One of the most important factors in growing your blog readership is consistency. You must publish new articles regularly or at least in a consistent schedule.
Most bloggers start well. After creating the blog, they have a lot of enthusiasm and they write articles daily in first couple of weeks. But after this honeymoon period, majority of bloggers fail to keep a regular and consistent blogging schedule.
This results in their blog losing the momentum, and it slows down the growth and decreases the potential of their blog.
Not updating your blog frequently gives an image of a dead place. It gives a bad impressions if a visitor comes back and finds no updates have taken place in some time and it decreases the chance of visitor subscribing to the RSS feed or commenting.
Why it is important to be consistent in blogging
- Brings a stream of traffic and comments
- Gives readers a reason to check back often
- Gives visitors a reason to subscribe to the blog RSS feed
- Builds trust and dependability
- More opportunities for buzz about your content in the social media
- More opportunities for inbound links to your blog
- Search engines crawl and index blogs that are updated regularly more frequently
- More content means increased chance of getting search engine traffic from different keywords
How you can improve your blogging consistency
- Use WordPress TimeStamp feature to schedule blog posts
- Save your article ideas as drafts so you easily can have a topic when you need to write a new blog post
- Invite your readers to write guest posts for your blog
- Write blogs about topics that interest you and that you have passion for
What is the perfect blogging schedule?
The perfect blogging schedule that optimizes your blog potential and maximizes its growth would most probably be to post one new article every day. Your readers would come back daily, you would have potential to create a lot of buzz and Google would love you.
Your own blogging schedule depends on how much time you have and how much inspiration you have though. I find publishing a new article every second day works best for me personally at this point in time.
Some bloggers publish new articles daily, some do it even several times a day. Anything less than publishing two new articles per week is probably going to have a negative effect on your blog’s growth potential and will slow down its progress.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I definatly agree with what you are saying. I find for me though I can’t post everyday but I do at least 3 times per week. However with me writing about helping others to get out of debt I find I have to do things that are different than the norm.
My question to your is what do you do when you work in a niche that has a lot of other bloggers in it. How do I differ myself from them. If I do everything the other bloggers are doing how am I going to gain a competitive edge?
Chris
@Chris Holdheide – Your question is good enough for a whole new article. Keep an eye out for that one at some point during this week.
@Colleen – I try to keep similar schedule to yours. One post a day is too much for me at the moment so I try to post either every second day or minimum of 3 posts a week.
Great post. I agree with you. I have a hard time blogging everyday because I have another fulltime job but I try to blog every other day or 3 days a week.
Colleen
I feel like this article was written for me, but I still find it difficult to get fresh content ideas every day let alone every week. Any tips?
@Joel Drapper – Reading helps me get ideas personally. More I read, more ideas I can write down and draft for future reference. Read comments on your own blog, comments on other blogs, read blog articles, revisit your article archive, follow discussion is social media, read books…
@Chuck – I am similar. I never subscribe to blogs that are not updated frequently.
@Tumblemoose – Definitely. Traffic decreases, number of comments decreases, number of RSS subscribers decreases… if you want your blog to grow, then put it as a priority to post new articles regularly.
What the frequency was & when the latest post was created are two of the first things I look at when I decide if I am going to follow a new blog or not. If the last post was a month ago, I am probably going to move on.
I did read that most blogs go stale after about 6 months.
I’ve seen the direct result of slowing down in terms of posting.
I had a relatively short period where I was at about one a week and saw the corresponding dive in numbers.
It is worth the effort to be consistent!
George
I generally blog every day and sometimes wonder if people are too busy to visit that often, especially if they read a lot of different blogs. Your post has helped to alleviate that worry – thank you!
@Janet Barclay – Not every reader will be able to read each and every of your blog articles, but by keeping a consistent schedule of publishing new articles you will have an increased chance of getting a word out about your blog via search engines and social media and in that way increase your readership.
I have just realized the importance of posting consistent posts.
I’m not trying to sound like I’m promoting my blog, or egotistical even, but I recently wrote a fairly large list on my blog that brought in a ton of traffic, a ton of feedback for my blog, and plenty of comments. Each night, I look at that post and I am really proud of what I have done on my blog, and I think about all of the fortune it has brought to my blog. I use that post as my main motivation when I prepare to write new posts on my blog. I want to see all of those things happen to each of my posts, so I use that thought to keep up my posting frequency and content quality.
A little off topic here: But I just bought Thesis and your blog has been an invaluable source of information to me on how to customize it a bit. So I just want to say thanks for your Thesis articles, and I hope there’s more of them!
@Alex | Blogussion.com – Congrats on the popular post and the Thesis theme. Looking forward to see how you customize it!
Here’s my tip. I draft my posts in OneNote. I have three posting tabs – posted, draft, and ideas. Whenever I think of something that may be a good topic i put it under ideas. Whenever I read an article that I may want to link to I save the link under ideas. Once I have a few sentences written, it’s a draft, and then I track and back-up my posts under the posted tab.
I then also have a tab for marketing.
wow, thanks for all of these ideas, I want to post more often, but I am new to this and trying to come up with valuable content that is well written.
Cheers
I don’t completely agree with the “one post a day” philosophy, especially if you’re attempting to write good content. I honestly think that “one size fits all” might not work for everybody. I’m thinking specifically for business blogs, which might not be the primary source of revenue for a business, can provide valuable information and increase traffic, just maybe not on the level of someone who only blogs professionally.
If all you’re doing is blogging and that’s your business model, that’s great and I can see why people would blog more often. But as you mention Marko, content is key. I believe, regardless of how you use a blog to communicate your ideas, your audience looks for this (in order of importance):
1) Content
2) Consistency
3) Frequency
Thanks for the great post Marko!
Hi,
I am new to http://www.howtomakemyblog.com and just want to introduce myself.
Thanks
I find that some bloggers who end up posting 4-5 times a day are just insane. It’s probably best to do that with short articles that can be shared for headlines, but for blogs with quality content and longer articles this is a harder approach.