How often should I post to my blog?

How many times have you asked that question or heard someone ask it? I would venture to guess I get that question every time I visit with someone about blogging. If you look at the title to this blog post you see my answer. Blog early and blog often. I know there are some who will disagree with me on this. However, from my own experience in publishing my professional service firm’s blog, the more I posted the better I did with the search engines.

One of the biggest advantages of blogging over other Internet marketing efforts is the fact you are, or at least should be, publishing new content on an often and regular basis. I recommend to all of our clients that they should make it a goal to post at least 3 times a week. I would rather they do it daily. But, I have to be realistic. Not everyone can set aside that much time. But, the more you post, the quicker your new blog will move up in the search engines.

Post relevant content.

While you should make it a goal to post as often as you can. Don’t throw up something for the sake of throwing something up. Not only should you post often, you should post good relevant content. Content which is relevant to your niche or target audience.

Keep current on what is going on and being said in your niche. Use a good reader and follow the news in your niche. Read other blogs in your niche. Listen to you customers and/or clients to see what they are talking about. And blog about it. Answer the current questions being asked and you will be posting good, relevant content.

When should you publish your posts?

If you are following your blogs stats, you should know what days you are getting the heaviest traffic. Try to schedule your post to be published on those days of the week. Do some testing on this too. Post on the heavy traffic days and on the slower days too. See if doing a post on the slow days might actually increase your traffic. If it does, this is clearly telling you that your traffic is dependent on when you post. Might you than realize you should be posting more often?

I also set my post to publish at 8:00 a.m. each day I post. I have found that posting in the morning gets better traffic. Those are the post I have previously drafted and set to post down the road. Usually a day or two down the road. In addition to that, I will post during the day when I can.

Do some pre-planning.

Which brings me to a final point. Since I started to use an editorial calendar, it has become easier for me to post on a regular basis. I plan the “feature” post I want to run during a week. I also put on my editorial calendar those weekly series post I do.

I also might do 2 or 3 blog post in one sitting and schedule them to publish on different days down the road. This is a great way to make sure you are posting often and on a regular schedule. You will find your readers will come to expect you to post on those days. And if you don’t, you may get an email or comment asking where your regular post might be.

Recently, Problogger had a post titled, how batch processing made me 10 times more productive. One of the tips Darren provided indicated that he does the majority of his post drafting once or twice a week.

I generally set aside Monday mornings (and usually Wednesdays also) for writing posts. I take my laptop - camp out in a cafe - spend most of the morning off-line (so there are no other distractions) and just write. My goal is to write at least 5 posts that I can then use later in the week. Quite often I’ll write as many as 10 posts in a 5-6 hour period.

This is one change in my post drafting schedule I may implement myself. You need to try different approaches to this which work best for you. While Mondays may not work, another day of the week may. You should also take advantage of those times when you have down time. One thing I did was to always have my MacBook with me. And if I was waiting on an appointment or other event, I would whip out the MacBook and start typing a post in my desktop editor.

So, try to blog early and blog often to see your readership increase and your return on your blogging investment grow over time.