Posting Frequency

APennyfor.. Posted these questions:

1. What is the acceptable minimum for blogging frequency? This answer should contain a number (i.e. once per day, once per week, etc).
2. What are the factors that control what the acceptable minimum is? My first thought is the age of a blog. Older blogs with established readership can post less often. When you are first starting out, providing lots of new material is very important. The topic of your blog can also dictate frequency.

Question One

I posted about this a while ago. It comes down to what type of blog you have. Take Jeremy at Ensight. He will post one or two a day. Sometimes I have seen 7 plus posts a day from him (No, clue where he finds the time). Are 7 posts a day too much? I believe so.

I read 10 to 20 web logs a day. If each of them posts more than a couple posts in a day I am overwhelmed.

As for a minimum – every other day (maybe once every third day, but not consistently), the longer the time between posts the more I expect a higher quality post.

Question Two

The most important factor in a minimum is time. If the author is pulling 12 plus hour days – are we as an audience going to be selfish and demand a post every other day? I hope not.

Think of a web log as a business. How many posts are going to keep my regulars coming back? How many posts will bring more readers to my site? What about quality and topic? Ideally the question should not be “What are the factors that control what the acceptable minimum is?” But “What is the minimum to keep my current audience.”

Everyone has deleted a website off their daily lists. What drove you to do that? In most cases I delete it because lack of activity. Some were deleted due to lack of content.

What does it take to get added to my list? The very first thing I look at is the date of the last post. If it was over a week ago, then forget it. The next thing I look for is the interval between posts. If they are every couple days then I add the site. I am not going to subscribe to a site that posts twice a month.

“Older blogs with established readership can post less often.”

I disagree, if you let a brand go stale readers will stop coming. It’s like a restaurant, when something changes for the worse, customers will leave.

“When you are first starting out, providing lots of new material is very important.”

I disagree with this statement also; new material is worthless, unless it’s interesting material. Interesting material will bring and keep readers.

Summarize

A web log author should post a minimum of every 3 days and preferably every 2 days. What dictates the minimum is what you want with your web log. If you are trying to build a web log, post once a day with interesting material. An older established web log may be able to get away with less. It all hinges on the expectations of the reader base.