Writing a blog is different to every blogger, but a common question is how often to blog. If you blog too often, you could burn out, but if you do not blog often enough, your blog may grow stale. Also, if you blog just for the sake of article frequency, the quality can suffer and you punish your readers. So where is the perfect balance?
How Often to Blog Depends on Your Purpose
What is the purpose of your blog? If you are seeking a readership wanting the very latest information, you should blog often. If you are blogging to compile a collection of useful information such as this blog, the quality is more important than how often it is updated. There are a few advantages to frequent blogging, but as a rule, if it does not serve your readers well, don’t do it. Blogging too often just for the sake of blogging can create a real risk becoming little more than static.
Blogging for SEO
Blogging for SEO is effective, but SEO should be the effect and not the cause. This is another article for another day, but if you are blogging to enhance your search engine optimization, the question of how often to blog will be secondary to how to blog well. If the articles are well written, it will likely do well at reaching search engine users and people are more likely to link to your blog (linkbait, yet another article). In any case, providing a useful and content rich Website should be the goal of every Website owner.
Blogs and Bloggers
Each blog has its own style which is developed by the author (blogger), and the readership will generally grow based on that style. Not so unlike any other publication, the readers will come to have expectations of the quality of the writing and how often the blog is updated. If all goes well, the author and reader will grow a relationship like I wrote about in another article titled “Relationships and Internet Marketing“. Even in the information age with exponential growth in publications, the relationship between the writer and their readers still holds a value. Advice columnists like Dear Abby grew a huge following because she reached out to the readers and developed that relationship. Even in the face of huge competition for readers, every blogger has this opportunity. If you think about it for a moment, you can probably identify a writer or two who really stand out in your mind as a favorite. Many of us have a favorite writer, and something we come to expect from our favorite writer is consistency. For example, for this particular blog, I write an article every other day or every third day. It is still in its infancy, so I may shake it up a bit from time to time, but you can generally expect how often I will blog.
Know Your Blog Readers
I blog for you, and I blog for SEO. I want you to read this and I want it to be useful to you. I also want to be sure that a lot of people find the article. This requires much consideration of what you want to read, how often you want to read it, and if you are new to my blog, just what you may have typed into your favorite search engine to find this. I know that much of my audience is other SEOs, but then there are others who may be seeking information about my services as a search engine optimization professional and writer. Who is your audience? Knowing your readers will help you to develop an ideal pattern in the length of your blog posts, the content of your blog posts, and also the frequency of your blog posts.
What is Your Blog Budget?
Whether you are budgeting your time to write your blog, or budgeting your money to hire me to write it for you, you should have a blog budget. The benefits should outweigh the cost. This will have a big influence on the quality of your blog, as well as the benefits you will receive from your publication.
