Blog Frequency
How many blog posts a day? a week? a month?
About a year ago I sent an email to Chris Brogan asking him why he posted so much to his blog. Not only could I not keep up with the frequency of posts but I had to wonder where he got all his Ideas from. In short, Chris told me that statistics show that a high frequency of blog posts was critical for growth and that he didn’t plan on slowing down any time soon. Chris was spot on as usual as his current feedburner subscriber number shows 17,384 readers! Chris continues to crank out amazing content day after day.
Another classic example of high blog frequency was Robert Scoble. In the height of his blogging days with Microsoft Robert could crank out 10 to 15 posts daily without batting an eye. Scoble became possibly the most well known blogger in the world at that time. Since then Scoble has taken to micro-blogging on twitter and heavy use of Friend Feed saying that people want smaller more frequent and timely chunks of information.
Here on my blog, my goal is to provide thoughtful insights as well as facilitate conversation and community. I guess I’d better exercise my typing fingers a bit more if I ever hope to have even 1/3 of this kind of readership!!
Wait? Too many blog posts a day? a week? a month?
My Google Reader often feels like the honking of horns in a New York City traffic jam! Blogs are popping up by the thousands each day. All of these bloggers competing for mind share and so many of them just repeating the same message as their neighboring blogger. Are posts even being thought out any more or is it just a race to see who can announce that Steve Jobs is sick quicker than the next guy! This blog post on Marketing Profs , writer; Eric Kinz gives us ten pretty compelling reasons why blog post frequency does not matter anymore! Some of these include (paraphrasing):
- Traffic is generated by participating in the community; not daily posting
- Traffic is irrelevant to your blog’s success
- With too many posts, you run the risk of losing loyal readers, overwhelmed by the clutter you generate.
There are more; but you get the point! I guess maybe after thinking it over again I should rest my fingers a bit more. Who knows? Very confusing!
My 2 Cents
In my opinion, this topic could be debated to the end of time. Blog frequency is highly dependant on your goals, audience and what you are trying to achieve through your actions. For the next two months I am going to try an experiment and post at least once a day here. Hopefully you will see some minor changes to functionality and possibly a newsletter; I havn’t decided yet. At the end of the two month period I will offer all of the numbers, statistics, and findings that I have come up with. if your interested, please stay tuned
What do you Think?
Are you a frequent blogger or an infrequent blogger? Has this affected your site stats? Do you even care about site stats? I am interested to hear your opinion on what you think is wright or wrong in your specific situation.
Keith Burtis is a social media and digital marketing professional. If you or your company are looking to REV THE ENGINE on your digital efforts contact Keith today! Specialties include: Blog design/Integration, Custom Facebook Pages, Social, Digital and Interactive Content strategies.
Comments
I don’t care much about stats. As long as I know the few people I care about are reading. Blogging also isn’t my bread and butter, nor am I very good at it.
It’s a testing ground for me, I do it when I’m inspired to. I much prefer to connect with people through Twitter or via Skype then for me to blab on about something that people may not care about. I also like creating audio and video so…
Are you a frequent blogger or an infrequent blogger?
I am a frequent blogger. My blog is a “life blog”, meaning I just post about my life, things I found that I love (music, websites, etc.), big news items and political issues I want to give my spin on, and stories I want to tell.
I post once a day Monday through Friday, and usually throw up a light-hearted “happy weekend” post Friday. Occasionally I’ll post on the weekend.
Has this affected your site stats? Do you even care about site stats?
I don’t know; I only recently started tracking. I would love more comments, obviously. I get a lot of comments via Twitter that I wish would go on my blog. Ideally I’d love to make tons of money blogging! 
I don’t pay too much attention to the stats. I look at my readership numbers on occasion, but I use my blog more as a permanent home for spreading info and my ramblings. My interests are varied enough that I’ve noticed most people come to my blog looking for specific posts, and I have few subscribers.
In terms of reading blogs, I’ve actually all but stopped reading them regularly. I found that some of them produced more content than I could consume… and much of it was rehashing other content.