Assuming a blog is important to your business, how often do you write articles & post them?

This is a question that I was curious about as well until listening in on a webinar entitled "The Science of Timing". The information of timing for blog posting (including frequency), email marketing, twitter, and facebook was fascinating. Here's a quick break down:
http://www.synnovatia.com/blog/social_networking/when-timing-is-right

For our own part, we are posting every two weeks, and getting to increase the post to weekly basis. It's the classic tradeoff of time and priorities. Many luminous content experts who talk about the importance of fresh content - and how this is the currency of business today. Keep it coming.

Every time we post, the traffic spikes, and more often we post we hit new highs in visits. We also started retweeting older posts as relevant opportunity arises. What we don't do is to hire someone in the other side of the world to write for us - not sure about pros/cons of that approach.

I agree with what Jenna/Alyssa say about being consistent and Tyler about figuring out what works for you.

Here are articles from two prolific writers I respect very much on what they say about this topic:

Mark Suster:
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/03/27/why-startups-need-to-blog-and-w...

Anthony Iannarino:
http://thesalesblog.com/2011/04/how-i-write-eleven-blog-posts-a-week-part-one/

I am posting once a week, trying to do it on the same day of the week, Wednesday. The reasoning is consistency and meeting the readers' expectations. Every once in a while I'll post a guest as a "bonus" post throughout the week. From experience, I found that once a month wasn't frequent enough to hold my readers' attention. Readership seems to be higher for once-a-week posts versus monthly posts. Great question, and I'm enjoying reading the other responses. Thank you!

I don't know that there is one right answer here.

The principle is obviously that your blog probably needs to give visitors a good reason to keep coming back. That does not necessarily mean that "you need to write an article 2-3 times per week."

First, this guideline probably needs to be adjusted depending on the nature of your business or the objective your online presence. Secondly, there are many ways to show new activity on your blog that may not entail your writing 2-3 articles per week, even if your intent was to update it that often:

It may make sense to vary the length of the content on your blog, if for no other reason than to keep the look and feel of your blog interesting. Wordpress, at least, and perhaps other platforms, provides the capability to post by email.

You could also solicit guest bloggers to contribute content.

Lastly, if you are on twitter, you can also show your twitter feed on your blog. These are just a few of some additional ways to feed content to your website.

I hope this helps.

Blogs are essentially a marketing tool. You are trying to influence people to do something ... subscribe, read, call, upload, etc.

Now, how can the blog support those goals?

Consistency is important for two reasons, it helps build readerhsip and it can be a powerful benefit to SEO.

You also need to balance the number of posts with the resources and culture of the company -- something that is often overlooked. Is you company built to blog? Can it be sustained and at what level? Can you deliver consistent quality (paramount for readership) every month? every week? every day? That may be your constraining factor!

Hope that helps.

I don't think there are hard-and-fast rules about how often you should post on your blog. It really depends on your topic, your audience and the type of posts you publish (short blurbs, long tutorials, daily thoughts, etc.). The key is figuring out the magic number that engages your readers and keeps them coming back.

And I agree with Jenna -- consistency is important!

It depends on your needs. If you think you need to post every day then do so. Just keep in mind that what you post is a reflection of you. You are posting your thoughts so at least find a way to show your readers that you like what you are doing by putting quality content in your blogs.

Ronni:

This question is getting all kinds of great answers. Sorry I am late getting to the party, but I have some thoughts that are too long to be included here.

I posted my response here: http://thesalesblog.com/2011/05/what-really-prevents-you-from-writing-a-coupl... (if all of these answers haven't yet satisfied your request).

Essentially, I believe that you do have two to three ideas a week, and that what prevents you from writing is the resistance that a lot of people feel, namely, that the ideas that want to write about aren't important enough or good enough for other people.

If it's not that, then it is likely you haven't yet found a process that allows you to be disciplined in the activity of writing.

