Occasionally, I will hear from a fellow blogger interested in tips on how to write a new blog post every day. They usually reveal that they are struggling to crank out a new post every day, and worry that they are breaking an unwritten ‘blogging rule’.
If you’re in this camp then you’re off the hook, because you don’t have to blog every single day.
I think this is a big misconception that many bloggers have. They believe they need to have new content on their blog every single day, and if they can’t do this, they feel their blogging efforts are ‘failing’.
Now in a perfect world, you’d have 5 wonderfully valuable new posts published to your blog every week. But if you only have the ability to write 2 good posts a week, by trying to write daily, you are going to dilute the overall quality of your blog. Don’t do this, one of the best blogging lessons I learned early on was to keep my mouth shut if I didn’t have anything compelling to blog about. IMO it’s better to make your readers wait another day or 2 for a good blog post, than to give them a mediocre blog post today.
So then the question becomes, how often SHOULD you blog?
First, let’s assume that you are interested in maintaining and building a readership for your blog. So now we need to figure out how often you can comfortably blog, along with how often you’d need to have new content on your blog to build readership, and craft our posting frequency and schedule accordingly.
Let’s assume that you can comfortably write at least one new blog post a week. WHEN you publish blog posts also plays a large role in building your blog’s readership. A general rule of them is to publish new posts between 8 am and noon during the week, for the largest audience. Also, readership tends to be slightly higher in the middle of the week for most blogs.
So in general, when crafting a posting schedule, start in the middle of the week, and work your way outward. If you can only post once a week, pick a day, say Tuesday or Wednesday, and try to publish on that same day, every week. Here’s how you could craft a blogging schedule, based on number of posts a week:
1 – Tuesday morning at 8 am.
2 – Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 8am.
3 – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings at 8am.
4 – Monday – Thursday mornings at 8am.
5 – Monday – Friday mornings at 8am.
Now when it comes to traffic, these are general guidelines. You should closely track your blog’s stats to see if your traffic patterns coincide. For example, most blogs see their traffic tail off on the weekends, but if your blog enjoys a traffic spike on Sundays, then you should probably try to publish new content on that day.
Does this help? In the end, it’s probably better if you set out to post FEWER times a week, then add more posts if you find out you can write more often you originally thought.
BTW we will be discussing this topic tonight on Twitter during #blogchat. You can follow #blogchat here and here. Feel free to join in!
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This is a timely topic for me, Mack. The day of week/time of day info is especially helpful. My plan is a regularly scheduled once a week post, with spontaneous posts in between. Does that cause confusion or frustration with readers?
How important would you say it is for every blog post to be relevant to each other? Are there successful blogs that are a variety of topics according to what the author is thinking of on a given day? Or would it be better to have more than one blog, each with it’s own topic?
Thanks for all of your help and for #blogchat! –A
.-= ArtseyC´s last blog ..ArtseyC: @chrisbrogan Sounds yummy. I’m about to make popcorn with EVOO, garlic & oregano from the garden. Good for heart & taste buds! =-.
Mack, do you have a certain time zone in mind? As an Arizonan, 8 a.m. my time is 11 a.m. eastern during DST, 10 a.m. eastern during standard time. I think you’re saying that it’s important to post at regular, predictable times and to post before noon in all time zones. Is that right? Thanks.
.-= Peter Faur´s last blog ..Smile! You’re a CEO =-.
Hey Peter, it’s best to post when it’s convenient for YOUR blog’s readership. If the majority of your readers are from Arizona, then obviously you want to schedule your posts when they can read them, as opposed to a blogger from NYC that’s writing for an Eastern audience.
But the bottom line is to check your stats. Look at your hourly and daily traffic and you should be able to tell which days get the most traffic, and what hours DURING those days get the most traffic. Start out by publishing your posts during those times, and go from there!
Hi Mack,
Nice post I was going to add what you wrote in that comment reply, but you said it, so. 😉
I noticed a big difference between different blogs with post times etc, one reason was one blog is based on my local area, so it made sense to post when I knew locals would be active…took me a few goes at it get it to to work out good, the faster people see your post after publishing the better too, helps with content being spidered quick.. bonus 🙂
Yet my personal blog, due to funny enough more people overseas reading it, I get a better response at a let night my time.
