Editor’s Note: Guest Poster Bill Belew wrote briefly about this topic back in March. Check out his advice, as well as reading this different perspective from guest contributor Shanna Mallon.
Whether you’re a new blogger or an old veteran, one thing’s for sure: You’ve heard you should be blogging regularly. If you’re going to blog at all, everyone says, you have to blog on a schedule. But how often is often? What blogging pattern translates to regular? Likewise, do certain days of the week or certain times of the day bring in better results? How can you tell? When should you post?
To help answer these questions, here’s a look at blogging’s big “When?” question and what you need to know.
Basic Blogging Post Time Principles
Before we look at the possibilities for blogging frequency, we need to look at a few key principles that guide scheduling decisions. Understanding these facts makes it easier to decide how often to post.
- Quality Trumps Quantity
No matter how often a blogger posts, one thing is certain: Quality trumps quantity. Readers care more about what you’re posting than when. If your content is empty filler content, readers won’t care if you post every day or multiple times a day: Your content doesn’t matter. If, on the other hand, your posts are legitimately valuable, readers are more likely to keep coming back, even if posts are infrequent.
- New Content Invites New Views
The logic is the same as the logic behind daily newspapers—People like to read content that is new. So just like you wouldn’t buy the same issue of a magazine every week, your readers are less likely to come back to a blog that shows the same old content every day. When you post new content, you give new readers a reason to check it out.
- Readers Like Consistency
Posting consistently—whether that’s every Tuesday morning, every day, or every hour—communicates an unspoken promise to your readers. They learn your schedule and come to expect new content will appear as usual. When you always post at the same time, you build trust with your audience.
Posting Every Week vs. Posting Every Day vs. Posting Many Times a Day
OK, assuming you’re creating quality content that actually benefits your readers and you want to do it regularly, what does that look like? Should you post every day? Every hour? Let’s take a look at the options.
- Posting Every Week
Most experts agree that if you blog regularly, that means blogging at least once a week. There are exceptions, especially for celebrity bloggers or other bloggers with established reputations, but in general, once a week is the minimum. If you choose this routine, consider making your once-a-week post always on the same day—Mondays, for example. Over time, your readers will remember your posts always appear on Mondays and want to come back to your site accordingly.
- Posting Every Day
Say you want to increase your content frequency to something more regular than weekly posts. Maybe you post every Monday and every Friday; maybe every other day; or, perhaps, you decide to post every day. Daily posting is pretty standard for large blogs, whether they’re run by individuals or groups. Keeping this schedule can be time-consuming, so if you decide to post daily, you may want to enlist other writers to help.
- Posting Many Times a Day
The largest, most trend-focused blogs post many times a day. Like news outlets or television stations, they are constantly providing new content for readers to view. Running this sort of blog requires a significant investment of time and energy, so you surely want a team of writers, but it also offers many rewards. Constant content often attracts a larger following, higher traffic numbers, and more potential for advertising or lead generation.
Your Thoughts on Blog Post Schedules
How often do you post on your blog? Do you post on a specific schedule, or do you post when you feel like it? If you haven’t tried a schedule before, maybe it’s time to give it a shot—to build trust with readers, keep yourself accountable, and prime your site for growth.
With havin so much content do you ever run into any problems of plagorism
or copyright violation? My website has a lot of exclusive
content I’ve either authored myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my agreement. Do you know any methods to help stop content from being stolen? I’d certainly appreciate
it.
If ever you have an authority site then you don’t have to worry about that because Google will index your site 1st. You just have to make sure the post on your site gets indexed fast by sharing it on social sites and syndicating with rss etc. 90% of the time Google will know which one’s the original content.
Or else you have to do a DMCA request in order to get the content removed on the website. You can do that here: http://www.google.com/dmca.html
I choose to post daily or twice a day if I still have the energy. The more content I have then I stand a better chance of getting a good amount of search engine traffic. If I create 30 keyword rich posts a month then at least 8 have to rank high for the targeted keywords. 8 is just the minimum, with good backlinks I can get more posts ranking easily because my blog is frequently updated and Google loves that.
So, I would advise anyone who’s still new to blog twice a day for the 1st 2 months that’s how I build my money blogs, but I outsource the content these days then flip the site. I have started a new blog though and posting daily no more flipping 😀
Great post Shanna, Thnx.
Peace!!
I tend to post on an irregular basis, and I often wonder what this is costing me in terms of making new connections, and potentially new clients. I run a local small business, and so I tend to spend most of my time doing actual work for clients… but sometimes I find that I just have something I need to say, and so I start writing… this tends to happen on weekends when I’m not so committed to my normal Mon-Fri business stuff.
I don’t know if anyone knows, but does data about this exist? I think that could be a very powerful article… one that talks to people like myself. People who know there is value behind a blog, and building a community… but still only tend to blog on an irregular basis due to a lack of free time, inspiration to write, etc. etc. Basically an article that provides real data on why this is a bad move, and what I could be missing out on.
I am posting once a day since september and my pageviews have gone up consistently.