How Often Should You Publish Your Blog Posts
I’ve looked at the issue of when to publish your blog posts, but what about how often?
Sharon Sarmiento of 901AM answers this for me beautifully:
I was thinking: Do these intense evolutionary pressures occur in blogging?
Really, take a moment to think about it–do you ever get the feeling in your blogging life that you’re running hard simply to stay in place?
One thing that springs to my mind is the standard for having lots of posts on a blog. The more content the better, it seems.
You may have started out with the personal expectation of posting 3 times a week, then increased the expectation to 5 times a week, then all the sudden it’s the norm for folks to publish multiple times a day every day of the week, and you’re wondering, “Should I be posting more?”.
As Sarmiento puts it, the race to “keep up” with other bloggers propels many into posting multiple times a day. If you have a multi-blogger blog, then this isn’t unreasonable, but it is certainly kinda nuts when you are a one-blogger show.
She highlights surveys done by ProBlogger Darren Rowse and Guy Kawasaki which basically said that too many posts is one of the main reasons why people unsubscribe from your blog and it’s better to post when you feel like it and have a topic worthy of posting than to post on a schedule.
I’ve long been a fan of publishing no more than one to two posts a day. I usually do one a day on Lorelle on WordPress, unless something timely and critically happens. I work way ahead using future posts. This technique works for me as I tend not to publish timely or time sensitive posts and can work ahead to cover the times when I’m away from the Internet for days at a time traveling. My blog can still do the work when I’m not around.
Even with one a day, I am starting to think about cutting back. I certainly do not produce that amount on my other blogs, but with WordPress and blogging, there is just so much news and so much I want to say and share with others. .
I’m often called “prolific”. While it’s true, it’s also hard work. Do my readers really need to read my words once a day? How many actually stop by every day to make sure that I’ve left a post on my blog. Would anyone notice if I skipped a few days?
Keeping up with bloggers or even news-oriented blogs and websites is overwhelming when their capacity to release information exceeds my capacity to keep up with it.
Part of the abuse of feed scraping to replace content comes from this need to have something published all the time, as well as malicious advertising techniques. Presumably, the splogs get more attention from search engine page ranking algorithms if they publish more frequently.
Though, after finding a few splogs with more than 2,000 posts in one month’s time, I’d say that frequent publishing is a sign of a splog, not a busy blogger.
The myth that the more posts you post the higher your Google PageRank needs to be shot down. Google’s new Blog PageRank algorithm seems to care more about how well you maintain a frequent post rate rather than how many. If those many posts aren’t laden with keywords, frequency of posting will still have no impact. Consistency matters. Volume doesn’t.
So there are two issues here.
How often should a blogger post?
How often do you read your favorite blog?
I believe you should publish a post when you have something to say. Avoid letting a month go by, but if you don’t have anything to say that adds to the conversation or starts one, then relax. In fact, we’d all relax and have a better experience on the web if the panic-posting frenzy would just lighten up a little.
As for how often I check my favorite blogs…how about you tell us how often you check yours.
Lorelle VanFossen blogs about blogging and WordPress on Lorelle on WordPress.
(1) I haven’t thought of how often should a blogger post before reading this article. However, I think a post on every two or three days is good. Unless the blogger posts short posts, I wouldn’t mind going back on a daily basis. You’re right about people unsubscribing from bloggers who post multiple posts per day (I did that a couple of times because I think they took too much of my time).
(2) I am always connected to the Internet whenever I work with my computer, and I am always logged in to my GMail and Bloglines. I read my feeds whenever I wanted to take a break from journal-reading and thesis-writing and I comment only if I have something relevant to say (as opposed to leaving passing comment such as “Great post!” or something to that effect. In fact I find that rude.
(1) It depends on the blog and writer/reader perspective. As a blogger I try to post (only) twice a week but as a blog reader I prefer 3-7 posts a week.
(2) I check my favorite blogs several times a day using Netvibes as my startpage. Even though I try read my blogs daily I’m having a hard time keeping up if a blog posts more than one post a day.
Hi Lorelle,
Thanks so much for the mention. In answer to your questions:
1) In general, I think a blogger should post “when the muse strikes”. Now, this doesn’t mean going a whole month between posts :), but I certainly think that the quality of posts published on most single-author blogs would improve drastically if the expectation of producing a certain number of posts was downplayed and the importance of writing for pleasure was up-played. As a reader, I value quality over quantity every time.
2) Like everyone else, I only have a limited amount of time, so my very favorite blog are few, and even with those, I’ll read them every other day or so.
Over in my post at 901am, there was one commenter who said something that struck home with me–he said that if a post was still getting lots of comments that he would hold off publishing his next post until the activity on the current post died down. I kind of like that idea and think it probably goes a long way towards building community around a blog–everyone is participating in the same discussion at the same time, for the most part, and as a reader, you don’t feel like you’re under pressure to consume a constant influx of daily posts.
Also, for us folks who publish longer essay posts, if we publish too often, some of our best work can end up getting lost in the shuffle, which is a shame.
So, this is why I’ve started posting “when the muse strikes”. Sometimes that turns out to be 3 posts of varying lengths a day, sometimes it turns out to be only 2 posts a week. One thing’s for sure though–ever since I started doing this I’ve been able to relax and enjoy the writing process more. :)
Cheers,
Sharon
I’m confused. Why would people need to come back to your web site to look for new posts? That’s the whole purpose of having an RSS feed. Subscribe once, then whenever you post something, the next time I check my feeds, I’ll see it. And if you don’t publish something, fine. I won’t know that.
I’m an RSS-feed-reading addict. I do check my RSS reader almost every other hour or even more often. However, I don’t read all the new posts that the blogs I’ve subscribed to.
Although it’s great if I get to read really interesting posts every so often from a blog. When the posting frequency becomes too often, I get tired, too, and start letting the posts pile up first for a few days or so.
It’s true ~
If I am subscribed to a blog and there are a gazillion posts that go up on it daily then I will more than likely unsubscribe from the blog.
I’m just not a fan of information overload.