Posted: 24 Oct 2008 07:01 AM PDT
Today I had this question from a reader about their struggle with posting daily on their blog:
“Darren I am a new blogger and I really want to be posting every day, but I just can’t keep up. I find it takes me so long to put each post together that to do 7 a week would take me 7-10 hours (I am writing ‘how to’ type posts). While I’d love to dedicate that much time to blogging each week I have a full time job, family and social life to keep up. Do you have any tips?”
This is a great question and one that I know a lot of bloggers struggle with - particularly in their early days.
Finding a posting rhythm is important to do - but it doesn’t just happen. In this post (and the next one tomorrow) I want to make a few comments that may assist in the finding of your posting stride.
1. There is no Right Posting Level
One of the common misconceptions that new bloggers have is that they are somehow failing as a blogger if they don’t get a post up every single day.
The reality is that there is no posting schedule that is right for all blogs. For some blogs a post a day is just right, for others posting 20 times a day is ideal, for others it is one or two posts a week. The ideal post frequency for your blog will depend upon many factors including:
Your topic (how wide the niche is, how much news there is on the topic etc)
Your post style (for example posting tutorials can take longer than posting short ‘news’ posts)
Blogger time (how much time you have available for blogging)
Your audience (some blogs readers seem to love lots of short posts each day while others are after something more meaty)
How Many Bloggers You have (a blog with multiple authors can sustain a higher number of posts)
There is no optimal posting level for all blogs. Last time I surveyed ProBlogger readers on how many posts they published a week I found that on average they were doing 8.9. However, as you’ll see from the chart below (showing the spread of results from the poll) the most common answer was actually 5 posts a week.
2. Start out Slow and Work Your Way Up
My advice to new bloggers is to start out slower than what you’re aiming for, to work hard on quality of posts and then over time increase your posting frequency as you’re able.
This was the approach that I had with my photography blog. My initial goal was to post 3 quality posts per week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Once I had consistently met this goal for a month or so I added a 4th post into the schedule and then a month or so later a 5th.
At 5 posts per week (each weekday) I stopped increasing my posting frequency (I couldn’t sustain any more) until a reader actually came to me and offered to post a summary of the activity on the forums every Sunday. I then decided to make Saturday a ‘reader question’ type day where I simply started a discussion (a fairly easy post to write) and suddenly I was at 7 posts a week.
This process of getting up to daily posts took me over a year to achieve. In more recent times I’ve hired writers to take on 4 of the posts per week and have weaned myself off writing them all. This will enable me to concentrate on expanding other areas of the site in coming months.
The beauty of this gradual increase of posts was that I was able to work up to daily posting and not over stretch myself (or have quality of work suffer). The analogy I use to describe this is that when you’re training as an athlete for a long distance event, you don’t suddenly go out and start running the eventual distance you’ll run. You need to work up to that distance over time, get yourself in condition and get your body used to the distance. Too much too quickly can mean you burn out.
It also meant that there was no sudden change in posting frequency for my readers to have to deal with. I doubt any of them would really even notice the changes.
3. Monitor Your Readerships Response to Your Posting Levels
As you increase your posting levels pay careful attention to how your readership are responding.
What I’ve found is that there is generally a ’sweet spot’ where a blogs audience is most content. This sweet spot will vary from blog to blog.
Watch what your readers say about your posting level - but also look for other signals and signs that you might be posting too much (or not enough).
For example watch what happens to your traffic levels on days when you post more as opposed to days that you don’t post (or post less).
Another thing to watch is comment numbers. I find that if I post too much the numbers of comments on a post will decrease while if I only post once a day the comment numbers go up (conversely if I don’t post for a couple of days comment numbers slow on a post after a day or two signaling that my readership are done with the topic and want more).
4. Consistency is Important
What is probably more important than ‘how many’ posts you do a week is that you establish some kind of consistent posting rhythm that readers can expect to get from your blog. The only time I’ve ever had readers complain about how many posts I do on my blog is when I’ve suddenly changed things in one way or another.
