Riddle me this: There are two popular blogs on the same topic. One blogger posts once to twice per day. The other blogger posts one to twice per month. Which blog receives more traffic and “buzz?”
Posting frequency is a topic discussed and debated by everyone who blogs about blogging. Some say it doesn’t matter, some say it does. Frankly, I think each and every blogger has different reasons for success. I can talk about what worked for my freelance writing blog, but a tomato blog might have way different results. The communities and their needs are different. With that said, there are a few universal truths one needs to consider:
- Most traffic isn’t foot traffic: Using my soon to be former freelance writing blog as an example. I can tell you that my Google Analytics clocks about 5,000 visitors per day. However, that same blog also has a Facebook group of 3,000+ receiving updates and reading via that network, and over 10,500 RSS readers. So it’s hard to accurately measure how many people are really reading your stuff when the bulk of your readers never even come to your blog.
- The more you blog, the more people will read: It’s kind of common sense. People aren’t turned off when you post ever day – or even twice a day. Some are a little put off by 30 posts a day, but that doesn’t stop Mashable or Techcrunch from being top blogs. Granted, we can’t all be popular tech blogs, but the truth is, if you have good stuff to say people will read it regardless of how many times you post.
- If you have good content, people will read it regardless of how often you post: Oh wait, I just said that.
- The more you blog, the more search engine fodder you’re tossing out: So even if you’re not seeing visible traffic at first, eventually all those pages are going to be indexed in the search engines and folks will come a-calling. It takes time, but eventually the search traffic will grow. Simply put, the more (relevant) content, the more search traffic.
- Readers like a schedule: When your community knows when you’ll be posting, they’ll show up at that time. They like to know you’ll be there when they want a lunch hour read or it’s time to see what’s new in the RSS feed. If you’re sporadic, they’ll be checking up on you less often and maybe even not at all.
I don’t feel the key to blogging is frequency, but rather consistency. When your readers don’t know when to expect content, they’ll lower their expectations. It’s been my experience that readers are loyal when their loyalty is rewarded. They’ll come once or twice a day if they know you’re going to be posting that often.
Does posting frequency matter? It’s been my experience that it does. What does your experience tell you?
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