How Often Should You Blog?

“How often should I blog?”

This is a question I get frequently from clients.  It is not one that has a cut and dry answer.  So to understand the reasons for the suggestions I give clients, let’s first explore some of the reasons to blog in the first place.

A Blog Creates New Content for Your Website

This is probably the number one reason to blog that relates to SEO. Google ranks websites based on a variety of factors; some of which are new content (or staleness of content), traffic, relevant content, quality, and authority.  To rank high in these categories, new content must be high quality and consistent so as not to become irrelevant.

The idea of creating a blog is to draw people to your website.  Once they are there, it is important to get them to view other pages (if they don’t, you will have a high bounce rate).  This is why it is important to have a CTA (call-to-action) in your blogs AND to reference other content on your website through links.

A Blog Builds Authority

If you are a fairly new business, it can take awhile to be recognized as an authority in your field.  A blog will expedite that process because it will highlight your expert status in your field and allow you to shine by providing relevant VALUABLE content to your potential clients.

"Creating VALUABLE content is key and being consistent is NOT an option!"
 
How Often Should You Blog?

Now that you understand some of the mechanics and how the blog helps your business, the next thing to consider is how often.  Here is where it gets tricky.  While blogging every day, may be ideal when in the building mode of your business, it may not be realistic for most business owners.  This is why I developed some basic guidelines I offer to business owners I work with.

New Businesses (Less than a Year and up to 3 Years)

As a new business, it is really important to stay in front of your audience and provide valuable content that will help you establish your authority in your field.  That being said, here is what I recommend to my clients:

Ideal Blog Plan

Ideally, a new business should blog daily in order to expedite the authority they provide in their field.  Doing this will provide monetary benefit more quickly than the other options.  Since the idea is to provide VALUABLE content AND you are new in your field, this may not always be possible.  Since you are in the building mode of your business you are wearing many hats, and usually quite overwhelmed with what must be done in order to move your business into being profitable.  As a new business, you also may not have the knowledge base necessary to provide value daily.  One way to counter both of these potential challenges is to open your blog to guest bloggers.  (A word of caution here – screen all blog posts and links prior to publishing them.)

The Moderate Plan

Here is where many new business owners will fall into.  Here, I suggest blogging 2-3 times per week, preferably 3.  This is still a fairly aggressive blog schedule if you are still building your business, but it is one that will allow you to be in front of your audience and quickly establish yourself as the expert.  Here, you can still use guest bloggers from time to time and still provide your own authority in your field. Remember, blogs should be over 300 words, but they don’t have to be epic blog posts.  My suggestion is to make them no longer than 800-1000 words.

The Rock Bottom Minimum for a New Business Owner

Okay, okay.  So you can’t handle the 2-3 per week.  It is aggressive.  However, you must remember that you are building and building takes stamina.  You must remember there is competition and there are already established businesses in your field you are competing with for readership and authority.  The very minimum a new business owner should blog is once per WEEK.  This should not be the desired frequency, at least if you plan on being profitable sooner rather than later.

Established Businesses (more than 3 years in business AND profitable)

So you are in business for more than 3 years?  Are you ALSO profitable? If not, I would stick to my guidelines for NEW businesses to turn things around.  However, if you are reaping a profit and you are established, follow my guidelines below.

Ideal Blog Plan

Unless you have the staff to support blogging daily, it is probably not necessary at this point in your business. However, it is still desired if it is doable.  Most established businesses, however, will not need to do this so my suggestion is to blog 2-3 times per week and share already created green blog content on the other days.

The Moderate Plan

Most established business who planned well will have enough green filler content that provides value on a regular basis.  These business owners may only want to blog once per week.  This is usually quite doable for business owners.  I would NOT suggest using filler content for these once per week posts, but actually create NEW content.  You can still use filler content and old blog posts on other days, but DO create one NEW and RELEVANT post per week.

The Minimalist Plan

If your business is profitable and booming, you may want to blog only once per month.  I would NOT suggest this for most business owners, but if you truly are not able to create one post per week, this is the rock bottom minimum I would suggest.  If you do only create one new blog post per month, I would HIGHLY suggest you have enough old posts to distribute no less than once per week without being too repetitive.

Conclusion

"The more frequently you are able to blog the better, as long as you are providing HIGH VALUE."
 
Realistically, many business owners are overwhelmed and are not able to blog as often as they really should.  I hope these guidelines help you determine what is best for you.  Keep in mind, that your website ranking is positively affected each time you blog as long as the content is relevant and valuable, making it more likely you will be found in searches.  For this reason, I would NOT suggest the last option for new or established business owners.  However, if you do choose that option, you should do so with the intention of working toward a more aggressive option that will allow your business to show in searches more frequently.  For more information, please visit my Katch video below.

If you are not yet blogging or need help with blogging, feel free to visit my blogging page and see how we can work together to get your content out to the world!