How often should I be blogging?
I have been told that producing content is important for business. As I am preparing to launch a new business, I want to set up a blog. I am working on putting together some topics and a schedule. How often should I ideally be posting new content?
When it comes to blogging, it means a mix of your knowledge, expertise and services which you share with your audience. There is particular limitation for blogging. I would rather focus on quality of the content. It does not matter if you are sharing two to three blog posts in your blog within a week. What matters is the quality of the content you share.
As a writer with two standard blog sites, a publishing platform site, and one or two additional posting sites available....I would suggest several questions to start your blog schedule standardization: 1) Are you just posting blogs or are you including articles (there is a difference) 2) How often can you generate original content? (Not just how often would you like to post content) and what type of potential do you have for customer/business contacts guest postings? 3) Remember: You should obligate yourself to the schedule you set, but real reasons to slow content publishing such as: resource situations, posting site availabilities, and work flow adjustments needed to sustain customers and business should allow for blog posting schedule adjustments.
I recommend once a month or every three weeks. There is just too many emails flying around these days. Original content, specific to your business and uniqueness.
Hello Sara! There is always something you can write about, and like Steve Smith said, blogging is a great way to market your business!
I would like to share our take on the question at hand! No matter what your niche is, there is a difference between blogging and commenting! We believe that when it comes to blogging, you should focus on providing quality content, rather than on how often you should publish a blog post.
There is nothing wrong with publishing an article sometimes once a week, and sometimes twice a week as long as the article in question can help someone resolve a problem they might have with something you have expertise in, or answer somebody's question on a topic you know you excel in!
There is no schedule that you have to follow to the letter when it comes to blogging! Just try not to publish your blog post in such a way that might send a wrong signal to the search engine and make them think your blog site is an article factory website!
So how often should you be blogging? sometimes once a week, sometimes 3 times a week, and possibly, sometimes not publishing an article in one week will not hurt you!
Sarah, many of the answers have sound rationale, however let me add a twist and additional value to the mention of scheduling. Off the bat blogs about 'stuff' are valuable to add humanity to your blog, but if you are working on a theme or product, then you need to plan these ahead. Besides an editorial calendar (critical) you need to prepare the blogs together and in advance. There are WordPress plugging that will enable you to do this which are a great help in utilising your time. Keep to subject, use pictures and don't forget a call to action.
Each blog post should be around 1200 to 1500 words and this will provide you)(using a little editing) with at least 10 Facebook posts or tweets to drive traffic.
...blog when you have something valid to say to your target audience...and be real sure you've clearly defined your target audience and why you're blogging for them.
I find that with this clarity comes ideas....once a month, twice a month, doesn't matter. What matters is content, not frequency.
Weekly is a good balance. Tuesday or Thursdays seem to be the best days for this. Also Sunday afternoon.
Blogging is a great way to market a business, especially if your business is in the service sector. It establishes your expertise, builds subscribers and is one of the best ways to build traffic organically through SEO.
How frequently you blog depends on the following:
1. What are you writing about? Short tips; brief opinions about things you know about; longer more indepth pieces. Think about what you will establish as your specialty or field of interest. This is what people will know you for and be attracted by.
2. What's your audience? Are they interested in daily musings, timely commentary or more developed thoughts and ideas.
Depending on your answers to the first 2 questions, you could be posing daily to entrepreneurs with tips or suggestions. You could be commenting to people in a specific industry or interest group about current events 2 times a week or whenever the opportunity arises. If you like sharing your expertise in more detail, once a week might be enough.
In just about all situations, posting 1 time per month is insufficient to get traction for anyuthing so write at least 1 time a week.
I write one indepth article each week. First, it goes on my blog and then I distribute it through a series of other websites where I have contacts and followings. I do this because getting your article in enough places to be found and read is more effective than posting daily to one site.
SEO favors quality content and frequency. Focusing entirely on SEO does not insure you get more subscribers.
Whatever frequency you choose, be consistent and focus on delivering value in your writings. This is what drives viewership.
Blogging is a great way to promote your business, profession or passion. It takes time so stick with it.
Hi Sara! I was recently asking myself this question for myself and our prospective client partners. The straight answer is it depends on your company size and the speed you would like to propel your content. This article from HubSpot will help you narrow down exactly how often you should be blogging - http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks
Hope this helps answer your question!
Is blogging revenue? Does it generate revenue? the washer to the first is no and tot he second, not usually.
As a startup you need to concentrate on those things that generate revenue. All the other stuff can come later.
