I attended HubSpot’s first annual user conference HUG last year which was the first time I saw this graph:
At the time, I had just started with a new company and was the first time I was solely responsible for a corporate blog. I had walked into the company stating ‘we need to blog everyday to be effective and we cannot miss one single day.’ Turns out I was right and wrong.
When this graph popped on the screen, I looked at my boss and just nodded my head pointing my finger at it. There. I had validation to blog every day. But it wasn’t as easy as I made it out to be. Yes. The decision to blog everyday was there but now I was charged with actually writing content on a daily basis. And it wasn’t easy. Perhaps I had set my bar high (I tend to do that a lot) but at what expense to my audience?
In one of my group’s on LinkedIn this week, there has been a very active discussion around the question; how often should I post? I was expecting the group to pipe up and say ‘as much as possible’ but instead I saw responses like these:
“SEO wise it is good to post new things a few times a day but as Ivan Lutrov said if you don’t have anything new to say or update about, then it is better that you don’t post at all, simply because you will end up angering your readers making them enter you blog to read nothing interesting. “
“I have seen many, many blogs with multiple posts per week but with nothing new to say. In a nutshell, if you have attitude, stance, position, and passion, but you only post once a month, I’m likely to follow you. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter how often you say nothing, I’m not interested.”
“I have seen brands posting jokes and other irrelevant humorous items that is not even related to what they do incessantly.. may be around 3 times a day but then that’s of no use. The audience will soon realize that this is nothing but just keeping your name on their wall which doesn’t sound too exciting.”
Seems like quality rules over quantity and you are better off waiting until you have something good to say than to say anything at all. Yes, I get that several posts a day with up your chances of acquisition, after all this data came from somewhere but don’t let data define your approach. Take your own; one that works for you and make it work for you.
My approach right now on this blog is to post twice a week because I know I can do at least that and live up to the expectations of my audience. When I can do more, I will. Doesn’t mean I don’t write everyday to get into the habit of eventually posting once, twice or thrice a day. But for now, this works.
What works for you?