This one goes out to all you bloggers and readers out there.
Q: What is your philosophy on posting frequency? Is less more, or more the merrier?
I generally try to keep it to one post a day. There are a couple reasons for this: One, I don't want to run out of things to write about. Two, I like to give what I have written a fair amount of time on the front page (or top of RSS).
Of course, I usually have plenty of thoughts on what to write about, so I could probably handle more than one post a day. And to my second point, that may just be the way I think it should be and not reality.
What do you guys think?
Friday, October 10, 2008
Friday Question: Post Frequency
14 comments:
I've read a few articles stating the case for small, quickly consumable pieces of content when blogging, rather than long in depth articles. Most blogrolls are sorted by recent posts, so that would keep you at the top of most of them and demonstrate a consistent amount of activity.
However, I think you might be more likely to draw visitors and links to your content when it has some depth and more value, which could increase page views. Of course, it does take longer to formulate decent content that way and you wind up posting less.
I keep telling myself I need to go in that direction and stop writing big walls of text, but then again if you come to my blog I guess you were warned of that just by its name alone :)
I don't have a system. I initially thought I'd have nothing to write about, which isn't true at all. Much of the time I restrain myself from doing too many posts because a) The Zuul gestalt-entity called Syp does it so much better and b) I can't be arsed and c) my blog is a blog, not a forum, and I'm not sure everything I'd post would be worth a post.
I never thought I'd even be posting daily, till I started getting told off when I didn't. Now I'm wondering if I can take a day off without my commentators getting all whippy-on me! ;) (Which is flattering, I'll admit!)
That said, if I need time off from the blog I'll take time off. I'm not a paid journalist. I make no money off it. If I want to, or have to, stop posting for a few days, that's exactly what I'll do. I don't do it for the reader numbers in any case.
I cant write short stuff. I try and I just cant do it. A blog is like my personal diary.
Being a horrible blogger, I'm not much of an example, but I tend to write something whenever I feel like I have something to share. That isn't very often, though, and my posts tend to be on the shorter side. I'll usually end up posting one of two short to medium length posts in the course of a week.
@Brentbr0: People do know what they are getting into when they click on your link :) If you enjoy writing the long posts, that sounds like the way to go.
@ysh: Syp is a machine or a group of people ;) Luckily in this age of RSS, taking a day off will not usually lead to a loss in readers. I tend to take weekends off.
@hud: You're not kidding, You and Brent could do some serious DPS with walls of text. But you do separate them into paragraphs, so it isn't so bad :)
As you know, we tend to go for at least 2 posts a day, but initially it was just one and that's our 'hard and fast' - we've had lots lots more and we don't like to stifle ourselves if there is stuff we want to post. I'm happy with a mix of longer in-depth things and punchy short 'hello' type stuff.
Depends on your reader's attention spans ;). But I vote for using whatever style you're comfortable with.
For myself, I tend towards burst-blogging. I'll write multiple times a day, followed by a deserted stretch of never updating RSS, followed by another flood of posts.
My own blogging frequency is directly proportional to my time investment in the topic I'm blogging about.
My philosophy is only post when you feel like it and if you feel like you are posting just because you're pressured to, don't succumb! :P
I tend to have more on my mind than makes it into my blog. There's a certain length at which I'll start to feel it's time to wrap it up, and rarely exceed that. However, when I see a short post in my history and think of all the longer stuff that was probably floating around in my head at the time, I feel kind of guilty.
Ideally, I'd be making my usual length posts daily. But as it is, well at least I'm getting some of it out into the net.
I've also heard that the shorter & more frequent posts are better than fewer, longer posts b/c of attention span and consistantly getting new posts out there, but even so I tend to babble on. :) There's always the option of breaking it up into parts 1 thru X and maybe writing later parts on later days. I'm thinking of doing that with an idea I've been mulling over on music in the MMO industry.
The only thing with that is that when you do it in one long post you can go back and edit the draft if you've floated off point or decide to go in a different direction than however you started out. It's a little more work to do that if you've already published the first part and are coming back to it the next day.
I post monday through friday, once per day. I try to keep things short and sweet. To the point. Once in awhile when I try to write some fan fiction it gets a little long.
I use my blog basically trying to help those in need of help, I'm not the best, but if my blog lets people know on where to buy a mount, cause I sure didn't then I done my job. Also I like my blog to be a type of forum to discuss skills, specs, and tactics. But a forum where I can guide the discussion.
I write my blog because I enjoy writing my blog. It's been there for years and during some periods it'd get maybe 100 hits/week and I was fine with that.
So I don't follow any system. Since I sorta engaged with the CoW bloggers I have been trying to be a little more consistent, mostly because I give Ysh a hard time when she doesn't post and don't want to give her the opportunity to retaliate.
I used to make my living as a writer & editor, so I feel strongly that if writing is "work" we should be paid for it. Since I have no ads on my blog, I don't get paid for it, so I only write what's fun to write.
I used to try aiming for at least one post per day but now I just write when I'm inspired. This has become much easier since beta and the release of the game.
Over the past year I have averaged one post per day but in the last three months, probably 2-3 posts per day.
What snafzg said; write whenever you are inspired. My advice is if you have plenty of ideas for posts and want to write them down but you also don't want to run out of ideas is to write the posts but don't publish them, if you do this enough soon you'll have a neat stockpile of posts at your disposal to churn out when you are out of ideas.
Personally I like to read a post a day, you can't go past a single daily dose.
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