One of the most common questions from bloggers is “how often should I update my blog?” to make it successful. If you’re a beginner, you’ll definitely mess up with your blog posting schedule and it’s really a daunting task to figure out the ideal blogging frequency.
If you’re blogging for a while, you already know that blog posting frequency is one of the key factors that makes or breaks your blogging success.
Unfortunately, most professional bloggers brainwashed that to increase blog traffic, you need to post daily.
Posting daily worked long back when there was not much competition. Daily posting to increase your blog traffic is not an effective strategy anymore. You need to post quality stuff, not mediocre contents.
People pay you, not page views
You heard somewhere that you can get more traffic and money by posting daily.
Since then you started publishing posts day-in and day-out. But you haven't got the traffic and money you deserve.
Do you know the reason?
You are missing out one major thing – “readership”.
Observe any popular blog that gets more tweets, shares, comments and sales, they all have one thing in common – LOYAL READERS.
If you want to build a profitable blog (or business), focus on building readership – not pageviews.
No blog post is better than posting crappy content. So when choosing the ideal blog posting frequency for your blog, instead of thinking about increasing your traffic, think about adding more value to your blog readers.
And if you are finding it really hard to catch up the right posting frequency for your blog, here’s a detailed guide to help you out.
[tweet_box design=”box_06″]So what’s the best blogging frequency?[/tweet_box]
So how often should you update your blog to make it succeed? Blog posting frequency mainly depends on 3 things.
- Your niche
- Your time
- Your expertise
Let’s briefly discuss about these 3 factors.
Your niche: The niche you are in largely affects your blogging frequency.
For example, if you are running a tech related blog, you have to post multiple times a day to keep your blog readers stay updated everyday. And if you’re running an SEO related blog, you should only publish content when it is extremely useful for the readers, in this case blog posting frequency don’t affect much.
Your time: Are you a full-time blogger or do you blog part-time? Can you spend at least 2 hours everyday on creating contents for your blog? Ask yourself how much time you can truly dedicate each week to make your blog a success. If you don’t have sufficient time to blog, you should either hire a freelance writer or you need to slow down your blogging frequency.
Make sure to post contents only when they are extremely helpful for your blog readers. Never post something just to update your blog, it’s the surefire way to kill a blog. Also create emergency posts in advance just in case if you have lack of time or not motivated enough to publish new contents.
Your expertise: Are you a beginner? Or do you already have enough experience in your field? If you’re a beginner and still learning to create new content for your blog, it’s better to go for less blogging frequency instead of churning out new contents daily. Create detailed articles and use data to validate your points. Once your blog audience recognize you as an expert in your field, you can pick a blog posting frequency that suits you.
If you’re already an expert, you don’t have to wait for anything. Just make sure you’re giving enough breath to each and every and every single post by promoting well.
3 solid tips for finding the right posting frequency for your blog
#1. Start small, increase the pace gradually
If you have a fairly new blog or you’re new to blogging, it’s always better to start small. Instead of creating new contents every single day or every other day, focus on publishing contents slowly.
Focus on building loyal audience instead of increasing your page views. Once you build a rapport with your readers, you can decide the best posting frequency that suits your audience. Don’t go overboard by posting too frequently or it will lead to burnout and you will soon start hating posting new contents to your blogs.
#2. Evaluate your competitors
Find out how often your competitors are updating their blogs. Also find out how many links, shares and comments they are getting for each and every post they publish.
A popular blog always attracts more social shares and comments but they also constantly updates their blogs. So focus on how the top bloggers are updating their blogs and how they are targeting their blog readers with their content. This will definitely give you a clear idea on when to update your blogs as well.
#3. Ask your readers
One of the simplest ways to find the most ideal blog posting frequency is to take your audience help. Use your email lists or social media sites to take a feedback from your audience.
Ask them how often should you update your blog. If they are really engaged with your blog content, they will definitely let you know the best posting frequency. You can also use tools like Quaraloo for conducting surveys with your audience.
Few effective recommendations to consider before creating an ideal blog posting frequency
If you’ve access to multiple bloggers to run your blog, you can post more frequently without losing the quality of your content. And we all know that, it’s rarely possible to collaborate with multiple bloggers to speed up your blog post frequency. But if you have money to hire few writers who can write quality stuff for you, focus on increasing your blogging frequency because Google always loves fresh contents.
Recommended Reading: Blogging for Business: A How- To Guide
Think about SEO. When you’re deciding a proper posting schedule for your blog, consider your SEO strategy. If you want to bring more visitors from search engines, posting frequently is often the best way. Just make sure you are updating the blog with high quality contents instead of publishing mediocre blog posts.
Value your audience. As I earlier discussed in the article, you need to focus on building loyal readership around your blogs instead of running after Google to increase your website traffic. What’s the purpose of writing more contents to increase your blog traffic if no one shows interest in sharing your stuff or commenting on your blog posts? So while creating an ideal blogging frequency, give top priority to your blog audience.
Assess your results. After spending few weeks on content creation, you need to analyze the results. Find out how much traffic you are getting from search engines to your blog posts, find out the keywords that are sending you the most traffic and evaluate your results accordingly. You can use Google Analytics for doing this (watch the Google Analytics video from Ms. Ileane at the bottom of this post), once you’ve a clear idea on the topics that are most popular on your blog, you can create the right posting schedule for your blogs.
Test, refine and repeat. Blogging is all about testing the results. If you are not getting good results with your content, you need to slow down or speed up your content creation strategy. And see what works well for you in terms of increasing your website traffic, social shares and blog comments. Rinse and repeat the same until you are satisfied with your blog posting frequency.
Final thoughts about creating a blog post frequency
There are no rules in blogging. There’s no perfect number that drives lots of traffic to your blog posts. Deciding your posting frequency is one of the key factors that influences your blog’s success. But you’ve to decide which posting frequency works well for your audience. Try, test, fail and learn.
Creating an ideal blogging frequency is really a tedious task especially if you are a beginner. But you will soon find out the perfect posting frequency as you go.
No one can give you the PERFECT recipe to succeed in blogging. Everyone has a different recipe.
Recommended reading: The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business
If something works for someone, it may not work for you. Sad truth!
But here's the thing… whenever you post something make sure it's worth reading. The #1 goal of your blog posts should be this: either entertain or educate. Don’t write crappy content and pollute blogosphere with generic posts.
Ask your readers if you find it really hard to create the right blogging frequency for your blogs and also analyze your competitors about their posting frequency.
Let me know if you have any strategies to create an ideal blog posting frequency. If you like this post, share it with others so they can benefit and ask your questions in the comments.