How often SHOULD you blog? Really?
It’s challenging to blog 16 times a month. I’ve done it, back in my early days of blogging (2003ish), when a company hired me to write two posts a day for their blog. I practically killed myself doing it.
I’ve experimented with blogging three times a week, twice a week, and once a week. Any less than once a week doesn’t work, as my readership tanks.
While it’s true that publishing more frequently does attract more visitors to your blog, I’d rather publish fresh, high-quality content at a pace that’s realistic and doable for me (currently, that’s once a week).
When life happens…
If I need to skip a week due to illness, travel, or a heavy work load, I give myself permission to do that, guilt-free. Okay. ALMOST guilt-free.
For example, during the next three weeks, I’m going to be doing a lot of traveling. I’m also fine-tuning workshops that I’ll be teaching at a conference, preparing to launch an online course, ghost writing and running Facebook ad campaigns for several clients, launching a client’s website, revamping my own website, and drafting several “mega” blog posts. And I’m recovering from a back injury that forces me to spend big chunks of time resting, stretching, and visiting the massage therapist.
I’m not telling you this to gain sympathy points. It’s just the way my life looks at the moment. I’m betting that your life includes a similar set of demands on your time.
Alternative: Group blogging
Unless you’re part of a blogging team in which you contribute one post a week, it’s really, really difficult to blog 3-5 times a week, every week of the year. Yeah, you can sustain that pace for a while. But after about six months, you’ll notice that the quality of your blog posts decreases and your desire to continue blogging flags.
And honestly, I’m not sure whether readers want to hear from you that often.
I’ve unsubscribed from several blogs that publish lengthy articles six days a week. While I’d love to soak in all their content, there aren’t enough hours in the day or brain cells left in my head to absorb that quantity of information.
Quality vs. quantity
I’ve never had a reader contact me and say, “I wish you would publish a new blog post every day.”
But plenty of readers have told me,
“Thank you so much for your excellent blog posts. I look forward to them, and I always learn something new!”
My goal is to publish fresh content at a pace that gives my readers time to digest my content, and keeps them coming back for more.
I’d love to hear from you on this.
- How many times per week do you publish new articles on your blog?
- Is that a comfortable amount for you and your readers?
- Are you thinking of cutting back or expanding the amount of weekly posts you publish?
More articles in this series
In my next post, we’ll discuss the “perfect” length for a blog post.
In Part 3 of this series, guest columnist, Lisa Michaels, will share five simple, yet effective tactics to promote your new content.
Tweet it
[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Is blogging 16+ times/month realistic, or even doable for a solopreneur?[/tweet_box]
[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Blogging: The QUALITY vs QUANTITY debate. What’s your take?[/tweet_box]
Statistic Source: Hubspot blog
Carrie,
Your comment makes me very glad I trimmed this post back to its original 500 words. I had the bright idea to expand it and it ended up being 2500 words! But I couldn’t figure out how to make the additional 2000 words work in this context, so I decided to ponder this for a while and save those words for another article. Or a series.
WOW! I’ve heard 3 times a week but never this much. I used to do 1-2 when I first started blogging 6 years ago to build a platform. Last year, I moved my blog to my website, had blog interface issues with the provider for 6 months (where I couldn’t post any new content on my site at all!) and finally moved all of it back to WordPress this past Septemeber. While people still found my past blog posts, I’ve had to rebuild my followers. I blog once a week with a rare extra thrown in if I feel led. I’m picking up momentum with new readers finally, but it seems to take time. Any more than once is too much when I’m trying to produce books. But I have found this year that a few things have helped: 1. I narrowed in on my “brand” or “message” and keep that as the focus (in some way) for everything I write. (I write about taking your life forward into hope, healing and redemption through Jesus). As I focus on taking our lives forward, my posts have become easier to write because I’m not scrambling for something to write about. Even if I have a new book coming, I can talk about it in terms of that. 2. I asked God to give me content. Sounds simple, but he really has given me so much during my time with him. 3. Writing out a schedule and spending about one day per month focused on blog writing keeps me scheduled about 3-4 weeks ahead. That takes the pressure off. 4. I’ve begun looking for other authors I can feature once a month with a similar message. A couple of times I’ve been reading a magazine and an article jumps out as pertinent so I can build a post around that. I finally feel like blogging is working well and not stressing me out.
Laura,
I’m glad to hear your current plan for blogging is working well for you. I am a huge believer in writing topical posts, as blogging about “life” or random topics and hoping that people will find you rarely works. The fact that your blog topics are broad enough to tie in with your book’s theme is great.
I like that you’re devoting a day a month to concentrated blogging. A lot of bloggers “batch” their posts and it’s an effective way to stay productive and stay motivated to blog.
Thanks, Laura! I appreciate all I’ve learned from you about social media both at Mount Hermon and on your blog. I actually really like your “tips” posts!
I too have experimented with frequency and have determined that 3/week puts me over the edge. I need more margin in my life than that allows. 2x is sustainable, but as I’m looking ahead to launching my first book and returning to freelance writing, I’m trying very hard now to make room for these by cutting back to just once a week. I don’t know what that’s going to do to my numbers, but I do know it’s going to make me saner and improve post quality — enough of a win-win to make me happy. And I suspect my readers too.