I added some prompts at the end of the post. I'll be you have fifty blog titles by the time you answer them.

Anthony

thank you, jackie & emily, for your very helpful answers.
both articles answered my questions. but, honestly, once a day????? i have trouble coming up w/ material 2 - 3 times a week.

What ever you do just stay consistant!

If you are using your blog to promote your business or services then you really can't afford to get carried away and spend more time blogging then you do producing. My blog has helped me find new clients and make new contacts but I limit myself to writing during that 1 and 1/4 hour window from when I put my son to bed to when my wife and I follow. Could I do it better and have a better and potentially more effective blog? Of course, but that's my system and it seems to work for me.

I think it absolutely depends upon the quality of the updates or the news. If you are just doing small minuscule updates few times a day it will put less and less value in each of the post and your audience might overlook it. But if you post less and less or once a week you might not grasp audience's attention or be able to engage them on a regular basis.

I think the best idea would be to find a middle ground. But that is totally based on your audience size, and the type of content you produce. If you are blogging only to supplement your business or blogging is your sole purpose. It all really depends.

I would say find the middle ground.

I just started to actively blog couple of months ago and I realized that what works for me the best is to write short articles when I am inspired to. I plan for one a day and if they are short its is possible. Some days I post more than one, some days I skip. But that made my blogging so much fun. I really enjoy the process now. I think that's the goal. It should be fun. Than you don't have to think about how often you need to post, because you actually want to post.

Happy blogging!

Think of your blog as an employee.

She cannot produce well for you if you will not take care of her. I think you can blog everyday. But do not just blog for the sake of blogging. Always blog with a purpose. Mine is to awaken the potentialities of Filipinos. I write because I must. The number of hits has nothing to do with my blogging.

Seth Godin posts every day. But only entries that will make you think. No matter how short.

Jef Menguin
http://jefmenguin.com

I think minimum once per week. Remember, you have stay on people's minds, especially your target market. But you should blog anytime you have actually have something to say that is helpful, interesting to your audience.

Grind for Greatness!

I post every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, no matter what ... but that's me. Whatever you can commmit to, do it and stick to it. It's far better to be consistent posting twice a month than to post every day and then burn out after two weeks.

We try to post once a week and like many of us having relevant content can be difficult at times. We're now including video with all of our posts. We're fortunate that we have regular access to quality studio and can do this. As a result we've added a new service to our offerings (not released to the public yet). This is giving us a creative way to generate content, then we write text around the video to enhance the SEO value. You can see a couple of examples here.

http://is.gd/my3Oo7 and http://is.gd/ToZSYY

Like most of the comments above, staying consistent and having an editorial calendar is critical.

I post a few times a week, so I agree with the 2-3 times a week. Too much, and readers are overwhelmed, high quality blogs get lost in the mix. Too little, and I think less than 2 per week is too little, and it's harder to get a good following. I find no reason why taking an old blog and re-posting it isn't worthwhile, as long as it is still relevant and pertinent.

It took a while but I post weekly. I ponder what I might want to share throughout the week then pour it out ...the good news is that you can usually link that blog post to FB (I do to my business page) and also to Linked In. I am on a few other sites and also link it.

I write it as I am speaking, folks tell me they like my blogs becuase they are no-nonsense, helpful and current. I believe you can over-think and this can cause a delay.

My challenge is finding other industry or suject blogs and going to them, which I know I should do. This will take way too much time and I am not convinced.....

I post once a week for sure. Sometimes more often. I'm trying to turn my "more often posts" into the schedule for another week.

The challenge, as I see it, is making sure that I don't send out too many posts for the RSS readers. I don't want them to be bombarded.

My company started a blog recently and we aim for one blog per week from a small select pool of high-level staff. Each person does their own writing as we think it is more interesting if their personality comes through in the blog.

I try to average one entry per week.

I try to update twice a week, but don't always succeed. I do think it matters!

I have adopted an every other week approach. There definitely is a spike after a post, and then a constant dribble until the next post.

