How Often Should You Blog?

If you follow Bit51 regularly you’ll know it’s been a quiet week without a post (up until this point). You’ll probably also know this goes against my normal schedule of three posts per week which I’ve been mildly successful at for most of the life of this site.

While my goal is three posts per week sometimes this just isn’t prudent and sometimes there is room for an extra post or two. Is this a problem? Should I even set a goal for posts per week? This brings up the topic of today’s post. How often should you blog?

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds to realize everybody has an opinion and many have a formula that they say should fit your blog. The catch is every blog is different. What works for them, even in the same niche, might not be right for you for more reasons than I could possibly list in a single post.

In my own experience what works for me is three posts per week. This gives me a goal to shoot for in any given week and helps serve as a benchmark for me to help determine if I’m keeping up with this site. The important thing to remember here is that while it is a goal it isn’t a goal that I should chastise myself over if I fail to meet it. For example I’ve been sick this week and the combination of medicines I’ve been on would have made any post up until this point a bad idea. Other weeks I find myself with such inspiration that I feel I could right a novel. These are the weeks when keeping to my goal of three posts can help me pace that inspiration for use when things are slower.

So we’ve covered what my goal is and how it keeps me on track, but how many posts should be in your goal?

While the answer to this question is different for everyone there are a couple of things you should keep in mind.

First, building a solid readership does involve some level of consistency. That said, setting your goal too high can make your posts appear erratic while setting your goal to low will take much longer to build enough content for a substantial following with most topics. Pick something that is both reasonable for you to accomplish but does actually build some content over time (once a year is probably too little while hourly is probably way too much for the average blogger).

Second, if your goal is too ambitious your content will suffer. This builds off point one in that not only can setting too ambitious of a goal make your posting seem erratic, but it can and probably will greatly reduce the quality of your work. If you are only working on getting the next post out at all costs it will be much more difficult to concentrate on what actually goes into that post. If our blog is a hobby or side business post accordingly. No one expects full time content from a part time writer.

In the end the frequency of your posts should only be enough to be consistent while still maintaining the quality content your readers value. Try to keep your posts frequent enough to not lose the attention of your readers while still maintaining the quality that brought them to your site in the first place.