Anyone that operates a blog has likely asked themselves the question of how often they should post on their blog at least once.
Right? I know that I have and I am sure that I am not alone.
As much as I would like to tell you that I have the absolute answer to that question, the truth of the matter is that there really is no “one-size-fits-all” answer.
In order to determine how often you should be posting new content on your blog you will need to consider the following:
- What Are Your Goals
Why are you blogging? Are you just trying to drive up traffic or are you looking to build a community of loyal readers?
If you have aspirations of becoming a professional blogger, you will likely find that you need to post with a little more frequency. However if blogging is more of a hobby or a part-time endeavor, you will likely find that you can get by with fewer posts.
Are you trying to make money with AdSense? Awhile back I discussed the secret to earning more with AdSense – which actually seemed to support the idea that posting less often resulted in more earnings.
- Type of Blog
How would you define your blog? Are you writing about the latest technology news or are you writing about what you had for dinner?
Depending on the nature of your blog, you may need to post more or less frequently. A blog on news and current events is not likely to garner much attention if there is only one new post per week. Likewise posting five times a day to a personal blog might be overkill.
- Length of Post
Are you the type of writer that likes to provide very thorough posts that run into the thousands of words? Or do you prefer short posts with less detail?
The length of your typical post will certainly factor into how often you post. It will be much more difficult to publish more than one post per day if you are writing 1000+ word posts that take hours to compose. But if you normally write posts of 100 words or less, your readers may want more than one post per day.
- How Many Blogs Do You Have
Along the same lines as the length of your post, your posting frequency will be determined to some degree by how many blogs you are operating.
When you have one blog it is much more manageable to post once or twice per day. But when you have a handful of blogs that becomes much more difficult to maintain.
- What Do You Want And What Do Your Readers Want
Ultimately the answer to how often you should post on your blog comes down to what you want and what your readers want from you.
It is great if you want to keep your blog fresh with two or three posts per day. But can you keep that pace up over a long period of time? One rule that you should follow is to never force a post just for the sake of posting.
You will also need to pay attention to your readers. It is possible to drive away readers by posting too often just as you can lose readers by not posting often enough. Don’t be afraid to ask your readers for feedback.
How I Have Answered The Question
While the answer ultimately lies with how you define the points above, I thought it might be helpful if I share with you how I have answered the question of how often to post on my blogs.
When I first started blogging in August 2006, I only had my personal finance blog and was committed to posting five times per week. When I launched this blog, I continued to post five times per week to my personal finance blog while also posting five times per week on this blog. Recently I launched a new blog within the eMoms At Home site that is focused on work-life balance for dads. With this new blog, something had to give as I no longer had time for posting five times per week to three blogs.
I still do my best to post five times per week on this blog while I publish three to five posts per week at Dad Balance. On my personal finance site, I’ve slowed down to one or two posts per week but try to make them a little more substantial. But I have also learned that the world will not end if a day goes by without a post.
Rule of Thumb
Because there are so many factors that will influence your decision on how often you should post, there really is no right or wrong answer.
As a general rule of thumb, try to shoot for posting between one and three times per week but do not force a post just to meet a minimum number of posts for the week. I would much rather read one quality post per week than five posts with meaningless drivel, unless of course I am looking for meaningless drivel. 🙂
Regardless of your answer to the question of how often you should be posting, do your best to be consistent, have fun and listen to your readers!
To all of my readers…anything you would like to say?
{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
I usually try for at least 2 posts a day. Most of the times I do 3. There are times like today however, that I can’t seem to find anything on the tech scene that hasn’t been written to death by other blogs. So what do I do? I don’t post. I’ll make it up tomorrow.
Skipping a day is no biggie. I’d rather skip one day than put up a post that will kill my visitors with boredom haha.
I try to post once a day on my main blogs and once a week on my minor blogs.
It depends on the traffic and other factors as to how long the posts will be.
H.C.
Great advice, I would say to experiment at first and they once you have found the magic formula be consistent in sticking to it.
Great advice. One thing I did was put my several blogs in my Yahoo. I check the My Yahoo page every day and if I see I have no posts in a blog, I go and make one, it shows posts from the last 3 days and since then, my goal has been at least one post every 3 days.
This is the post you did for Court? I’m done with mine also. I put out one post every day. Sometimes if I’m tired I’ll post every other day.
My blog is very much comment driven and I try to keep an even tempo so my readers know what to expect. BTW, It will be Monday before I have an interview, I’ve been real busy.
I think it’ll be really good. You can plug whatever you want and any pics also.
This is a really good entry. I feel out my traffic. If it’s high and I’m getting good responses, I will post every day. Every blog has to find what works best for it!
@Brown Baron :: I don’t think I’ve encountered a boring post on your site and always look forward to your time wasters! 🙂
@Halloween Contest :: Thanks for sharing what has worked well for you, that is very similar to my current schedule.
@Matt :: You’re right, it is important to experiment because every blog will be slightly different and you need to determine what works the best for you and your blog.
@Kate :: I’ve got one of my blogs on My Yahoo and that is a great reminder if you see the notice that there is nothing new. Thanks for the comment!
@Bobby :: Yes, this is the post that I did for Court’s writing project and I forgot to mention it within the context of the post. No problem on the interview, tomorrow is my son’s birthday party so it will give me time to relax. 🙂 Thanks for the feedback.
I’m taking a rapid blogging approach on OpTempo, shooting for about 10 posts a day, at least at first. It’s kind of an experiment to see if I can keep up the pace and keep up quality plus experiment with monetization and promotion ideas.
I also have a software development blog where I keep a slower pace, but the articles are much more detailed.
