Building a Good Blog

It is a common piece of advice that bloggers should add new entries to their blog at least 5 times each week. In large part this is based upon data which demonstrates 5 entries each week is a magic number concerning gaining followers and heightened traffic. Today we will look at something that is often misunderstood which is how many blog entries you should create each week, when you should submit them and why any of it matters.

A blog thrives because it has followers. Followers are people and people are creatures of routine. They like to get up in the morning and prepare to greet the day in the same manner as they did the day before and the day before that. Whether they like to do their web surfing over a bowl of oat bran or a half hour after getting into work, they are generally going to follow this pattern as soon as they log in:

1. Check their email
2. Scan headlines/scores/recaps at the pages provided by whoever hosts their email
3. Visit their favorite sites and blogs

If a site or blog establishes a pattern in which they are updated in time for the morning reader to have something fresh to view as they start their day, that blog is going to begin building consistent daily traffic you can see when checking your traffic stats. To the contrary, blogs that update with little rhyme or reason tend to get less traffic because on a subconscious level, visitors feel no urgency to visit. They have no idea if they can count on anything new being there. As such, that type of blog becomes an “afterthought blog” that is only visited if time allows. Think of it in terms of television. If you like a show but the network is constantly changing the day and time slot it runs the odds are it is going to get lost in the shuffle. You want your blog to be like the old “Must see TV” like Seinfeld in it’s prime. To get there, you have to be consistent.

Now that the importance of posting at least 5 times each week on a regular schedule has been established, the question of “is more better?” begs to be answered. The simple and definitive answer is yes. Five posts a week keeps you on a par with most bloggers that take more than a passing interest in what they are doing. A post a day jumps you up a notch because many blogs, especially business oriented blogs, take the weekend off. Two to three posts each day is like launching off into outer space. If you can work your way up to providing three posts each day on a regular schedule you have done yourself a great favor.

You have provided your core followers a reason to keep coming back. Imagine those morning numbers you built replicating them self at lunch and again in the evening. Add to that the new followers you will pick up based on nothing more than the fact that you are now having entries indexed 3 times each day rather than once. More entries equals more potential to be found and more potential to make money. It isn’t reasonable for everyone to put in that much time personally, but that is why copywriters exist.

The key to all of course hinges on providing useful, well written, relevant entries that compel people to come back and act on what they have read. If your posts are just hacked together entries for the sake of adding content, you are actually better off doing without.

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