I don't have a specific timing for blogging; I only write a post when I have something I'm compelled to post about. Sometimes this is once or twice a week, for my personal blog, sometimes this is a few times a year, for all of my other niche blogs.

But this is because blogging serves as a "archive" of the other online activities that I participate in and not my primary marketing channel.

The "reach & frequency" model works if you are saying that frequency guarantees reach, or that you already have the reach... or if blogging is your primary activity that returns the best ROI (which, frankly, I haven't seen because I can't make a living from blogging alone and so don't see this warranting that level of time investment). If you're already gaining leads and traffic from other sites, like this one, then it makes more sense to focus giving value right here.

The business conversion / leads from blogging has been so much less efficient than my activities on LinkedIn or even Quora, hence, my blogs are the archive of my primary activities there for those who wish to read everything I've written in one place. They meet me first elsewhere.

Monthly has been the current rhythm, topical along with current marketing theme or promotions. It's a struggle to do more frequently and still perform business tasks. Our goal is to boost SEO. You can blog for quite some time and often it's the competition that reads the most.

I have been really inconsistent. Here is my history:

1. When we started my blog, I tried to go 2x a week! (Umm, day job, don't forget the day job...).
2. Then I went for big, long posts once in a while. That actually worked ok.
3. Now, I shoot now for once a week but am not consistent so I end up at every 2 weeks.

All in all, I am consistently writing and participating on the internet. Even if I am not writing a blog post, I am on Focus answering questions.

I would definitely 2-3x a week, it would depend upon what your purpose is for your blog, if you are wanting to use it to market your products & services, then you could even do everyday. Pick a niche that you want to serve and go from there.

Google loves blogs, and if you want to get noticed you have to post often, otherwise you the bots won't come visit you as often.

If you consider your blog a marketing tool that replaces or augments the "get the message out philosophy" then you may "need" to blog often.

If however your blog is supposed to be a mechanism of value contribution, where you share information that you AND your reader believe is of value - you blog whenever you have something valuable to share. That maybe several times a week if it is the case - and it maybe 2 weeks with no post at all.

The Social Media Academy blog has sometimes three posts a day and sometimes none for two weeks.

I do feel a blog is important and I have an editorial calendar of what we will post when. We post at least once a week based on the calendar but often I get an idea and will post that in between. For my clients, I advise weekly postings.

Blogs are very important tools to businesses and serve various purposes from marketing to media coverage to conversations. We post every Wednesday. And like Axel said, we share other information that provides value. But, I think once a week is good and it doesn't give your audience an information overload.

As ususal, the answer is "It depends." For me, and from what I hear from my audience, a consistent weekly entry at approximately the same time each week seems right.

Low-content daily musings don't fit the audience I'm after, and monthly "articles" tend to be too long to quickly engage and process. So, I shoot for a 150-300 word piece that contains topical/pop culture/current events references to attract initial attention, then try to raise a question, issue, or position that could stimulate some thoughts relevant to my professional specialty.

Having engaged in article marketing for over 6 years, I have found that consistency is the key. Also what is the goal of the blog? To increase SEO ranking? To improve traffic? To demonstrate your expertise?

I started my blog with one posting per week in February of 2010. This had no impact on traffic. Then I increased it incrementally and monitored the results. When the postings reach 5 times weekly I saw dramatic traffic results as well as increased sales leads. Currently, my website with most traffic entering from the blog is receiving over 7,000 unique visitors per month. The goal this year is to increase it to 10,000 which is doable as traffic is increasing by 10% per month.

The key is not only frequency of postings, but the use of key words both short and long tail if you truly want to increase sales.

From an SEO standpoint you should also consider that Google's recent algorithm changes are all about trying to provide better rankings for quality content.

Frequency is important, but don't increase frequency by spreading thin the same resources, thereby lowering the quality of the posts. If you need more frequency commit more resources, either by prioritizing it higher for by getting some help. I like the idea proposed earlier to include guest bloggers.

