How many times do you upload new content on your blog in a week? Most bloggers set a weekly schedule and keep their content ready in advance. The amount of content you’ll need to upload depends on what kind of blog you own, how much traffic you get and your goals. So do you know how much content you need for your blog?
Why Content Frequency Is The Key
Content is key; it’s your content that drives in the traffic. What makes your content compelling? It’s a combination of your opinion, your blog type, your niche topic, your writing style and most of all, the freshness of your blog. Your blog’s freshness depends entirely on the frequency with which you upload content.
Most people buy newspapers every day. Would we bother to get a newspaper everyday if the same news and the same articles were printed each day? We wouldn’t. However, the reason you buy a newspaper everyday is that newspaper companies strive continually to bring you the latest every day. Apply the same theory to your blog content. If you don’t bother to upload new content, your visitors won’t bother to visit. If you upload content only periodically, your blog won’t be a newspaper to your blog readers. It will be a periodical magazine. That’s the key.
Determining Content Frequency
Determining content frequency rests on several factors. A great deal has to do with your blog’s goal, your personal goals, your growth plan and strategy and what people expect from your blog.
What’s Your Blog Topic?
Is your blog a personal blog or a news blog? People visit blogs to read news on a more regular basis, as they want to be on top of the current trends. People do take a more relaxed view of a personal blog; if they become fans, they’ll visit often, but they know the content won’t become outdated in a day or two. News will.
What Are Your GOALS And Growth Plan?
Revenue: If this is your main goal, then the more you post the better it’ll be for your purse. In this case, you want to aim for maximum growth. By industry standards, that means 3 to 5 times a day. You can figure out how much content you’ll need, to make that many posts a day.
Here’s what you can do if your goal is business revenue. Post 4 or 5 good quality posts and then upload a blatantly promotional post. This means, if you want to promote your business, you need to post content at least 5 times a week! If, however, you can only post once a week, you should post promotional content only once a month.
Steady growth: You need to upload minimum one post a day. You’re probably looking at a steady group of followers, not money.
Slower growth: If you want to take it slow and easy and build a steady fan following over time, keep enough content to upload at least 2 to 3 times a week. Bloggers who prefer slower growth are usually interested in conveying thought leadership or building brand loyalty.
Hobby blog growth: Hobby bloggers don’t worry about fast growth, since they don’t have a strategic plan for growth. In this case, keep enough content to make 1 or 2 posts a week.
What Does Your Audience Want?
Different blogs have different kinds of audiences. Each audience has a different set of expectations. These expectations are set by your blog type.
A news blog will have audiences expecting regular and very steady updates. That means short posts every now and then, to keep the adrenalin going.
A personal or motivational blog will make the audience expect quality long posts that stir them. One or two blogs a week will satisfy your readers. They’re looking for quality and emotion, not regularity.
A business blog makes audiences expect knowledge-base that shows you are a Subject Matter Expert. This means more frequent posts; your posts will be tied to your brand loyalty as well, so make sure you put up something at least once a day.
So analyze your blog’s audience to know what kind of content they expect, how much they expect and how often.
Keep An Eye On The Numbers As You Experiment
If you’re still not sure what level of frequency you should aim for, experiment with different formats, lengths and posting frequencies. For example, put up posts daily for a week. The next week, put up posts only twice. Keep this up for about four to six weeks. Study your web traffic results for each approach. You’ll know soon enough what your audience prefers and how often you should post content in order to serve your bottom line and your goals.