How Often Should You Blog?

Anyone who doesn't have a blog wonders why people start blogs. The question they ask most often is 'how often should you blog'? It is not an easy question to answer, even if you are already a blogger. So, how often should you blog?

If you are wondering yourself, how often should you blog, it may be that blogging is not for you. Or the niche you have selected, is not for you. To successfully run a blog, you should want to post. You should love to post. If it is a struggle, then this could be a sign that you are in the wrong niche.

Lets take a look at a starting point for how often you should be posting to your blog.

Whilst thinking about how many times you should post to your blog, think more along the lines of your blogging strategy. Rather than planning to post X times a week, first plan what the strategy for your blog.

Like an army, rather than thinking of how many battles it will take to win the war, think of the end result you want to achieve. Pick smaller goals to help you along the way, rather than one big end result.

Generally speaking the more times you blog, the better. But there are certain caveats to that. Firstly, rather than do lots of posts in a week then none for a month, make an effort to blog consistently.

Numbers don't matter here as much as consistency. If content is king, then consistency is right up there next to him. 

If you blog a couple of times a week, but consistently, then your readers will come to expect new content from you. This will ensure they check your blog regularly and engage with your content.

When you put consistent, good content out into the world, you start to develop authority in a topic. This might be what drew you to blogging in the first place. But remember, other authority figures may use other channels in addition to blogging. They may have a YouTube channel with a massive following. They may have built up a library of podcasts. Maybe they do regular webinars or even appear at seminars in person. All of these other activities can build up authority outside of their blog.
However, it is possible to gain an audience and authority mainly through blogging. For bloggers who want to use this platform as their primary source of audience engagement, then you need to make a commitment to show up and share on a regular basis. But beware. It’s only better when there’s more if there’s something valuable that you’re sharing. In other words, don’t blog just to blog. 

Don’t slap up meaningless content that dilutes the truly valuable blog posts you have just because someone told you to blog 3 times a day. It’s helpful to your blog subscribers if you blog frequently. If this is a topic they’re interested in, then you want to be the go-to authority figure in your niche – the person they know will have continual updates and fresh information. It is helpful for your readers if the information you post is not only useful but co-ordinated and logically planned. 

What you ought to do is go through and develop your editorial calendars to see how much content you can conceivably create. You’ll be surprised at how many ideas you generate once you understand how to look for good blog ideas.
When you start blogging and people recommend an editorial calendar, it seems a waste of time. Especially if you don’t have much time to begin with. You feel you would be better spending your time writing posts.
This is one of those times where the annoying phrase of ‘prior preparation prevents p* poor performance’ is actually true.
If you don’t have one already, start a planning calendar. Now. Go ahead, I’ll wait! You can buy a blank calendar and write one up, or print one from many sites. I created my own in excel as nobody does what you want exactly, except you. If you want a copy of mine just ask me in the comments and I will send it your way. So now we can look at the burning question.

If you have enough valuable content to share then blogging daily is best. However, that is pretty difficult to achieve. You also may not have enough to say about your topic. Could you really write 365 posts within your niche? You may only be able to manage a couple of posts a week so work with what you can actually do. If planning to blog daily is setting yourself up for failure, then don’t do it. Pick a totally realistic goal.
There is such a thing as blogging to little so the minimum you should do is one post a week.
If you can manage 3 times a week, that is a great goal. If not, then work up to it over the next 3 months. Post once a week for four weeks, then try twice a week. After a month of posting twice a week, can you step it up to three times a week? If you can, keep going until you are posting to your own weekly target. If not, stick at three posts a week.

Far better than blogging daily, is a mix of blogging and promoting. Especially if you are new to blogging and/or time poor. However, you do need to write often enough that you get better at it. Your writing will not improve, unless you write.
Write and publish your post, then promote it on your preferred social media channels. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t seem to gain any readers. Keep doing this every week, and people will start reading your blog and hopefully sharing your great content too.

So, what have we covered? We want to build up our authority through blogging. To do that, we are going to blog consistently. To help us achieve that goal, we are going to start our own editorial calendar. And we are going to plan our posting schedule for the next 3 months. We are going to split our time between blogging and promoting.