How interesting can you make the blog? Even if it doesn't center entirely on the business aspect the more of an audience you can attract the less expensive the marketing will be later.
How often should you brush your teeth? Of course the ideal answer is daily...for both brushing your teeth and blogging. But for most, that's impractical. There are many studies already out there that tell you that if you blog every other week you go unnoticed. If you go weekly, that is where you start to build some awareness and when you get to daily, you are top-of-mind.
So the real answer has to do with what you want to accomplish with your audience. My recommendation is to start weekly or don't blog at all...it's a waste of time. Adding one extra day during the week makes a huge difference and you can then see how frequent your audience wants the content and how frequent you can be consistent on delivering them this content.
Caution...don't start blogging 5 days a week and then run out of content or get tired and stop...you might as well not have started. Think of it like training for a marathon...start with one mile and work your way us as you get in shape and realize the rewards. Hope this helps...oh, and definitely keep brushing your teeth every day!!
Constantly. Some sites are turning out more than 10 new articles a day. The more you put into creating high quality content, the more you will get back from it.
Hey Sara,
Post, monitor, analyze data then strategize. Repeat. Your readers will determine if they want more. Always, always write for your audience. Ensure you maintain evergreen content with news related sprinkled in. A/B test your titles. Promote on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Visual content is huge these days. Vlog if you can then transcript the Vlog on your websites so search engines can pick up in the text. Vibrant images are key. Posting on FB, make them big, 1200x600 I think it is. Atomic content is important. Schedule your posts when readers are most active and make sure you pay attention to your day parts in analytics. Timing is also important. Be trendy and set trends when you can. # your posts by thinking of your own hashtag so if people click those hashtags every post you've tagged shows on their timeline. They easily be able to scroll all your topics in one place nice and easy. There is so much more but at least this will help you get started. Good luck and private message me if you require any other assistance.
Welcome to the game. Play ball!!! ;-)
Everyone has already given some great input on this, so I'll just throw out a Hubspot article that I recently stumbled on that talks about blog frequency: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks
it is essential to privileging the quality to the quantity . You can post only one or two articles per week taking care of writing.
A second important point: is to meet a demand and an interest in a particular topic. A further analysis platform and other blogger can provide information on the subject.
Always think you do not blog for yourself but for others.
Add content just to the content has no interest
Hi Sara
In general, the more you blog the better but, quality and consistency is more important than quantity.
HubSpot has crunched some numbers on the frequency of blogging and the results(leads) they can produce if done right.
Here's some of those stats.
"Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got almost 3.5X more traffic than companies that published between 0 - 4 monthly posts."
"The small companies that publish 11 or more blog posts per month drive much higher traffic than companies of the same size that publish fewer than 11 blog posts. Those that published 11+ posts per month had almost 3X more traffic than companies publishing 0 - 1 monthly posts, and about 2X as much traffic as those publishing 2 - 5 monthly posts."
"For our customer base, we found that the more blog posts companies published in total, the more inbound traffic they got to their website. You'll notice the tipping point happened around 400 total blog posts: Companies that had published 401+ blog posts in total got about twice as much traffic as companies that published 301 - 400 blog posts."
You can find more blogging frequency stats here.
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks
Hope this helps and good luck with you new venture. So exciting! :-)
Depends on the product(s) and or service(s) you or your company provides. Also I would question rather it's actually best served as a press release given product and or service...
As a new business or simply a blogger I would make it a practice to create 2 to 3 post a week. I would also stay up on posting rather you do a Monday, Wednesday, Friday rotation or a Tuesday and Thursday rotation or rather you are just a Saturday blogger.
The others above have also added some great personal questions to ask yourself or if you should get some help or hire someone.
As Ed Drozda has said, the most important thing to do is identify your goals. Generally speaking, the major benefit of a blog is to help with SEO, so you probably want to target very specific keywords and have new posts ready to publish often. If your business is local, you will likely be trying to compete for a Keyword group that combines your product or service and your city or region (eg: "Buy Blue Widgets in New York City").
With keywords chosen the more unique content you can publish the better. Google loves fresh content so posting often will help you climb the ranks for your keywords. This will be very important especially is you expect most of your traffic to come via search (less important if you have strong presences on social networks to help get your work out there...but still important).
At first blogging is very much about quantity over quality, you'll have more chances to hit that home run post if you publish 25 times a month than 4 or 5. If you have the budget, finding freelancers or a full time content person will go a long way. Feel free to reach out if you're looking for someone to help or have more questions.