunity to release that new icon pack, script, blog theme, etc, and etc. Or, give something away in the form of a contest. Even if it’s something inexpensive and rather weak, it lets your readers know that they mean something to you, and their viewership is worth a little bit more than just your time, but also your coin.
4. Avoid Getting Stale – I hate chips like this too, but more importantly, as soon as press publish on your first “welcome back” post, your readers are going to be expecting the return on consistency. Don’t pound your head over what topic to write about and spend three weeks between posts because you want to be perfect. Chances are, you will not be able to win back your entire lost reader base in one swell swoop. It is going to take some time, so worry about getting fresh posts out as frequently as possible (still, put some thought into them, no one wants to read complete bs), but don’t worry about getting dugg on your second post in a very long time.

The most important step: just get back out there and have fun. You may have had the unfortunate luck of falling off your horse for a few days / weeks / months / whatever, but it is still right there waiting for you to get back on.