How Many Times To Blog A Wekk

How Many Blogs Should I Write In A Month? Featured Image

Okay, so you knowwhy you should blog - right? Quick refresher: it helps SEO, can give your brand some bad-ass digital authority, will attract people to your site, and potentially convert visitors to leads (or customers, or new friends, whatever you want to call them…) Got it? Good. But, deciding how many blogs you should write in a month?! Now that's a mystery even Sherlock might struggle with.

Truthfully, there is no right answer to how many blogs you should write in a month. It's one of those "how long is a piece of string?" questions, but you should be aiming for a minimum of 1 or 2. Here, we will walk through the basics, with careful consideration of your business' goals and audience along the way.

First things first, you need to pick the right kind of schedule for you and your audience. Here are a few ideas you could choose from....

Several times a day.

Choo, choo! This blogging schedule is definitely best suited to blogs that go full speed ahead – reporting short news items, technical alerts, or new gadgets and gizmos. Posts are typically short, derived from press releases or curate other peoples' content. This type of blog is important in markets that are continually evolving, as less frequent posting would result in falling behind. TechCrunch is a great example of this kind of high-speed blogging.

One of Google's key factors in its algorithm is QDF - that is, Query Deserves Freshness. Basically, it gives superiority to websites with lots of fresh, relevant content, so this can be a great blogging technique for ranking high and attracting traffic. However, it's just one of many ranking factors to consider. For example, you may be producing as much/more content as your competitor, but if they are using more keywords and linking, then this QDF effect is likely to be mitigated.

Monkey Thoughts: Blogging several times a day is an incredibly demanding frequency to sustain, and high quality content - published less frequently- obviously still matters. The worst kind of content is low quality rubbish churned out for the sake of it, so only adopt this strategy if you're certain you can commit.

Once a day.

If you're looking to get lots of traffic quickly, then blogging once a day is likely to get your site traction in play. However, this is hard to maintain unless you're in a fast moving niche or you've got a strong writing habit with a never-ending amount of content and a lot of time on your hands (LOL). Daily blogging is typical for blogs focusing on short inspirational posts (e.g. thought of the day), horoscopes, or content that prompts the reader. A bit like Daily Post!

Monkey Thoughts: Plan ahead to avoid producing sub-standard content in a rush, and try to vary your posts as much as possible. Your audience will be seeing a lot of your content, so bring in videos, images, and fun formats. A bored audience = un-subscribers (*gasp*)

2-5 blogs a week.

Updating your blog 2-5 times is pretty common for top blogs. You should have enough time to produce engaging content, but also enough content to ensure your site remains authoritative. This type of schedule should definitely send some really good QDF signals to Google (always a plus) whilst making sure your writers don't collapse from being overworked. Perfect! Check out Moz for an example of this schedule in action.

Business as Unusual. Next Episode: New Year, New Analytics?

1-2 blogs a week.

Your readers will look forward to your content if it's posted slightly less frequently. You may drop a little in Google's QDF radar, but it will give you sufficient time to polish your blog content and structure to make it shine. We like this strategy (as you may have noticed) because it gives us time to make sure our posts are well written and well researched and, crucially, we can also do our Actual Full Time Jobs (pesky things). You can obviously check out our own GLORIOUS blog to see how we do this.

Top Tip: To ensure your once-a-week post is successful, try analysing the success of your previous blog posts and replicate this. Know that your audience love a list format? Great - up your list game! Just don't get lazy, and do make sure you keep experimenting with content styles.

1 or 2 posts a month.

This frequency of blogging is more suited to bloggers who aren't overly concerned with building traffic for business. For example, established businesses may want to release company updates occasionally for the education of their readers, but aren't too concerned about content otherwise. Search engines will still recognize you as a site that updates regularly, and enable you to establish authority in your field. HSBC are a pretty good example of this.

Hopefully you're already starting to think about the right kind of blogging schedule for your business - but there are a few more things you'll need to consider...

Size DOES matter.

Having defined and aligned your online content to attract your audience, converting visitors into leads (or paying customers) is vital for basically every business. As demonstrated by a HubSpot 2015 review, there is a correlation between more monthly blog posts and more indexed leads, especially if you're a small company (just have a look at the snazzy graph!). HubSpot also found that the higher the number of published blog posts a company has in total, the more inbound traffic there is to their website. Basically - it's probably a good idea to get bloggingly fat.

But, before you start over-indulging, remember that blogging for blogging's sake never works. The number of blogs you write should always depend on your content marketing goals, what you can realistically achieve, and the expectations of your audience. So whilst it IS good to aim for a super-stuffed blog, don't rush it. Take a long term view.

Use scheduling/planning software.

Creating an organised schedule, and using the right software, will keep you focused, will make you feel in control of your online content, and it'll give others the means to step in if need be.

Here at Noisy Little Monkey we've used a few types of Project Management software to get our scheduling tip top, and are big fans of HubSpot and Trello in particular. However, there is an extensive range of software out there to choose from e.g. Microsoft Project, Atlassian, Podio, Basecamp, Asana… Have a look around, talk to your team and choose the right one for your business. Then stick to it!

Okay, what else?

If you've thought about all the above and are still unsure about how many times you should blog, you can take a sneaky look at others in the field and see what they're doing... After all, they're successful for a reason!

Don't be afraid to update older blog posts as well. HubSpot is yet another good example here, as they devote a significant amount of time every month updating old blog posts as 70% of their traffic comes from posts that weren't published that month. So, let's scrap that "out with the old" idea - we love the old!

Remember - there is no "one size fits all" for blogging. Just think of what is appropriate for you, create a content plan and schedule, and you're off! Your social media prowess awaits....

Want some more excellent monkey advice to help with your social media marketing? It's your lucky day! We've put together a FREE eBook that'll help you manage your social media in under 20 minutes a day. Did we mention it's free? Click here!

Gertie Goddard Image

Digital Marketing Executive at Noisy Little Monkey, Gertie blogs about Content, Social Media & Analytics