The Red Queen, is an evolutionary hypothesis that can be summarized as “do nothing and fall behind, or run hard to stay where you are”. The hypothesis was recently adapted by Sharon Sarmiento and applied to the question of ‘how much should you blog?’
Sharon is one of my favorite new additions to the team at 901am and her question is one that I have wondered about and toyed with on every blog that I have been a part of. For example, when I was blogging at The Mu Life, I started out blogging once a day and only on weekdays, and ended up blogging 2-3 times a day including weekends. One of the first blogging advices you get from the veterans is to blog often. The problem with blogging infrequently is that if people aren’t getting content from you regularly, they will look at other sources and you will fail to develop an ardent following.
But more is not necessarily better. Just as too little content can be bad for your blog, too much content has the same effects. A post written by Darren Rowse a few weeks ago in which he asked his readers what the number one reason was for readers to unsubscribe from blogs, and on top of the list, with 37 votes (8 more than number two) was “Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming)”.
The Frequency of Posting is obviously a big factor with 35% of respondents saying that too many posts was reason for unsubscribing and 28% saying that infrequent posts was reason to delete a feed from their reader.
The Coverage Aspect
There is no fixed number of posts that a blog must have on a daily basis to succeed, and in fact the number can vary. There is a simple question you should ask yourself: What industry are you blogging about and how many different niches within the industry are you covering? While it is is important to keep your blog hyper-focused, there are varying degrees of focus based on the type of blog you’re running.
If it is a one-author blog, you can get by with just focusing on MySpace; surely the service generates enough meta-news. If it is a two person blog, you can add other services such as Facebook, Friendster, and so on to the mix and make the focus into social networking in general. And if you have a huge team blog with 4-6 authors, why not take on an entire industry and go with everything social media?
As in the above example, Pronet Advertising is truly an industry-focused team blog, but it is equally important for us to keep in mind what our readers want. Please tell us how many posts you would like to see per day. Here are your options:
1. 2-3
2. 4-5
3. 5-6
4. As many as our team feels fit to publish
Muhammad Saleem
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1
I have to say 2-3 is a lot for a blog in one day, if you have good quality, long posts to make. I see this type of content coming from you guys a lot and LOVE it! Anything more would make reading pronet everyday a hassle, because the posts tend to be longer than just the short.
I’d say as many as you guys see fit. When you do post it’s usually good, so I certainly don’t plan on removing you from my feeds.
3-5 quality articles a week
1-2 news posts a day maximum
As long as you write frequently and stay on top of things I will be glad to read this blog! With over 294 feeds in NNW at this moment posting frequency is a considerable factor for me. Quality over quanitiy. Always.
Frankly, I would go with Ivan. One good quality post per day is more than enough. And with four of you, I bet three days will let you do research/work and write that smartly-written post. Don’t make too long posts though. I’ve observed that readers nowadays have a short attention span.
2 posts per day is the ideal, the best a blogger could make. Sometimes, less is more.
That is very interesting. I would not think that too frequent posts would literally cause people to unsubscribe. Read less maybe. If it’s good content, save it for later.
I think you should not publish more than 2 or 3 articles per day.
There are two contrasting feeds that I subscribe to.
One is Seth Godin, who easily makes more posts than any other blogger I read. However, 80% of his posts are between two sentences to three paragraphs long, and it’s extremely rare to find more than that.
The other is Henry Jenkins, who posts almost daily, but 90% of his posts are the size of thesis papers. I honestly don’t have the time to read through each of them, and lately, I’ve found that I simply can’t keep up. I continue to subscribe, but I don’t read most of his posts; I just skim the interesting ones and study the best ones.
My point is that it’s not the number of actual posts that matter, but the content density. A single, solid post per week is equivalent to a dozen superficial, but vaguely useful, posts per week.
I don’t care how often someone posts. That’s a useless metric. You can post a thousand times per day, or once, as long as I want to read it. If you overload me, then I won’t be able to read all of it, then too bad for me: but I’m not going to unsubscribe.
I think 2-3.
Since I have quite a few blogs in my reader I almost dread opening up newsgator and seeing (15) by one of my favorite blogs. Yes I like the information, but I do have a life and a job.
After about my third or fourth post on each blog I tend to loose steam and start thinking about the next blog in my reader.
But make them good posts. I’m not counting the two or three sentence post.
I like the 2-3 per day as well. One well known blogger that I read has steadily gone up to 4-6 per day and it is almost overwhelming given that I follow about 20 blogs in all.
Hi Muhammad,
Excellent post! And thanks so much for your kind words–they mean a lot to me. I’m getting a huge kick out of blogging at 901am with you guys. :)
My answer to your question would have to be “As many as our team feels fit to publish”.
This is the same for my own blog–I used to go for 5 quality posts a week, but found that the pressure to produce that quantity (I usually write essays)was getting extremely taxing.
Since writing about The Red Queen effect, I’ve decided to post only “when the muse strikes”. I’m having more fun already, and remarkably I’m finding it easier to come up with posts.
1
2-3 posts a day is plenty, as I read several blogs daily and already have a hard time keeping up with all of them. I like this post, though… writing more is something I need to do for my own blog.
Namaste,
Andrew