Blog Posting Frequency vs. Success of Bloggers (How often should you post?)

Here it is, the Age old question: “How often should I post on my blog?”. 

If you Google “How often should I post on my blog?” you’ll get about 1 billion results. With all these different opinions, we can easily get lost in the large group of bloggers telling you how often you should post.

Today I want to help you develop a posting schedule that works for you and will help you succeed!

Different Posting Schedule & Success of Other Bloggers

Now let’s go ahead and look at different posting schedules from different successful bloggers:

• Copyblogger​ produces a helpful article every day. 
• Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn​ writes 3 blog posts per week. 
• So does C.S. Lakin's Live Write Thrive Blog, specifically on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. 
• The famous copywriter Bob Bly (bly.com) only publishes once a week, and has been growing his blog for quite a long time with this method. 
• Catherine, Caffeinated, takes a chance and writes less than 4 posts per month... and to great success to!
• Some blogs don't post at all - hoping their previously written evergreen content will sustain them.

Now that you know what works for others, let’s figure out what will work best for you!

How Often Should You Post?

In short, you should create a new blog post as quickly as you have time for - as more blog posts mean more possibilities to create traffic. However, not all blog posts are created equal. You should aim for quality first, then quantity. 

While there are various different posting schedules you can commit to, you should follow these basic guidelines:

• Publish at least 1 post per week
• Post consistently on the same day
• Create High-Quality Content

Now that we have a foundation to build on, we can dive deeper into developing a perfect posting schedule for you. 

What comes next is going to be a series of questions that you should ask yourself. Once you have read through them all, you’ll have a better idea about which posting schedule will work for you.

1) Are You Creating Quality Content?

As a new blogger, you don’t need to post 3 times a day to succeed. To be honest, that's a ridiculous amount of content for just one person to create (as a part-time blogger). Many new bloggers get the idea that to succeed, they need to post every single day. Yes, it'll greatly increase your chances of amazing success, but even the best bloggers started out part-time posting just once per week.

One of the biggest reasons posting every single day doesn’t work is because you start sacrificing quality. The worst thing that can happen to your blog is that you start focusing on how many posts you're creating, compared to the quality of the content.

While quality an be subjective, there are a few standard guidelines to a quality blog post. Here are a few:

• SEO optimized: SEO is very important in making sure that each post is utilized. Check out my full blog post on writing a SEO Oriented Blog Post.
• Receptive: Are you writing in a tone or style that your audience can relate to?
• Repetitive: One of the biggest issues bloggers face when their pumping out content is repetitive or duplicate content. When you go to create your blog post, make sure that it’s new to your audience and that you’re not recycling old posts.

If you stick to having the mindset of “Quality over Quantity”, you’ll see that you succeed without even trying. But before you fully form an opinion... keep reading through this post.

2) How Much Posting Does Your Schedule Allow?

Most new bloggers are trying to turn their part time blogging into a full time career. But before you can quit your job and build your home office, you’ll need to be posting while you have a job. This will limit the amount of time for you to spend creating content. Add children or any other extra activities, and you've quickly got a full schedule!

If you only have an hour or two a day to write and create content you can go about the process of hiring writers to take the load off of you, while still building your blog. This offers many benefits while also giving you time to live your life, though it will cost a little bit to hire a great writer to create content that you know is quality.

You can hire writers to help you create content, but ultimately you must decide if you want to spend time or spend money growing your blog. 

To be able to figure out if you really need to outsource, take a moment and think of your blog's success is being throttled by your ability to create content. If it is, then go about finding a writer.

3) Does Your Audience Have Time For Your Content?

Something I don’t see a lot of bloggers consider is if their audience has time for a new post every day. Remember, your daily readers are going to be the ones that will vouch for you and recommend you to others, so you don't want to overwhelm them with posts. 

Even if you're creating long-term evergreen content, posting short 1200 word articles every day might not be the best decision. 

