Are you busy publishing blog posts every couple of days? Wondering if 500 or 1,000 or 2,000 words per day are enough to get your blog rolling?
“You need to publish as often as possible!” is one of the first rules new bloggers learn. So you set up a tight publishing schedule and… fight to keep up with it day in day out.
And while struggling with your content production schedule, other things accumulate in the queue.
When to create your lead magnets, email funnels, optins, digital products?
When to set up and maintain your social media marketing and powerful content promotion?
Are your priorities in the right order? What if publishing frequency is not key but the final killer of your business?
Let’s debunk some myths about blogging frequency to help you (re)organizing your working days, leading to less stress and more outcome.
Myth #1 – You need to feed Google with fresh content every day
The more new, unique, helpful content, the better for your rankings in the search engines. That’s a fact. And the starting point of a tragic content creation mania for many bloggers.
Why tragic? Because it opens a vicious circle of FAST MORE, MORE, MORE content… to the expense of it’s quality. The longer you are in pressing treadmill writing, the less unique and helpful your content will become. That’s an unstoppable process, even if you try to avoid it.
But to serve Google, you stick to it. Publishing every day. For a long time to come. Until that day when you realize that nothing (or not enough!) is coming back from all that content. Google sucks!
No. Google doesn’t suck. It just doesn’t lower its requirements. And that’s still pole positions only for unique, helpful, engaging content.
If you publish mediocre content every day, the only effects on Google are that they might get suspicious why you spam the internet with petty stuff.
But, if you publish a fantastic epic piece of engaging content once a week or twice a month, Google will give you credits for all the interactions it has triggered.
Myth #2 – You need to feed your readers with fresh content several times a week
Okay, good traffic comes from helping your readers. Why not giving them lots of help by providing great content a couple of times per week?
No good idea, cause you’re again at risk to produce hurry-up treadmill content of low quality. Like Google, your readers won’t like it either.
Don’t transfer your content stress to your audience! Your readers face tons of inbox things and posts each day that are waving to get their attention.
If you jump into their faces with fresh content every couple of days, they are very likely to turn you off or even unsubscribe. Don’t believe it? Neil Patel has put together some impressive figures about that in his post about determining how often you need to blog.
Believe it or not, if you post new content to your blog too frequently, the engagement in comments and shares will go down.
But you want to keep up and increase the participation, by all means. That happens best with your followers waiting in a thrill of anticipation for your next beautiful piece of content to come.
With a moderate frequency, they will love to read, share, comment your posts. And they feel in control of things, which is keeping up with your updates in this case.
Myth #3 – Publishing often helps to improve your writing
Publishing often does not help to improve your writing. It is rather likely to harm your writing, at least when you try to master blogging as a solopreneur.
There are many other things beyond writing you need to take care of to turn your blogging journey into a profitable business. Bloggers are short in time in general. And even more if under the strains of a high publishing frequency schedule.
Too much pressure in time and tasks eliminates almost all the fun part of blogging (like SmartBlogger states in why it’s a silly strategy to post every day.
Writing every day helps big to improve your writing. It’s the “has to be published today and every day” that can kill your writing.
It’s true that advanced writers can produce excellent content at the push of a button. They easily come up with great posts like clockwork. But, this strong ability to deliver fast is nothing that emerges overnight.
In the beginning, your writing skills need time to evolve and unfold with a lot of persistent, focused practice.
That’s why it’s wise to stick to a publishing schedule that is doable and leaves you enough time to do all the other things bloggers need to do.
Again, it’s way better to publish an excellent piece of content once a month than mediocre or worse posts every week.
Myth #4 – Posting at the perfect time is all you need
The time when you post your content can have a huge impact on the traffic and engagement it delivers.
If your focus is traffic, then Monday mornings are probably the best time to publish your posts. The weekend is a perfect time for publishing if you are on the hunt for engagement (comments, shares).
Keep in mind, though, that things can vary depending on who your audience is and where it is located. Therefore, it’s best you test with publishing times a bit to find your sweet spot.
And there is a difference between the posts on your blog and the posts in social media. On your blog, as already mentioned, one excellent post a week is a very good way to go. In social media, though, you need to post far more frequently to be seen and shared.
If you want to learn more – Darren Rowse has created a great podcast episode about when it’s best to publish your blog posts.
It definitely makes sense to choose a particular day in the week to be your regular publishing day. If your audience expects new content from you every Monday, they can get themselves organized to read it. The search engines like that consistency too. And for your own discipline, it is also very helpful.
Great content combined with a smart publishing schedule is very powerful. But is that all you need to create the momentum your blog needs? No, so let’s debunk the content myth next.
Myth #5 – Content and only content drives your business
Content is only half of the success story. The other half is content PROMOTION (which is more than your smart publishing schedule from above).
Online business is a very crowded place. Your content, even if extragalactic good, won’t make it on its own. It needs lots of active support to be seen from the right people.
You need to reach out to other bloggers and influencers to help each other with your content promotion. What assets of your peer bloggers are worth to share with your audience? What of your own content assets are worth to share with your peer’s audience?
And, next to the strategic marketing of our blog, you have to plan and build an exciting journey for your visitors!
Think of where to pick up your help-searching visitors, what tasty provisions you offer them along the trip and where the journey culminates with them turning into your help-found loyal customers.
There are many things to create for that trip like attention grabbing headlines, lead magnets, optins, email funnels, lots of posts and guest posts, own digital products or services, etc.
No doubt, awesome pieces of content are the beating heart of your business. But, it’s the marketing and smart distribution of that content that finally leads to enough people visiting you and buying from you.
Slow down on posting, speed up on promoting
To sum it up, center all your content production around solving your audience’s problems. Commit yourself to a regular schedule, creating excellent-only content that people will love to share. Accept a lower publishing frequency to ensure this highest possible level of quality.
Keep in mind that, next to posting blog content, there are many other things you need to take care of in your business, with content promotion leading the way.
With a doable schedule, you can train your writing while ensuring excellent quality. The more you practice, the less time you need for creating an outstanding post. Invest that saved time in (you got it) finding even more promotion opportunities for your content.
If you are stuck in the publishing-every-day treadmill, I really hope you have found some good reasons to set yourself free from that.
I am sure you’ve got great help to offer for your audience. Give your content the chance to show that through purposeful stress-free writing.
To your very blogging success,
Vera
Very useful advice. A lot of bloggers spend a lot of time publishing posts everyday without realizing that they are not giving enough time to promotion. Traffic cannot appear magically. It will have to be trigerred with appropriate promotion.
Thanks Vera for taking the pressure off. Slow and steady is better than fast and sloppy, got it!
I can concur with the idea of slow blogging. Not so long ago I decided to reboot my blogging routine with a post everyday challenge. I learnt a lot + am glad I only set myself that initial 30 days.
Since then I have slowed down a lot, and even taken blogging sabbaticals every now + again to recharge + reboot my writing.
I do write every day, but that is offline in a journal + it has gone a great ways to finding my writing voice, but I would rather post less often with greater quality, than vice versa.
Anyway, good points. Thank you for sharing this valuable reminder 🙂
Hi
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Cheers