While you may be planning to take a holiday from blogging, keep in mind that your prospective customers will still be online looking for information – maybe even more than usual if they have some holiday down time.

Here are five ways to keep your blog working for you and still have a holiday for yourself:

1. Pre-schedule your holiday posts – Have an epic idea for this week’s blog post? Divide it into two or more shorter posts and pre-schedule the rest of the series to publish over the holidays.
2. Share links to older posts – Even if you haven’t planned ahead to pre-schedule new content, you can still use your blog to get people’s attention and demonstrate your value. Use Buffer or Hootsuite to pre-schedule teasers with links to posts that have timeless value. As Julia Borgini of Spacebarpress commented on my post at Social Media Today, you can make it a weekly habit all year round to mine your blog content for timeless gems.
3. Keep your readers busy – In each post, embed links to older posts about related topics. In your blog’s sidebar, provide a search box, list of categories, and links to recent posts. All of this makes it easier for people to continue browsing the content and information that’s already on your site.
4. Use related posts plugins – Tools such as YARPP and LinkWithin accomplish this in another way by automatically displaying related posts at the bottom of the page, so your readers are guided to keep reading.
5. Brag about your blog (a little) – When you’re catching up with people at holiday gatherings and they ask what you’ve been up to this year, mention, “We started a blog,” or, “We really ramped up our blogging.” Let them know there’s a wealth of valuable information on your site, for themselves or someone they know.

If you’ve been blogging consistently through the year, congratulations, you deserve a holiday! If you haven’t, rest up and get ready to make a new start in 2014.

Customers and prospective customers approach you and your team every week with questions about what you do in your business. Business blogging is a way to turn those FAQs into informational articles (weekly blog posts) that can be read, shared and used to highlight your expertise in a particular subject area.

Who is the best person to sign these blog posts?

Before you answer that question, there are many other details you must put in place. In fact, in my list of the 10 steps for success when you’re starting a company blog, you’re already at the ninth step when you’re looking at who will do what.

Even as you’re going through your initial planning steps it will be helpful to start forming a picture of the overall voice and positioning of your blog.

Option One: Leadership voice

This is a blog or blog post penned by the CEO and/or leadership team of your company. Company leaders who blog show that they want to connect personally with their employees, customers and prospective customers.

According to a study by BRANDfog, it works! 78% of respondents would prefer to work for a company whose leadership is active on social media, and 82% of respondents said they were likely or much more likely to trust a company whose CEO and leadership team engage in social media.

Rather than answering how-to questions, company leaders typically take a higher level view of their company and industry, sharing a glimpse of the thought leadership behind their success. One example is George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research, who is one of many Forrester bloggers.

Option Two: Multiple voices

The CEO of Royal Caribbean has a blog that features other team members, and not just from the leadership team. One way to improve on a blog like this is to be consistent with how you display the guest author byline (for people who may only contribute once or twice), or link to their user profile (for people who will be posting regularly).

Depending on your blogging software and the add-ons you choose (in WordPress these are called “plugins”), you can create a page for each blog author, including a photo, brief bio, and links to their posts. (Here are more tips about bylines and bios.)

The U.S. grocery chain Wegmans does a wonderful job of presenting their blog’s multiple voices. While they don’t have individual bio pages for each author, their Our Authors page beautifully demonstrates how Wegmans pulls together their larger community of those involved with delivering their products to the consumer. (A link to each contributor does bring up a list of that person’s blog posts.)

[Update May 12, 2016: There are currently only three authors listed on the Wegman’s blog.]

Bonus tip: Your blog’s search engine rankings can improve dramatically if your blog authors set up a Google+ profile and claim “authorship” via Google.

Ultimately, people like to connect with and buy from other people, rather than companies. So give all your company bloggers a voice, face, and profile that helps build a community between them and your readers.

Option Three: Company voice

Some of my ghostblogging clients don’t want to be thought leaders, and that’s okay. You don’t need to be a “blogger” or a thought leader in order to use business blogging as an effective marketing strategy, and not every company blog or blog post needs to have an individual voice.

Similar to the text on your static website pages, a blog can simply present information on behalf of the company, with no one designated as the blog post author.

Techie tip: Ask your IT team or website developer to display the blog post author as something like, “Customer Service Team” or “[Company Name] Team,” rather than the default “admin” byline moniker. “Posted by admin” is a sure sign that you didn’t put much thought or effort into setting up your blog.

Even if you take this approach, you can still invite comments and have a dialogue with your readers (just don’t expect too many blog comments too soon). In the comments section, have team members sign their responses, similar to what many companies do on Twitter to individually sign their tweets (there’s less room on Twitter so usually initials are used, e.g., ^RH).

When deciding who will sign your company blog posts, you don’t need to restrict yourself to one of these three options. Your business can have different categories, or even multiple blogs, for a variety of voices and approaches to blogging.

On November 7, 2013, a couple of hundred marketing professionals gathered at the Bloor Reference Library in downtown Toronto for the meshmarketing conference. A highlight of the day for me was definitely the closing keynote presentation by Jay Baer, author of Youtility and founder of Convince and Convert.

On his blog (and then again as a powerful introduction to his book), Jay writes about Geek Squad and their instructional YouTube videos. Robert Stephens, Geek Squad founder, was challenged with this question from an audience member:

Why was Geek Squad giving away the very thing they sell?

People sometimes ask me the same thing when I suggest they give their blog readers valuable information they can use to solve their problems.

Stephens explained, “Our best customers are the people that think they can do it themselves….eventually everybody will be out of their depth. They won’t be able to do it themselves, and at that point who will they call?”

The success of Geek Squad speaks for itself (they were acquired by Best Buy in 2002 and have since grown exponentially), and so does the remarkable turnaround story of River Pools and Spas.

In recounting his pool company’s blogging success story in the foreword of Youtility, Marcus Sheridan writes that when people were reading the self-serve information about pools on the company’s blog:

“They weren’t just self-educating, they were self-qualifying, too. By the time they contacted us for an in-person appointment, they were predisposed to working with us.”

Selling pools to homeowners is one thing, but what about companies that serve other businesses? Are B2B customers also looking for self-serve information?

Yes, absolutely! A couple of the presenters at meshmarketing mentioned a survey that found that, on average, by the time a B2B customer contacted a sales rep they had already completed 60% of their purchasing decision process.

That means they’ve been on your website, reading your blog posts, and looking for answers. So as you’re getting ready to publish your next blog post, check whether the information is self-serve or self-serving. Is it focused on a topic of interest to your ideal customer, or is it a diary entry about what’s most important to you? (There is a right way to use personal stories on a business blog.)

Here are some different types of self-serve blog posts to offer your customers and prospective customers

(Click the embedded links for examples.)

• A “how to” article that helps the reader solve a specific problem
• Tips and insights about a topic your ideal customer is interested in
• An interview with a related expert that helps the reader solve a specific problem
• A video demonstration about how to complete a task
• An infographic that makes it easier to understand a complex issue
• A review of a book, website or other resource that will be helpful to your ideal customer
• An example of how another person or business succeeded in the same situation that your ideal customer is facing

If you’re still feeling hesitant, Jay Baer has five great reasons to give away the recipe for your secret sauce. Remember: Your self-serve information can cement your credibility in the eyes of a prospective customer who needs the products or services you offer.