Testing is important and shouldn’t be overlooked in any sense, just the small tweak can paid dividends.
Anyway, good stuff, and nice meeting you all. 😀
.-= rob sellen´s last blog ..PR 4 and it means nowt, really… basic SEO is still basic SEO =-.
Great info especially for twitter and blogging newbies like myself! I am on Twitter all the time but had no clue of the key times to post!! Great Blog and I look forward to more!! 🙂
BTW if you have no idea how to track your blog’s traffic, try using a free tool like SiteMeter. It will involve adding a small bit of code to your blog’s template, but it will tell you how to do that. Once you have SiteMeter tracking your blog, then you can check out your blog’s traffic patterns. I can look at mine and clearly see that traffic is highest during he week, and then falls off on the weekend. During the week, I can see that traffic is highest usually from around 8am to noon, then around 5pm it really starts to tail off. So for this blog, during the workweek and from 8am-5pm is usually best for traffic.
Your mileage may vary 😉
Hi mack, again,
Another good one I have used for years is http://statcounter.com which is handy, free and you can add lots of blogs/sites to it … just to throw another one there, I’ve used it for as long as I have blogged.. 6, almost 7 years.
Never used that sitemeter one but have seen it on alot of sites too, so, must be good because some of the sites I saw it on were huge traffic ones.
.-= rob sellen´s last blog ..Make money online, mining locally? =-.
Rob, Statcounter is good too, I love how SiteMeter gives me real-time results, especially for referrals. Big advantage over Google Analytics. I like to see WHERE traffic is coming from, in real-time.
.-= Mack Collier´s last blog ..You don’t have to blog every day =-.
I agree, in these days of “real time web” being trumpeted, I can’t understand why google analytic’s isn’t utilising it, are we to really believe Google THE search engine is unable of giving us that?
It’s only good for checking say at the end of a day, week… usless, more so when we know it’s script slows our sites down, while google say, website speed matters! Yeah..I scratch my head at that! 🙂
The other thing now is google’s url shortner…goo.gl where are the damn stats for that?
Seems Google is taking us for mugs.
And… we let them! 🙁
.-= rob sellen´s last blog ..Make money online, mining locally? =-.
Mack, ITA with a quality over quantity approach. One of Seth Godin’s latest was about when someone new reads your blog; he says there’s “no time for nuance.” I’ll go with this platitude: “you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”
I know I need to write and publish more but I’ve committed myself to offering content of value (IMO) to the readers. Sometimes it means I have two or three posts one week, none the next. Now off to come up with something worthy of the PUBLISH button this week. FWIW.
.-= Davina K. Brewer´s last blog ..Smart Marketing 101: Being helpful wins business =-.
Here’s another reason to avoid blogging every single day: You exhaust your readers. I follow probably 40 blogs on Google Reader and I am pleased when people blog only once or twice a week because it allows me to keep up. If someone goes a couple of weeks without posting, I get concerned … unless that’s a habit for that blogger. Intermittent posting also gives me time to investigate other items online.
.-= Mary Warner´s last blog ..Do I Still Exist if I’m Not Online? =-.
Mary that is a GREAT point. I am terrible about checking my Google Reader on a regular basis, I usually get to it a couple of times a week. If I see Mashable has 45 new posts waiting for me, I will often just mark them all as read, but if another blog only has 1 or 2 new posts, I will probably read them.
I definitely think that consistency is most important. We started posting every weekday (it used to just be once every week or two) and noticed jumps in readership.
However, this could’ve been because actually made a “posting schedule” to maintain regularity.
Also, writing more often helped hone my blog-writing skills which is always useful!
This desire to “post, post, post” everyone has is ridiculous. Keep talking…nobody’s listening! Quality content cannot–“usually”–be produced with too much frequency. People, write less and write better and your chances of success will skyrocket.
Hey Richard…
I can see your point, but how about looking at it this way, you SHOULD always be posting… but not publishing. 😉
The more you write, the better it gets, just publish the best stuff. 😀