This is a question that scares a lot of people from taking the writing plunge. Is writing new content for a blog everyday really necessary for success? The answer to that question has several variables, and we’ll go into those variables in this week’s article. The short answer is that you don’t have to blog every day, but you do need to blog consistently. Here’s why.
Business Blogs vs. Personal Blogs
People blog for all sorts of reasons besides making money. Passion about a topic, personal vanity, or a love of writing can drive a person to begin blogging. However, it is assumed that if someone makes a blog they want their thoughts to be known publicly.
Writing a personal blog for your own interests doesn’t matter how often you post. However, if you’re writing for the interests of your audience, things change. Your blog audience will always want to know more about the topic of the blog. If you want consistent visitors to a blog then new content must be posted all the time.
For a business blog, the audience is paramount. Without regular traffic, there will be very little lead generation. Posting regularly is like priming your lead generation pump. If the trickle has slowed you’ll want to make sure that you’ve been posting enough quality content to hold interest.
The question is, how much is enough? Incidentally, there’s more to it than just posting regular content. I recommend free resources Expert Tips to Blogging Success if you’re just starting with a blog. That will get you going on the right track.
Why blog everyday?
Why blog every day? Here are some statistics from Hubspot about blogging frequency and traffic generation.
- Companies that blog around once a week get twice as much traffic as those who don’t.
- Increasing the frequency to 6-8 times per month can double inbound sales leads.
- Companies with 15 or more posts in a month see traffic gains of 5x of business sites that don’t blog.
- Small businesses see significant gains when they post more often.
Clearly, even a small increase in posting frequency can see larger gains in both traffic and leads, assuming all other factors are equal. However, it may not be in your best interest for the long-term health of your business to blog at a high posting frequency.
How much do you like to write?
It helps greatly to love to write before starting a blog. Blogs must have regular content to attract and retain readers. In a blogging business, you want to have people coming back to your site again and again to get exposure to your products and advertisements. Therefore, fresh content is needed.
Many people find that they don’t have the writing stamina to come up with fresh content all the time. Blogging does take time and effort. Some business bloggers even hire out regular blog writing to other people so they can focus on product creation. Speaking of product creation, if you’re having trouble figuring out how to drive readers to your product, I highly recommend downloading my free resources on how to structure your blog for maximum lead generation.
If you set a posting schedule that is too ambitious you will burn out. I assume you want your blogging business to last for more than a few months. Therefore, you need to know how much you want to write and how much you can write given your circumstances. Remember that a good blog post for a business needs to be 300 words at the absolute minimum, and preferably 500+.
If you haven’t started a blog yet, here’s a useful exercise. Pretend you have a blog and write posts on your desired posting schedule for a month before starting. This will help you find out how creative you are with your posts and how much time it takes for each one. At the end of the month, if all goes well, you’ll have a month’s worth of content to seed your blog while you work on setting up things like your sales funnel.
Don’t let the content generation stop while you’re doing this though! The worst thing that can happen is to fall behind on your posting, especially if you’ve built an audience that is expecting posts.
The treadmill
A dangerous time for a blogging business is when a regular audience starts taking notice of your work. Now you’ll have people expecting your posts whether you feel like writing or not. In an emergency, sure, you could dash off something quick saying you’ll be back soon, but do it too much and you’ll lose the audience.
Some people turn to guest posting to help fill the gap, but unless you’re well-established you’ll spend more time finding a guest blogger than writing the post yourself. The way to avoid the treadmill of too many posts is to set a realistic schedule and use some blogging assistance tools to keep you on track.
How many posts are necessary each week at a minimum?
This depends on your topic and your audience. Many niches have only a limited supply of information in their domain before it has all been written. This can leave a blogger in a jam, and possibly lead to the abandoning of a site. Your audience can also be very fickle, demanding new content on a schedule you can’t or aren’t willing to meet.
At the bare minimum, you should do one post per week. Updating your site less often not only loses the audience but also loses search engine attention. Ask yourself if you can meet this schedule. If you can’t and still want to do a blogging business, I highly recommend hiring a writer to help you out.
Fiverr is a good source of quality writing work.
If you can post 1-3 times a week, that’s an excellent sweet spot to shoot for. It keeps the content coming fast enough to entertain and inform your readers without overwhelming yourself with content generation.
For more information on starting a blog, making content, and getting cash, try reading my Profit Blogging Blueprint (How To Make Money by Blogging). You’ll find a complete plan on how to make a business-oriented blog that will make you cash. You’ll also find more tips through my previous blog posts.
