Blogging 101: Content Frequency

So you’ve started a blog and have loads of amazing ideas to write down. Now what? – Should you write them and post them ASAP? When’s the best time to post them? How many times a day or week are you supposed to post? I know when I first started I was just guessing about all this, and even now I still change it up a little every now and then. But I thought I’d give you some pointers on deciding what frequency would be best for you.

Make a Schedule

If you saw my editorial calendar you would know that I plan out my posts sometimes months in advance. Making up a schedule (that you can stick to!) is really helpful for you to know when you need to actually write the post. If you’re anything like me, who like’s to procrastinate, you know that writing 2 weeks in advance is good planning to meet your schedule and therefore you’re more likely to get your posts out on time.

Making a schedule also means picking which days you want to post on. Some people only post once a week on weekends, some post every day and there’s all manner of in between. There’s no set rule of how much you should be posting on your blog. But you can set yourself a schedule of days for yourself.

For example, I have blogging 101 posts scheduled for every Monday until Autumn. This means I know when I need to write each post, and my readers also know that they’re getting a new blogging 101 post on Monday.

Quality not Quantity

It’s all about the quality of your content, if you don’t have the time to churn out good content every day then post less often. Figure out how long it takes you to write a piece of quality content plus extra time for taking photos, creating media, or filming a video. Add all of these up and see how much you can fit into your schedule. I personally can’t write good quality content on a weekday evening because my brain is fried. So I schedule based on how much time I have the weekend before to create my content so that it is good quality.

Timing

A lot of people have asked me ‘What’s the best time to upload posts?’ and this question doesn’t have a definitive answer. For one, it can depend on where you are in the world – but at the same time the internet isn’t a localised service. Your blog isn’t like a magazine that can be bought in store between 9 – 5 for working hours – and you can cater your content to be picked up at any time of day – no matter which country the readers in.

At the end of the day, pick whichever time is best for you to post. If you’re not scheduling then 8am probably won’t be doable on a regular basis but 8pm might be. If you are scheduling, think about what time your readers are online and most likely to read content. You can also test best times by changing it up every so often which is what I do. I initially posted in the morning but found that most of my views came in later in the day, so I moved it forward. I then shifted it back to around midday as I have a lot of views from the UK and the USA and this is a time when both countries are awake.

Consistency is Key

I’ve already said to create a schedule which will help with this point. People want to follow content which is going to be consistently in quality and timing. There’s a low chance that people will enjoy poor content that only comes out every 3 months. But they will enjoy good content once a week. So you sometimes have to push yourself to create the content and post it for the readers. This is where scheduling comes in handy because then you know what you need to write, and you schedule it to go live in 5 days time. If you’re having a particularly good creative weekend, you can schedule ahead and there’s no need to stress or feel guilty if you end up with no time to post something.

Take a Break

If you’re just not feeling it and have writers block then don’t force yourself to write. When you’re not confident, inspired or motivated you can tell through your writing and the quality of your content may suffer. Sometimes you just need to take a break and relax. Ideas and inspiration will come back to you eventually, and unless it’s a sponsored paid post, no one will mind if you’re not posting as often as usual. I know I said to be consistent with timings, but if you don’t take the break now, your quality consistency will decrease as you start to burn out. Sometimes it’s a balancing act and it always comes down to how you want to create content.