Blogging Frequency - Quality vs. Quantity

The other day a friend and fellow blogger asked me how often he should post to his blog. Since I started blogging full time, I have usually tried to post at least once a day on each of my blogs. Sometimes I like to take the weekend off to generate some ideas for the next week and clear my mind a bit, but I think if you want to be taken seriously as a professional blogger, you need to at least post at a regular frequency.

Posting Frequency
If you are writing a blog about a topic that is timeless, it is less important that you post every day. Someone can read a post next month or next year and it will still be relevant (personal development, for example). At the same time, your readers will begin to expect you to post at a regular frequency, such as once every other day, or you’re likely to alienate them. People are very fickle these days, and if you can’t keep their attention, they are likely to go elsewhere.

If you’re writing information that is timely, you will likely want to post more often. If you talk about a news story that came out three days ago, it will likely be old news for many readers, and again you will likely lose them.

For most blogs though, I think once to twice a day is plenty.

Its All About Quality!
Now that I talked a bit about quantity, let me flip flop and say that posting frequency is irrelevant unless you’re putting out quality material. If you post a bunch of garbage every day, no one is going to care. You need to be engaging, informative, and most importantly, you need to write to your audience.

Many bloggers blog so they can get huge traffic - they forget why people came to them in the first place. A good example of this can be seen around the real estate blogging world. Many of these real estate bloggers have simply stopped writing about real estate altogether and now just blog about blogging about real estate.

I’d rather post 4 quality posts a week then put up a bunch of crap that is going to confuse my audience. Focus on quality and cater to your audience, and you’ll be on your way towards a successful blog!