Do you blog once a day, every other day, or once a week? Everyone has different blogging advice to dish out, but if you’re numbers driven, a recent report from HubSpot has suggested the cold, hard, calculated truth about how often is enough when you’re blogging.
Of course, everyone knows the right answer is “as much as possible,” but that’s simply not realistic unless you’re sitting on an inherited fortune with nothing else to do but blog about your luxurious life.
Simply put, the more blog commentaries you post, the more traffic you’ll get, the more leads you’ll attract, and your sales should increase. However, HubSpot’s data indicated that when it comes to blog post frequency and customer acquisition, 92 percent of bloggers who acquired a customer through their blog published “multiple times per day”(!).
Beyond that, 78 percent blogged daily, 70 percent blogged two or three times a week, 66 percent blogged weekly, 56 percent blogged monthly, and 43 percent blogged less than once a month.
Understanding the data
No matter what type of blog you have, whether it’s about celebrity gossip or life sciences and applications, blogging every day is a good and commendable goal. Very few business blogs that are considered notable have new posts less than five times per week. (In some industries, weekends are regarded as optional.)
There will also be variables in different industries and businesses sizes. Lead generation happens best for those who can squeeze in at least three blogs per day (yes, that’s day, not week), with a maximum of four. Any more than that seems to be overkill.
HubSpot came up with this figure after analyzing “thousands of organizations” in a variety of industries. Of course, it goes without saying that the content has to be high quality; you have to have something to say.
One popular blogger, Amit Argawal, says that the best results he’s achieved have been after blogging multiple times per day. He says he spends about 50 hours a week on writing and research alone. If you’re committed to maintaining the highest quality content that’s also unique, that’s a massive job.
Time to spare?
Argawal isn’t alone. Another popular blogger, Mack Collier, says he agrees with Argawal’s stats. He also blogs daily and reveres quality content.
Collier point out that blog traffic always increases slightly after a new post, but it takes time to build a steady following. In the end, the answer to how often you should blog is still “the more the better,” but you have to accept that this can quickly become a full-time job.
Asking yourself a few key questions can help you develop your own plan of blogging (POB). Figure out how far you can plan in advance, consider outsourcing (or bringing guest bloggers on board), know your metrics, pick a pace you can maintain, and have an end goal in mind.