For example there was a week a couple of years ago where I simply found myself with a lot to say and where there was a lot of breaking news on the niche of blogging. As a result my posting frequency here at ProBlogger leapt up from twice a day to 4-5 times a day. Readers pushed back because I’d been consistently producing 2 posts a day and suddenly they were needing to find time to digest double that.
The same thing can happen when you suddenly decrease your posting frequency - readers come to expect a certain level of posts and suddenly it is gone.
If you do make changes to your posting frequency consider doing them gradually and/or explaining what is going on to your readers.
4 More Tips Tomorrow - Have Your Say Now
This is just the first part in a two part series on finding your posting rhythm as a blogger. As I began to write this post I realized that there was a lot to cover so wanted to hold the second half of this post (with 4 more tips on finding your blogging rhythm) until tomorrow.
In the mean time - I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on a couple of things.
Firstly - how many posts do you do a week? Is this your goal or do you struggle to meet your goal?
Secondly - what advice would you give to bloggers on posting frequency and finding your blogging rhythm?
I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts and sharing more of my own tomorrow.
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8 Reasons to Add a Newsletter to Your Blog
Posted: 23 Oct 2008 07:11 AM PDT
Almost every time I write about having an email newsletter associated with my blog (as I did yesterday in sharing how I drastically increased subscriber numbers) I get people asking me why I use newsletters?
The questions on newsletters as a medium often include:
Isn’t Email old fashioned?
Isn’t RSS the new way forward?
What about Social Networking - isn’t that more effective than email newsletters?
Aren’t Newsletters very one way and not very conversational?
Isn’t building a ‘list’ as a way of doing online marketing a thing of the past?
Doesn’t the Blog replace the newsletter?
While I can see why people would ask these types of questions - if I had to name one technology or medium that has had the greatest impact upon building my blogs readership - newsletters would be right up there, particularly since moving services to Aweber.
Let me qualify that by saying it does vary a little from blog to blog depending upon the topic and the type of reader they attract.
8 Reasons I use Newsletters & the benefits they bring
Before I go any further - let me say that I’m not talking about RSS to email newsletters that simply convert your RSS feed into emails. I’m talking about building a list of subscribers who get a weekly or monthly (or some other period) purpose written newsletter. It might point people to your blog and posts you’ve written but it’s purpose written and often includes other material exclusive to newsletter subscribers.
1. Newsletters create Loyalty
The majority of your blogs readers never come back.
The sad reality is that despite our best efforts, there’s a lot of passing through traffic on most blogs. People arrive from a search engine, another blog or website or a social media site - they stay for a few moments, consume what they can and then move on.
Unless you find a way to ‘hook’ people into returning to your blog the majority of your readers won’t return. It’s not that they don’t want to or that your site is bad - they just forget and/or have no means to remind themselves of your blog.
A newsletter is a way of giving those people who arrive on your blog a way to opt in to being reminded to come back to your blog. The same can be said for RSS but a newsletter reaches a different crowd to RSS (more on this below).
2. Newsletters Develop Relationships and Trust
After two years of sending weekly newsletters to my readership at DPS I’m now starting to get some interesting interactions from subscribers. They’re emailing me like they’d email a friend.
What I’m finding is that the weekly newsletters (in which I’ve got a photo of myself and share the occasional snippets from my life including the birth of children, trips I’m taking, things that I’m doing) are making me very familiar to my subscribers. They seem to feel like they ‘know me’. It’s difficult to explain but I guess when you get as many emails from someone as these people get from me - they really do ‘know me’ (at least on some levels).
Not only do emails build relationships and intimacy with your readership - they build trust. My newsletter subscribers respond to affiliate promotions much more than my normal blog readers. They seem to follow the recommendations that I make and try the things I suggest.
RSS and just blogging can build relationships and trust also - but I suspect adding email newsletters into the mix adds to it.