Though if you’re just starting out it can be really hard to figure out how many posts your audience will want. Here are a few ways you can figure out your posting schedule:

• Look at Similar Blogs: If you haven’t posted and you don’t really know what your potential audience would like to see, go ahead and look at other websites. This is really easy and can give you an idea of what to post. Jump onto Google and look up your niche or keywords and view all of your competition. 
• Ask Them: The easiest and most proficient way to figure out how much content your audience wants... is to ask them. You can do this either inside of an article or inside of an email that you send out to your readers. Include something like this “Hey Everyone! I have been debating on a posting schedule and I would love to know what you would like to see. Please respond below!” This should bring in some replies and give you an idea of what to expect.

4) What Type of Business Do You Run?

Next, you should think about which type of business you’re running. Each different type of business will have a “best” posting schedule. If you’re in the business of selling affiliate products, then your posting schedule will be different than someone who is creating content to educate their readers (and eventually sell them a product). Either way, figuring out how often to publish a blog post can be difficult. Let’s dive into both.

Affiliate / Sponsorship:

When your business is based on affiliate income or sponsorships, then you’ll want to pump out as much content as you can. The reason is because the more content you can get out the better chance you’ll have of selling a product through one of your posts.

For example, which do you think would generate more income: 3 articles about one product, or 3 articles about 3 products? Not only will you have a better chance of ranking one article for the keyword, you also diversify your sales market. 

Educating:

However, if your main premise is creating content that builds trust and educates your reader, then you’ll want to slow it down. You're in it for the long-haul.

Just as mentioned before, to best educate your readers, you’ll want to create longer and more quality blog posts. Create content that will stand the test of time, and still be useful in 20 years. These posts will strive to answer all their questions and show that you’re an authority figure. Of course these will take longer, so you’ll be posting less. 

5) Can You Maintain Your Pace?

Consistency is key when it comes to running a successful blog. When you start growing your own little audience, you’ll want to make sure that they always know when to expect a post. (Especially if you're sending them updates via email marketing!)

I had the opportunity to sit down with a gentleman that was talking about a blacksmith blog he watched. The gentleman stated that since he knew the blog was updated every single Sunday, he knew to go back and look for it. It wasn’t until the blogger started slacking on his consistency that the gentleman stop watching for new blog posts. Mostly because he didn’t know 100% that there was going to be a post.

Whatever schedule you’re on, make sure that you’re consistent. This will ensure that you keep your current readers and start building trust with the new viewers. When you’re able to show your audience that you can post on a consistent schedule, you’ll not only gain trust but you’ll start to become an authority figure.

The best way to ensure consistency is to start out with 1 post per week. If you can master that... then after 2 months, move it up to 2 posts per week. Then keep the system going. If you ever catch yourself not being consistent lower the amount of posts.

One of the biggest and most common mistakes that I see beginner bloggers making... is rushing into creating content and then burning out. My final answer, to the golden "How often should I post on my blog' is once per week. I think this will be the best for most bloggers. 

Conclusion

So now that we have gone over everything that involve a posting schedule, let’s recap and get you to take some action. You can think about posting, but if you don’t commit and actually write, you won’t get anywhere.

1. Are You Creating Quality Content?: No matter what your posting schedule is, you should focus on creating quality content. Focus on quality first, then quantity.
2. How Much Posting Does Your Schedule Allow?: Every new blogger wants to post daily, but not everyone's schedule will allow it. Take time to analyze what your schedule will allow.
3. Does Your Audience Have Enough Time For Your Content? One of the most important things in blogging is to think about your readers. Do they have the time for 3 blog posts per day?
4. What Type of Business are you in? Depending upon WHY you are writing, you'll figure out how much and how often you need to write. There isn't a one-size-fits-all when it comes to the amount of content creation.
5. Can you keep up the pace? Ultimately, you can set a goal to write 3 blog posts per week, but if you don't actually have the time to do it... those goals don't matter. How much time do you have, and how much discipline are you willing to commit to this project? 

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