Importance of consistent blogging

written on May 28, 2008 in Blogging, Tips & Tricks

When I started blogging again on this site, I tried to make it a goal to write at least once every two days, if not every day. Why, because I read this article on Problogger about the importance of consistent blogging. I also found a similar article on MonkeyBlogger. I’m not going to go into details about why you should post consistently because I believe that those two sites already do a good job of summarizing that for you. What I will go into is what happened to the traffic on my site when <sarcasm> I didn’t post for *gasp* 4 days. </sarcasm>

The first thing is that my traffic didn’t decrease immediately. As a matter of fact, it went up for a day before returning to the average number and going down again. I’ve posted a screencap of the stat for my site for your viewing conveniences. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the fact that the traffic was high during the weekends, or if something else triggered the increase in traffic.

However, the evident fact is that my traffic did decrease eventually. I still dropped my entrecard, I still returned comments, and I still commented through despair regularly, so the only cause for this drop in traffic is the fact that I slacked off for a couple days, which worries me because I’m going to be gone for 3 weeks from tomorrow, so God knows what’s going to happen then. Also, not only did my traffic drop, my topsite rank dropped as well (I didn’t check my Alexa or Technorati ranks).

So to save my site (and maybe yours) from drowning, I’m here instead of packing for Taiwan. Now you’re probably wondering, does that mean I have to post everyday? The answer is no. I know it might sound like a contradiction to everything I mentioned earlier, but consistent blogging doesn’t always equal blogging many times a day. It means blogging consistently every two days, every three days, every week, or whatever your pace is. Of course, you don’t have to be on mark every time, but fluctuating from 2 posts a month to 15 posts a week is obviously a no no. Try to make a goal of posting at least # times a week, but if you don’t reach it, it’s ok. What’s even more important then blogging consistently is blogging with quality. I much rather read 1 good post a week than read 5 poo posts a day. TheMadHat has a good article on this.

Since I’m trying to build up the content of my site, I make an effort to write more often. It can get tedious because sometimes you run out of topics to post about. But as I continue blogging, I’m beginning to find that there is a lot you can write, from reviewing your must-have makeup item to ranting about stupid people you encounter online. And believe me, you can write a poo load on the latter

So what’s my conclusion? Find a blogging schedule that works for you. Don’t pull out your hair if you don’t always meet the dateline. Don’t force yourself to churn out 10 mediocre posts just because you feel like you have to. Quality > Quantity any day. Error processing request