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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I agree with you that it is consistency rather than frequency that matters to me. Although I find it hard to keep up with the ones that post more than once a day, and even those that post daily, I may catch up with a few times a week and read a few at a time. As a subscriber, I come to depend on the bloggers who I can count on being there week after week and tend to put them at the top of my reading list and the sporadic posters I get around to when I have extra time.
Yes, I think it does, because when I have a flurry of posting often, interest and traffic rise. However, I don’t think that means you need to post every day. As long as readers know what to expect and they like your stuff, they will come when you post. That’s been my experience, though I will admit that if I posted several times a day I’d probably have a community twice or three times the size it is now. Slow growth works for me at the moment, though.
I am currently having just this debate with myself. Even asked the question on Twitter – was my frequency enough, too much, not enough. I got “Enough verging on we want more.” It’s really hard to put good stuff out there more than about 4 times a week. For me. But I sense that 5/week would be just right for my audience, so maybe I will try to turn the dial up just a bit.
Three times a week seems to be best for my audience in terms of truly reading/interacting with the post. My posts are often a bit on the longish side, and I find when I have a day or so in between posts there are more comments, emails, and tweets than when I post more than that.
Blogging has definitely boosted the number of visitors to my site. Posting links to my blogs on Facebook is where I seem to be making the most connections, not Twitter or LinkedIn…yet. My first weekly newsletter debut broke my highest numbers of visitors in one day. I blog five days a week at this point. Like LPC, I would love to be doing four but the consistency of five seems to keep readership up. I lose hits on the weekends and have considered finding a way to do at least one weekend blog as more people may have extra time to read on non-work days…perhaps I’ll trade a Wednesday for a Saturday. So, yes to blogging regularly…it works (I’m sure as stated above with the caveat the material is quality)…weekly newsletter is a must for my coaching business…so yes to this. What is unclear is what readers would prefer to read ~ more fact based tips ‘n tools about how to use coaching in your life to make incredible changes or whether they enjoy my more personal stories that always touch on a life lesson but are not necessarily how to type articles. I just keep treating things like an experiment. Great dialogue! Thanks for posting this discussion.
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