Comments on: Posting Goals

By: blogvp » Blogger Posting Goals: Consistent Or Overload

blogvp » Blogger Posting Goals: Consistent Or Overload — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 16:29:04 +0000

[...] Darren and others discuss different ideas for the number of posts to have per day on your blog. I like all of the ideas, especially about being consistent and and developing some kind of regular schedule. [...]

By: Sa Blog

Sa Blog — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 06:54:57 +0000

Wow, 25 posts per day. Thanks hectic.
I’m a ‘pro blogger’ too, from South Africa, so I have the time to post quiet a bit but clearly I’m slacking with only about 2 or 3 posts per day across 3 different blogs. Ok, its time to get into the blogging gym, and build some posting muscle.

By: Rebelbagwan

Rebelbagwan — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 05:18:58 +0000

Thanks Darren for taking the time to answer that question and for all the others who offered their opinions , there is certainly a lot there to digest, can’t say I have come across another blog to date where the comment section ( as well as the text blog ) is so so informative.. cheers

By: Kamemada

Kamemada — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 04:31:37 +0000

Maybe offtopic but I think its a good suggestion to build another blog especially when you own a ‘niche’ blog. Is that what you call it? Sorry, english is not my mother tongue and I’m so used to random ramblings kinda blogs. My current blog is about music and there are times when I desperately need to post alot, I tend to use alot of ‘copy&paste’ posts and it’s kinda killed the whole blog. Looks like a splog to me. Before reading this post, I planned to change my blog to a more open… But I might change my mind and build another blog for other topics that sometimes came out alot but couldnt put in my current blog coz its offtopic?! At least with more blogs, I got more posting options. Hope i didnt confuse you guys.

So my next plan will be, post 1-2 good posts in my current blog and the soon-to-be.

By: Michael Moncur

Michael Moncur — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 04:09:40 +0000

Another tip about writing too many posts: Start small. I’d say 1-2 posts a day is great for the first couple of months. Unless you’re agressively promoting your site, if you post 5 times a day, you’re scrolling posts down the page before anyone has had a chance to read them. If they’re all timeless posts, that’s great – otherwise, slow down and save some of your posting for after the honeymoon period.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 04:04:28 +0000

Very true ME Strauss – in fact I’ve found since decreasing my posting frequency here at ProBlogger that the comment levels have skyrocketed per post. It means everyone gets a chance to add their two cents worth before the post drops off the front page.

By: fivecentnickel.com

fivecentnickel.com — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 03:21:36 +0000

Yes, I agree that posting too much can be a problem. I’ve unsubscribed from some feeds because they’re updated too often. Some authors also rely far too heavily on excerpting their content from elsewhere in order to achieve such a high posting frequency.

By: ME Strauss

ME Strauss — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 01:38:45 +0000

Darren, your post itself covered the topic so well and the comments filled in the nuances beautifully. I only have a tiny addition. Posting too often not only overwhelms readers, it discourages comments. That cuts down on the dicussion and also takes away from the sense of community.

Depending on the blog and the topic–Some posts require thinking time before people are ready to comment. Like good wine, they need time to breathe. Give that time and the discussion can keep people returning to the post every ten minutes.

By: J Wynia

J Wynia — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 00:39:00 +0000

The other thing to consider is making some of the posts you write on “burst” days into scheduled posts instead of posting them all at once. It can help buffer the posting frequency a bit. I’ve currently got 3 postings in my queue that will show up over the next day or 2 while I’m doing yard work. I’ve also got a pile of postings that are part finished that I can quickly sit down and polish off into full postings any time I need one.

This all works better if your posts aren’t time-dependent. A post about the score of a sporting event from today isn’t something you’ll want to put on a 3 day delay, but an article like the one we’re responding to (setting posting goals) could just as easily come out on Sunday without suffering from being out of date.

Incidentally, posting “timeless” content also helps for long term traffic building as well. If your article takes the timely discussion and frames it in a timeless way, it’s more likely to continue to be relevant as Google and other viewers over time. I usually just ask myself what about the current event will still be relevant a week from now, a month from now and a year from now and write from that perspective.

Almost every site I’ve worked on has new content go through phases and “waves” of traffic. The first wave is the avid fans of the site. They hit the new content because they’re visiting every day. Then they post pointers back via blogs, places like Technorati and delicious, etc.. The visitors to *their* sites follow those links and become a second wave. At about this time Google usually starts sending the 3rd wave, which becomes the long term source of traffic. Whether that last wave stabilizes into ongoing traffic or not is determined in large part by the timeliness of your content.

By: vivek

vivek — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 00:25:26 +0000

Very good advice for professionals. My personal experience so far:

Me and my friend write about 3-5 entries per week, yup I know that is bit low but we are not professional blogger like all of you ;) but still I get around 600+ unique hits per day. The main reason is quality of content that is useful to readers, sure if we write more, then more hits we get (like 1000+ mark per day).

Other experience is that Adsense work very nicely but Chitka failed to work out; may be chitka suits more for gadgets and tech news kind of site… or may be we need to find out goldan spot :)

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 23:59:48 +0000

That’s some good advice, as usual. For me, I aim to post at least 1 entry a day, but often go up to 3-4 entries a day. I plan on making it more, and even expanding out to other blogs that are more focused on particular subjects, thanks to your advice. Cheers!

By: Cary

Cary — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 23:59:08 +0000

Darren, I think you make a really great point about posting too many times to a single blog. Today I dropped my subscription to Engadget’s feed because to be honest with you, 29 posts in one day is far too many for me to even want to keep up with. If I miss a day or two I’ve got 100 posts to go through.

No thanks : (

Also, I have found that writing good posts really does become easier and easier the longer you do it. I can easily write six posts in a day now, where I used to only manage 2 or three.

One problem I’ve been seeing with a lot of blogs is the reliance on linking to other people’s posts. I mean, it’s pretty boring to read about the same gadget or news story on three different blogs in the space of one afternoon. Sometimes it just seems like a giant echo-chamber. I would think that it would be very difficult to get much of a readership for a blog that just links to everyone else, unless of course you are one of the very few successful link-bloggers.

I guess that would fall under quality of content, eh?