I also saw your post about Adsense. My static HTML based guitar site that rarely changes makes more than either blog. People who come through it are in a buying mood it seems.
i have tired to maintain one post a day, so my readers know what and when to expect an update and i will always post at the same time everyday…
@Frank C :: Will you be posting at all on your experiment with the high number of posts per day? That would be very interesting to see how that turns out. Is is interesting to see that your guitar site makes more and that makes sense that the visitors have a different mindset. That is why I believe this site never did much with AdSense as the visitors just aren’t looking for ads.
@Simon :: I’ve tried to maintain a consistent time but have found that to be pretty hard. Most of my posts are later at night after I get home from work but every now and then I can get a post out over lunch.
I post about every 2-3 days on mine. Maybe I should pick it up a little. 😀
If it works for you and your readers are happy then posting every 2-3 days might be just fine. 🙂
I should really be posting more often, but I enjoy my leisure time. The time I have allocated to taking care of the sites has been sucked up completely by my Tech Site. I never thought giving away a mountain of free stuff could be so much work 😆
I do, however, touch base at least once a week, or when I have something important to say. It’s always been my personal blog, and I intend to keep it that way.
I generally keep the frequency at 2 per day. I agree wtih Simon’s idea to post at the same time everyday, but a lot of times I don’t get that done. The trick to doing that is to have them done in advance and time-stamp them…but to do that, they have to be done.
@Stephen :: I can only imagine how a big giveaway like you are running takes a good deal of time. Just giving away 15 shirts was time consuming, lol.
@Nick :: Writing in advance certainly makes it easier to post at the same time. As much as I try to do that, I still fall into the habit of posting on the fly.
Just post when you have something worthwhile to say. Posting for the sake of posting is getting close to ‘splogging’.
Guess which participant will give you the best return for your comment effort.
Table of Link Values of participants
Just a quick survey of how many links on each participants article page.
It will eventually be an article but I thought you would like to see the table. I was amazed!
“Will you be posting at all on your experiment with the high number of posts per day?”
Derek, I’ll be posting updates on my site from time to time. Right now I have 88 posts since October 6 which is running slightly behind my target because of some unavoidable connectivity glitches. I’m working on the best way to show total number of posts in my sidebar. I’ve got the PHP code to do it but it’s kind of ugly right now.
@TigerTom :: Thanks for the feedback!
@Localref :: Are you implying that comments on a page with less links is more valuable? It is an interesting comparison though.
@FrankC :: Are you looking for a grand total or just the total per month? You can display the total next to the name of the month in your archive widget. If you’re looking for the grand total I think there are plugins that will do that but if not I wouldn’t that would be too hard to do.
If you take the “nofollow” out of the equation, that is what I am saying. Of course, if nofollow is attached the link value is .00. Wonder if you have 100 links and 50 are nofollow, does it read the value as one-hundredth, or one-fiftieth.
Wait till you see the rest of the article. I thought I just would add some data. My head is spinning.
I see you have about 150 links on your page. I hear google only reads around 100. Wonder which ones are left out! I also noticed 66% of your page value goes off your site. Quit it, my head is spinning…..Are you writing articles for the benefit of us, more than yourself?
Thanks!
I’ll be waiting to check out your article to gain a better understanding of what you are talking about. Thanks for the additional bits of explanation.
I hate it when sometimes people just create a blog entry that has no value to the reader what so ever.
If you have nothing good to write then it’s better to just skip for that day.
That is exactly why I didn’t post anything yesterday. 🙂
It really depends on the blogger. Some blogs are meant to have post everyday some don’t.
wow love this post.. from now on i will follow all of this.
Derek,
First off I found my way to your site from Courtney Tuttles Group writing project, just in case you are tracking that.
I love the sub heading of your blog to allow you to include the kitchen sink, if necessary. It gave me a little chuckle.
Your article on when to post helped me sort through the issue. I try to keep a delicate balance of enough but not too much. I do post daily, but I use features like Sunday Video to make the process a little easier. Then when I have something really special that I wrote I add it in, something like 2-3 times a week. I also vary the size of my post from one line to 1,000 words, but I avoid going over that limit.
Thanks,
nick
Nick, thanks for mentioning how you found your way here. In my most recent Speedlinking post I noted that Courtney’s site was one the top referring sites due to the writing project.
Regarding the sub heading, if you stick around you’ll notice that I do fall into the “everything else” category quite a bit. 🙂
Your note about the size of the post is a great addition to the decision on how often to post. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
lately i lost my blogging mojo and i just lost the urge to post new topics for my blogs… maybe i just need some break from the blogging world. I’ll return after i got some vacation and new fresh contents.
I like posting every two days on my blog, xptricks.net, but somethimes I get carried away and make over 3 posts a day..
Eerik’s last blog post..U Comment – I Follow
Hey Eerik, posting 3 times in one day on your blog is not really considered getting “carried away”..lol. Some people post on there blog almost every hour, so just as Derek said, it all depends on what type of blog you have.
I really like to add video when I get a chance to my blog. Got a really nice little camera that’s YouTube ready and it makes it easy to put stuff up there. Same with the Flip camera, plugs directly into USB w no cords.
i like to post every day when i can
I try to post once a month, the problem really is not creating the post, but the constant spell checking and grammar problems so you don’t look like a fool.
From a SEO view the more often you post the best for your site not only because it will show search engines that it is updated regularly but you will have more chances to rank for many keywords, simple because you have many pages
I keep a blog about diesel performance kits. I update it about three times a week with relevant to information about the industry as well as product reviews. If I did anymore I don’t think I would be able to keep up with it.
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