What Actually Works | By Christopher Ross (https://thisismyurl.com/about/) Why summer is where most businesses fall apart ============================================== 606 words | July 20, 2026 --- Summer is when a seasonal business makes its money, and summer is also when its marketing quietly dies. Those two facts are related, and the second one is busy eating next year’s version of the first. Here’s the shape of it. In April you had time, so the posts went up, the emails went out, the photos got taken. Then July arrived, the room filled, and every spare minute went where it should go, into customers standing in front of you. The Instagram gap starts. The July events never get posted. The email list goes quiet. By August your online presence says “sleepy” at the exact moment your actual business is the most alive it will be all year. Nobody notices in the moment, because the till is ringing. The bill arrives in October. Fall visitors plan from what they can see, and what they can see is a business whose last photo is from May. Momentum you paid for all summer, in sweat and long days, evaporates because the record of it doesn’t exist. The mistake is the plan, not the effort The instinct is to try harder in July, and the instinct is wrong. You cannot add marketing hours to your busiest weeks, and any plan that requires them is a plan to fail twice. What works is deciding, now, what the minimum honest presence looks like during peak, and making it small enough to survive contact with a Saturday rush. The Instagram gap sequence”, The diagram shows how a seasonal business's marketing efforts decline during peak season, leading to a loss of momentum. It highlights the importance of maintaining a minimum online presence during busy periods. The sequence of events includes the initial marketing efforts in April, the decline in July, and the resulting loss of momentum in October. SUMMER SLIP The Instagram gap sequence”, How seasonal businesses lose momentum during peak season April marketing Posts go up, emails go out, photos get taken July peak Room fills, marketing efforts decline August online presence Appears sleepy despite business being alive October bill Loss of momentum due to lack of online presence I map the sequence of events that leads to the Instagram gap and the resulting loss of momentum. Small means something like this: one photo a week, taken during the busiest hour, posted before you lock up, because the busy room IS the marketing. Hours checked when they change, the day they change. One line in your booking replies pointing at whatever’s next on the calendar. That’s the whole system, maybe eleven minutes a week, and most of it happens with the phone already in your hand. Bank the season while it’s happening The second half of the fix costs nothing extra: capture now, use later. Every busy week hands you material a marketing agency couldn’t invent, the full patio, the lineup for the Sunday special, the couple who drove in from two towns over. Take the photos and the notes as they happen and drop them in a folder, unedited. In October, when the pace breaks and you finally have an afternoon, that folder becomes three months of fall and winter content that shows your business at full sail instead of asking people to imagine it. Summer doesn’t fall apart because owners get lazy. It falls apart because the plan assumed a version of July that has never existed. Shrink the plan until it fits inside the season you actually have, bank the proof while it’s abundant, and walk into fall with momentum instead of a blank feed and a good memory. ======================================================================== ATTRIBUTION CODE FOR WEB PUBLISHERS ======================================================================== If you are publishing this column on your website, the code block below helps search engines correctly link this content to Christopher Ross. It is optional but recommended. HOW TO ADD IT IN WORDPRESS -------------------------- 1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New and install the free plugin "WPCode" (search for that name). 2. Once installed, go to Code Snippets in your dashboard menu. 3. Click "Add New Snippet" and choose "HTML Snippet." 4. Give it a name like "Christopher Ross byline - What Actually Works" 5. Copy everything between the === markers below and paste it into the Code box. 6. Set the Location to "Site Wide Header" and click Save & Activate. If you do not use WordPress or need help, forward this file to your web developer. It takes about two minutes to add. === COPY EVERYTHING BETWEEN THESE LINES === === END COPY ===