How frequently will you post on your Blog?
The 8th chapter in our 11 things to consider before you start blogging takes a look at publishing frequency. By this I mean the rate at which you write and publish new content on your blog. In this article I shall be discussing publishing frequency, why it is important and what the outcomes are of maintaining a certain publishing frequency, to only improve on it. It is very overlooked that by maintaining a certain publishing frequency and to only increase the amount of articles you publish on your blog can have major impacts on your blogs growth.
Publishing frequency, what do you actually mean?
I understand that throughout the Internet people use slightly different terms which in reality mean the exact same things, this is just proof that each individual is different. So I shall explain a little more as to what I mean by Publishing frequency.
In simple terms Publishing frequency is the amount of times you publish new content on to your Blog over a certain period, in this case we shall be using one week. In some cases the published content will be a couple of sentences long and in others it may be several thousand words long it doesn’t matter. All we count here is the amount of times new content is published over a period of a week.
Give us a clue Will, how many times a week should I publish content on my blog?
This is a question I can only answer very broadly as each blog will be totally different. However there are ways you can catergorise or group blogs. In terms of grouping a blog to a certain publishing frequency you can look at your blogs catergory or market. A blog which is related entirely to news and world events may publish content every hour or two where as a blog that publishes content on cooking recipes may only decide to publish new content every weekend.
If your struggling to figure out how many timers per week you could publish new content then it may be useful to find other blogs in your area (preferably successful blogs) and look at how many times they publish new content per week. This may give you an ideas as to how much content there is to publish on your blog as well as the amount of content readers are satisified with each week. Going back to the catergories, a reader isn’t likely to be satisfied with a news blog which only publishes content every week, because they would be late telling their readers about the current affairs. Just like a reader would probably get annoyed or overwhelmed if a blog on cooking published more than 30 new articles a day, whether they be recipes or food reviews.
To come up with a publishing frequency you need to look at several different variables internally and externally.
The main internal variables are:
- How much time do you have to write?
- How many ideas for articles do you have?
The main external variables are:
- How many times a week do your competition publish new content?
- How much content is their to write about?
- What amount of weekly content would your readers be most satisified with?
These are just several of the variables which you may need to answer to find a good publishing frequency. Obviously some are more important than others, such as the time you have to write. This should be one of the first variables that you answer, if you only have enough time to write one article a week for your blog then you’ve pretty much answered the question yourself. However if you have a couple of hours each day then it may be a little less clear.
Tip: When considering to start blogging make sure the topic selected has a large amount of information to write about.
Mistakes not to make when figuring out how frequently to post content on your blog
As this series has progressed I have tried to include all of my personal examples or experiences of each mistake I have made along my blogging path which I hope will help to ensure that you don’t make the same mistakes that I did.
When it comes to posting frequency I never actually considered a frequency. The main reason for this was because I was not using a blogging platform such as Wordpress, Blogger or Joomla instead I was using a hand coded site which I had to add and edit to upload new articles. This obviously made it extremely time consuming to write even one article so instead of trying to consider a posting frequency I would just write an article when I had the time and upload it when I had the time. Obviously this wasn’t the perfect strategy thus being why my blog has taken so long to get even to this stage, however I have learnt from my mistakes and since I changed to Wordpress I have tried to keep to some sort of frequency. The frequency I am currently aiming for is 5 posts a week, some weeks I am successful and other weeks I am not however its the fact that I have my aim and I am trying to achieve it which keeps my blog moving. Now 5 articles a week might not sound much but I always try to make each of my articles pillar articles (articles which are usually quite long in depth and linkable) instead of making my articles very brief, I extend my articles and try to add as much personal experience, advice and information as I can do.
By making each of my articles pillar articles it hopefully grasps the readers attention and helps them realise that the blogger (this being me) understands what they are talking about, they have the expertice and are willing to help others no matter how long it takes (I hope this is the point I get across). I would rather post 5 articles a week which are quite in depth rather than 15 posts a week which barely touch upon a subject or cover a certain point or issue which may need making clear.
So without blabbering anymore I will list a couple of mistakes that you should NOT make!
- Starting with a publishing frequency that you can’t handle
- Sticking with this publishing frequency and then realising after a couple of weeks that you can’t do it and cutting down
- Publishing more content on one day than on another. (Exceptions are made)
I know three mistakes isn’t really a lot however I wanted to briefly explain each of the points I have made. What I mean by the first point is by planning on writing 9 articles a week and then realising you can only do 5 a week, although it is much better to realise before you make the mistake of point number two. The idea is that you already have it planned in your head how many articles your going to post per week.
The second point refers to people who start blogging, really motivated and after not really planning anything, after a week or two they realise that they can’t keep up with posting 10 times a week and they start to cut it down. First to 8 then to 7 then to 4 where they struggle to achieve this each week. The problem with this is any readers which subscribed to your blog at first because you posted so much will now realise that you don’t post as much and may because of this lose interest in your blog. Another point is the majority of people subscribe to blogs because they feel that they are going to miss a certain point or article that you write so by subscribing they ensure that they never miss the article.
The third point I made has its exceptions however I am focusing it directly at people who don’t yet post once a day however one day comes up where they have a sudden urge to write and end up writing two or three articles on that day and end up publishing all the articles on that day. This is a very bad strategy, if this happens to you (it probably will do) you should save the articles and publish them another day perhaps when you are very busy and find you cannot write an article on that day, use the articles as back up articles.
Overall deciding what publishing frequency to post articles on your blog is totally up to you and no one else. Although you can look at competition and your chosen subject for inspiration or ideas it comes down to the amount of time you have spare and how much of that time you are willing to dedicate to writing articles each day. For some people including myself, every day is different, one Thursday you may have all day to write articles where as the Thursday after you may have plans and are not able to write any articles at all. The key in this situation is to write articles for the future, I shall cover this in another article as I don’t want to hurt your eyes too much after reading another long article.
I hope you enjoyed this article, although it wasn’t as well structured as my usual articles I ended up writing it at two different intervals. Anyways, I am very interested in hearing your thoughts and techniques of how you decide how many articles to publish each day.
Please comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to my Blog to catch next weeks 11 things to consider before you start blogging chapter.
Enjoyed this, why not download the 11 part series as an E Book at 73 pages long I am sure you will find it helpful. Subscribe and download right here.
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[...] How frequently will you post on your blog? [...]
Those are very good points. Frequency is something people should consider before they start blogging. - and yes each blog / subject will have its own needs.
I think planning is often overlooked when people first start blogs/sites. There have been reports that there are tens of thousands of blogs started a day, but most go dormant after 6 months.
[...] I have spoken about the frequency of posting on a Blog, why it is important to set a posting rate from the day your Blog is created and what factors [...]