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High or Low – Which Posting Frequency Works Best?

Posting FrequencyHow often should you post new content to your blog? Is there any such thing as posting too often? The blogging experts have varying opinions about what a blog’s posting frequency should be. A lot of it depends on the type of blog you have, the audience of your blog, and the actual content you’re writing. For example, if your posts consist primarily of thousand-word, highly technical articles, posting multiple times a day – or even daily – might be a little overwhelming for your audience. On the other hand, if your blog has many different sections with unique content in each, it might be appropriate to post one or more articles in each category every day.

Most bloggers don’t fall into either of the above sample categories though. Most of us have one primary topic theme and post articles of 500-700 words. So what’s the best posting frequency for us? There are advantages and disadvantages to high versus low posting frequency, so let’s take a look at those.

High Posting Frequency

We’ll define high frequency as three per week or more. It takes some dedication and commitment to crank out a post every other day or more, so is it worth the effort? Again, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

  • Timeliness – When you post frequently, you’re able to cover topics that are current and newsworthy more easily. If you post once a week, by the time your post goes live, any big news you wanted to cover might be old news.
  • Fresh content – This might be the most obvious advantage of posting frequently. You’re providing your readers with fresh, new content on a regular basis, and that’s something most blog readers love.
  • SEO – Not only do readers love fresh content, but so do the search engines! If you have your XML sitemap or ping list configured right and you post every day, that means search engines will crawl your site every day. That translates to better SEO and more traffic – which is the point of your blog in the first place.

Disadvantages

  • Time – It takes a significant time commitment to maintain a high posting frequency. If you don’t have the time regularly, your posting could become very inconsistent and unpredictable, as you struggle to find the time to keep up.
  • Quality – This isn’t an issue for everyone, but most of us aren’t authors by nature, and coming up with high quality, interesting content on at high volume isn’t easy. If you’re posting often, but the quality begins to slip or your topics become repetitive, you can do more harm than good.
  • RSS Overload – Not only can the blog writer become overloaded from maintaining a high posting frequency, so can your readers. With the amount of content being thrown at us all the time these days, people might be less likely to sign up for an RSS feed of a blog with a high volume of new content.

Low Posting Frequency

We’ll call once a week or less low posting frequency. Although many blogging gurus say that once a week is perfect for many blogs, it can’t be considered high frequency, and less than once a week is definitely low frequency.

Advantages

  • More Depth – If you aren’t posting frequently, what you do post can be more in-depth and complete. Longer, deeper posts are better received if they aren’t coming at the reader too often.
  • Higher Interest – For readers that tend to join email or RSS feeds “yet another” post from your site might be overlooked if you post often. On the other hand, if your posts are high quality but not as frequent, they’re more likely to generate more interest from your audience and to be looked forward to.
  • Less Time – Obviously, it isn’t as much of a time commitment to post weekly or less, and that can be a significant advantage for busy entrepreneurs.

Disadvantages

  • Less Interaction – Studies have shown that blogs get less interaction overall the less often they post. Not only can you expect fewer total comments, but you’ll likely see fewer social media shares as well.
  • Not as Timely – When you’re posting once a week or less, you could miss or be late talking about a big development in your industry. Of course you can always throw in an additional post, but if you don’t have the time for that, your posts might not be as timely as someone who posts more frequently.
  • Less of a Community – When someone posts to their blog frequently, many readers make a visit to their blog part of their daily routine. They become “regulars” and tend to interact on that site more. This builds community, and that’s a very good thing for any site. If you post less frequently, it’s more difficult for someone to make your blog part of their regular routine.

Overall, unless you have a unique blog and audience, it’s probably better to post more frequently than not. One way to accomplish that when you don’t have a lot of time is to invite guest authors to post to your blog. If the content is high quality, your readers won’t mind it’s not from you, and you can have the advantages of both approaches!

Matthew Toren
 

Matthew Toren is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, investor and co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com. He is co-author, with his brother Adam, of Kidpreneurs.org, BizWarriors.com and Small Business, BIG Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right (Wiley).

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