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Setting up a blog is easy; keeping it updated is where the challenge comes in. But how often should you actually post? There have been a lot of independent trials done on this subject, mostly by individual bloggers, who were tracking their results, but the result was invariably the same: More is better. Let’s take a look at what that means, and why finding a balance is the best way to get your blog to the top.
The Research Is Conclusive
We just mentioned that a lot of the “facts” about blogging frequency are from various sources, but don’t let take that to mean that there haven’t been any official studies done on the subject. The State of Inbound Marketing 2011 report from Hubspot came to the conclusion that 57% of companies with a blog have managed to get at least one customer from a lead generated by that blog.
However, even more importantly there’s a direct relationship to the number of blogs posted and the number of customers acquired. Those who published more brought in more customers from their blog. The opposite is also true. When you take a laid back approach to your business blog, you won’t get anything moving. Customers respond to consistency, especially in the blogging world. Businesses that don’t keep their blog updated are seen, even if superficially, as unreliable and potentially untrustworthy.
So How Often Is Often Enough?
That same Hubspot report said that businesses that publish a new blog post at least twenty times each month get an average of five times as much traffic as those that publish less than four posts each month. What that means is that those once-weekly posts just aren’t cutting it.
And what about leads? Those businesses that are throwing out 20 or more blog posts each month are consistently reeling in four times as many leads as companies that don’t blog at all. Those are pretty solid numbers, so what’s holding you back from blogging more?
Realistically speaking, there can actually be a lot to keep you from getting more blog posts up, time being the main factor. Twenty posts each month is a lot of work, especially if you’re shooting for high quality, informative blog posts. A lot of businesses also look at blogging as a secondary priority to other business tasks, and we’re not saying that’s a bad thing. However, finding the time to sit down each month and write a few posts can end up paying off in terms of a 500% increase in website traffic.
Tips for Keeping Your Blog Organized
If you have trouble remembering to get those posts up (and a lot of us do), try to sit down at the beginning of the month and plan out which days you want to post. You can make it even easier on yourself by figuring out which topics to write about for each day. Them either set aside an hour for each posting day to write, or write all of the week’s posts at the beginning of the week and schedule them.
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