Terrific spectrum of ideas and feedback here. I've struggled with this and am going to TRY to post weekly but if something else comes up, I won't wait, just post it right away. Anything more than 2x per week is starting to overlap with other content distribution mens like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Geoff

Geoff - Posting more than 2x per week should not be overlapping with other content distribution means. In fact, as we outline in this free special report - http://www.getlinkedinhelp.com, you should be mixing your blogging efforts with your social media efforts.

Eric

There is a wide and varied response to the question you have posited reflecting a high interest in the subject matter. All the answers are useful. On my part, I think the frequency of your blog should be determined by your need to say something useful to your audience whether it is weekly, monthly etc should depend on your need to keep your audience informed. It is very important that your write-ups have some meaningful information. The substance and content of an article is invaluable in a business blog and it should be directed to a targeted business audience as much as possible. There used to be a time when only astute and determined writers could find a medium to accept an article to be published. However, with the wide spread use of the internet, emails, blogs and discussion forums anyone and everybody can now publish anything whatsoever whether it is useful or not. My take on this question is publish a blog only if you have something to say or advertise that you want to be heard on.

I've found that posting more often doesn't necessarily raise traffic statistics. I save my postings for saying something that is really worth saying or is timely. When it seems that I've said everything worth saying, I go to Google Analytics and see what people are searching for in my area of expertise, sometimes that sparks an idea.

I participated in a webinar yesterday with Hubspot, and they provided some interesting stats on blog frequency tied to business being closed as a result of the blog. The biggest jump was when the blog got updated at least weekly, but each incremental increase in frequency also brought an incremental increase in likelihood of winning business.

Click the link below to access the webinar recording. The link goes to Phil Donaldson's blog post on the event. Scroll down to access the video. The stats are presented by the second speaker. http://www.propelgrowth.com/2011/05/11/using-content-to-drive-inbound-marketi...

Based on my blogging experience, it's not a must to post new articles 2 - 3 times a week. The periodicity is only a part of the content strategy efforts. But, yes, it's important to create some sort of schedule so your readers can expect something from you at a certain day of the week.

Don't underestimate the SEO efforts for an individual blog post. I've outlined my vision on it in the following article:

http://www.marketingsutra.com/blog/search-engine-optimization-for-blogs/

Happy blogging!

Late to the party, but am compelled to chime in . . .

We've all got different interests, needs, strategies, tactics, target audiences, and objectives; a uniform answer is probably not useful.

For myself, I make one entry a week, even if I've had two or three decent ideas. Somehow, it seems that multiple entries puts a burden on the intended reader (and a huge obligation to maintain quality/consistency on the blogger). Less often leads, I think, to growing disinterest.

My aim is to tell make a point and tell a story in less than 300 words, in a way that is interesting and relevant. I avoid articles - again, not wanting to create a burden for the reader.

So far, I get off-line responses that generate interesting dialogue. I am not a fan of lengthy on-line and visible exchanges, preferring to keep the blog site uncluttered.

If you are interested in the approach, my blogs are at www.dcvelocity.com/blogs

Although we are hyper active on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, Garious blog is the most important piece in our SM puzzle. In fact, we see our blog as our social media gateway and our main target of any "external" SM interaction is to drive traffic to our own content hub (i.e. Garious blog).

To ensure consistently posting interesting and diverse content, we have a team of resident bloggers each of them is responsible for a number of post per week. The beauty of dividing the work is that we end up publishing quality posts on daily basis stress-free.

We also diversify the type of digital content we offer. We publish well selected videos audios and audios on specific days that our blog visitors are accustomed to.

If you can afford to build a team of qualified bloggers, your blog visibility will skyrocket in no time. Although Garious blog saw the light on August 2010, we have been on AllTop.com for a while and we are so happy about it.

I hope you find this information helpful and I wish you great success.