3. Newsletters Drive Page Views/Traffic
My biggest traffic days are those that I send out newsletters. I use newsletters to highlight new posts on the blog and key discussions in the forum that I run. The more helpful and topical the posts and discussions the more traffic the links in the newsletter drives.
Interestingly - if you need an ‘explosive’ burst of traffic to a particular post a newsletter can be great for this. For example:
if you’re launching a new product or service and want to kick it off well - do it with a newsletter as well as a blog post
if you’re launching a new affiliate campaign - do it the same day you send a newsletter
if you’re wanting a post to do well on a social bookmarking site like Digg - put a digg button on the post and a few minutes later send out your newsletter pointing people at the post.
These sudden bursts of traffic can really help build momentum around the projects that you’re starting.
4. Newsletters are Familiar
Most of your readers don’t know what RSS is and unless you offer them an email subscription option they are unlikely to ’subscribe’. While RSS awareness is growing, some research shows that it’s slowing and even peaking in it’s use. I personally feel it’ll continue to grow and be utilized by people (even when they don’t know they’re using the technology) but email will continue (at least in the short term) to be one of the most used forms of communication on the planet.
This is a little dependent upon your topic and audience. Some of your readerships will be more tech savvy (and RSS familiar) than others and in those cases email newsletters may not be quite as effective - but I suspect in most niches offering a newsletter will be effective.
5. Newsletters Build a Core Community and Enhance Reader Engagement
One word that keeps coming up as I interact with my newsletter subscribers is ‘membership’. I don’t use the word but have noticed increasingly that subscribers refer to themselves as ‘members’ or as having signed up for ‘membership’. I find it interesting that these subscribers don’t see themselves as just receiving an email (as a subscriber) but as having joined something or being a member of a community.
I guess signing up for something is a reader showing some level of participation and commitment to a site - by doing so they’re investing something in your blog and feel like participants.
I use the words ‘core community’ above because I find that those who subscribe to a newsletter are often among the most loyal and committed members of your blog’s community. These are people who want the inside word on your site and are telling you that they want to know what’s going on as soon as they can. They’ve given you permission to contact them - as a result they’re a powerful group of people to know and be able to communicate to (and they can actually help you grow your blog further as they can be effective evangelists for you).
6. Newsletters can Track and Target Groups of Readers
Using a tool like Aweber to run your newsletter gives you access to all kinds of interesting tools, stats and opportunities. You can track which links in your post get the most clicks (this can be used as a form of research into what readers respond to) but you can also segment readers into different groups and target them with individual messages.
For example:
You can send special newsletters just to new subscribers - for example you could send an email every month just to those who’ve signed up in that time highlighting key posts in your archives.
You can track who clicks on affiliate links in your posts and send them emails with special offers
You can send special emails just to subscribers who never open emails (testing subject lines with different strategies in them)
Really the sky is the limit as to what you can test and how you can target readers.
7. Newsletters help build Momentum
I use my newsletter not only for promotion of content and affiliate products but to build a sense of momentum on my blog. Every few weeks on my photography blog I’ll give subscribers a little extra insight into milestones that we’ve reached as a community, mentions we’ve had in mainstream media, new features that we’re adding etc. In this way I give those subscribed a sense that they’re a part of something that is growing and exciting.
I find that as I do this that readers respond very well and give me feedback on how they’ve been helping the site to grow (by promoting it to their friends).
8. Newsletters Open Up Possibilities for Monetization
Newsletters open up another avenue for profit for those of you developing online businesses.
I’ve already mentioned numerous times that newsletters can be effective when it comes to affiliate programs - but they can also be good when it comes to advertising revenue.
Selling ad space in our newsletter can be quite lucrative when you build up your readership. I’ve found that advertisers can be willing to pay quite good CPM rates because they know a newsletter subscriber base are usually pretty committed and loyal readers (and very focused around a niche too).
Further Reading on Email Newsletters
Why I Use Aweber to Deliver My Newsletters
When Should You Add a Newsletter to Your Blog?
How to Drastically Increase Your Newsletter Subscriber Numbers
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