In a comment on today’s post, Chris Branscome asked:
How often should you post to your blog? Once a week? Once a day? Somewhere in between?
It’s a great question! It’s certainly a very commonly asked question, and it’s when where there are bound to be differences of opinion.
Erica Mullenix, responded with some excellent insight:
I believe that as long as you let your readers and first time visitors know your schedule, you can decide for yourself. Irregularity will kill your blog faster than infrequency.
I agree with Erica completely.
Your goal as a blogger is to connect with your readers. To do that, they have to know when to expect new content from you. I know some of you creative folks cringe at the thought of being predictable, but just imagine what would happen if your newspaper or favorite TV show was published/broadcast at random intervals. You’d get frustrated, lose interest, and eventually stop reading/watching.
Now days you can overcome irregular posting if a lot of your readers subscribe to your blog by RSS or follow you on Twitter, but IMO you’ll still be better off if you try to post on a regular schedule.
On the low side, I think a blogger really needs to post at least once a week. On the high side, unless you’re blog is reporting breaking news, one post a day is probably the max.
- How often do you think a blogger should post? What factors and principles should be considered?
- How often do you post to your blog?
10 Comments
great article. I was just discussing this with our pastor this morning. I run his bloghttp://www.tomelmore.com He's not a blogger and blogs sporadically. He'll sometimes want to post 3 blogs in one day and then nothing for a week. Trying to put him on a healthy schedule of Mon/Wed/Fri..
A good examination of an interesting topic.
I write Bible prophecy related articles for a National news site, Examiner.com. Although it is not a blog per se, the same dynamic is in play. I have noticed that the more I write each week, the more my readership builds.
The Examiner group recommends that we write at least three articles each week to build and retain an audience. The most important thing is as your article states, to remain consistent as you noted.
Well said.
Regular and predictable. If you post a type of post every Friday then stick to it.
I have observed that regular posting keeps pageviews up, not so sure about comments – that to me seems to be a luck thing.
At the moment I am too busy to keep regular and immediately I see that visits have dropped noticeably.
I try to post daily, with only a scripture meditation post for the weekends (that I schedule in advance). I agree that it's important to post regularly so people know when to check your blog for new posts.
Thanks for posting this. I've been wondering about this myself.
~Jennifer
Gosh. I'm humbled that you would write an entire post to answer my question. Thank you very much!
Comparing blogging to a newspaper or TV show is a great way to look at it. That's a great point.
No problem. I'm glad you raised the question. It's certainly important and common enough to warrant it's own post.
I agree with regularity. One correspondent I know tries to catch the Central US lunch time crowd, which is great, but I prefer to be timezone independent, as long as I keep up a consistent, regular flow of output. I try to stick to one a day and one intense debate a week, but sometimes I do more, sometimes a little less. I am dead against too much and feel once a day is about as much as most busy people can absorb. I also limit all blogs to a maximum of 500 words – evidently people are reading more today than ever, they are just accessing material differently – in bite size chunks. They also scan, so headings can be really useful.
predictability!? aww 🙁
If you blog in the growing stages, you might way to try to post everyday including Saturday and Sunday. If you really want to see great results, try posting twice a day. Then as your blog matures, you can scale it back however you like.
Regularity is key. I know of an occasional blogger who writes on average 1 per month but the content brings the readers back. Some people seem to be overwhelmed by the thought of checking back daily (I think its "too much to read" thing leftover from reading assignments in High School and college.) I've been doing 1 per week. Writing when I catch an inspiration and them scheduling them to post on Wednesdays. Can't say it's helped or hurt my stats.