I’m posting less than ever (and more erratically) and my traffic is the highest it’s ever been.
Sarah from XO Sarah recently reported similar results. She’s no longer posting the six times per week she used to, and yet her traffic is higher than ever.
More blog posts does not necessarily mean more traffic.
Unless you’re super woman, you usually have two options:
- Write a lot of ‘okay’ blog posts every week.
- Write one or two AMAZING blog posts every week.
This is because of one simple reason: time.
Awesome blog posts take time to write.
The more time you put into a blog post, the better it’s going to be. It’s hard to publish 5-7 super high quality posts per week, simply because there’s not enough time (again, unless you just have a lot of time to put into blogging, which a lot of people don’t).
A lot of people go the route of #1 because they see other bloggers recommending “consistent posting” in order to build a following and gain more traffic.
I call bullshit.
Bull. Shit.
The best thing you can do for your blog is to make each post amazing—not work on filling a weekly quota.
What inspires you to click the “follow” or “subscribe” button on someone’s blog?
- Is it because they post a lot of stuff every day?
- Or is it because you love the content they’re posting, no matter how frequent (or infrequent) it is?
I follow someone because their posts are amazing—not because they post a lot.
If your goal is more page views, more subscribers, and more engagement, then focus on creating fewer, more epic posts.
- Stop publishing posts you don’t like. If you didn’t enjoy writing it, people will notice.
- Stop following arbitrary “rules”. Don’t work on posting 5 days a week because someone told you it’s necessary. Don’t keep posting your monthly wrap ups because “you’ve always done it” even though you no longer enjoy doing them.
Put more time into fewer posts and you’ll see great results. You’ll see more posts shared, more images pinned, and more posts going viral on social media (like my post on designing a logo, which has had 10,000 visits from Pinterest in the last 30 days).
I give myself one rule: I only post when I have something to say.
This is actually quite similar to how I behave in life. I’m not really one for small talk and I’m kind of quiet. That’s because I only actually talk when I feel like I have something to say. It makes sense that this would carry over to blogging as well.
I don’t post out of a sense of obligation. I don’t post because I feel I “need” to. I post when I want to—when I have something to share.
Very useful post for me as I’m new to the blogging game.
I always wondered about that advice of posting as much as possible, 5 days a week, etc, etc. Admire your stance on this topic and love the headline too!
Request: A future post with advice on writing an epic post? That would tie in nicely with this piece.
Oops, just say your prior post “What the Hell is a “Quality Blog Post”? ”
So ignore the Request line in my initial comment.
I’m glad you found the quality blog post, Ken! 🙂
Yes..totally agree. I eliminated Saturday posts and my numbers are way up. Quality is the key whether you post twice a week or ten times a week.
I always seemed to get very few views on the weekends and that’s one of the reasons why I stopped posting on weekends completely.
That’s actually very interesting, Ashley… I may have to mix things up a bit next year, so maybe that would be something to help me, too. I love my weekly wrap-up posts, though, but I could possibly combine two into one 😀
Great post, I have recently become very turned off by bloggers talking about posting every day means a successful blog, I am sick of meaningless wrap ups and memes as well.
I hate wrap ups that are just like, “here’s what I posted this month!” Yeah, I know, because I saw them all earlier this month. No need to remind me.
If someone is going to do wrap ups, they should at least include a lot of ORIGINAL content that we haven’t already seen on their blog earlier that month.
Oh and don’t do a wrap up if you’re just going to say, “Well nothing really happened in my life this month.” If nothing of note happened, then skip the wrap up. We don’t need to see a post about nothing!
I absolutely LOVE this! And I totally agree!
Thanks Ashley! 🙂
Yes to this. I don’t understand the whole post every day to encourage traffic. Your followers won’t forget you if you have great content. I’ve found that my traffic has gone up just a tiny bit since I stopped keeping a schedule. And now I get more comments on my posts, too!
I mean, fuck, last week we didn’t post anything. And I didn’t feel even one ounce of guilt.
If you post a lot of crappy stuff people will remember you as the girl who posts mediocre content.
If you spend more time on fewer posts, your followers will look forward to them! Then they’ll love, share, and rave about your posts.
That’s so much more important than just whipping out mediocre content every day.
Also why I gave up weekly memes.
I totally agree! I used to religiously post two or three times a week and I’d write posts that I didn’t really enjoy writing and didn’t put a lot of effort into. Nowadays I only post once a week and I don’t know if page views and traffic have increased (I only just figured out how to sort of use google analytics), but the engagement from readers has definitely increased and I’m enjoying myself far more!
It’s so great that you’ve seen more engagement, Lara!
No more writing posts you don’t enjoy!
This post is actually a massive relief. I only post about 3 times a week, and I’ve constantly heard people say that to be successful you need to post at least 5 times a week, and that it should be consistent. I’ve never been concerned with that myself, and never understood why others were, but it’s still always been at the back of my mind.
I definitely put a lot of effort into all my posts – even if it’s just a monthly wrap up (which I enjoy!) – so I’m hoping that my small number of posts will continue to work for me!
There’s no “magic number” that will lead to blogging success. That’s just BS! Three times a week is fantastic, Sabrina. It gives you more time to give each post a little extra oomph!
Yes, Yes, a million times Yes!!! I’ve tried it all – I’ve tried posting on the same days each week, I’ve tried posting everyday, every second day, once a week…. I’ve tried it all. But now I’m not publishing to a set schedule and pouring more time into my posts (high quality, longer content that I love writing) I’ve seen some great changes. The best being a significant jump in my subscribers. Thank you for putting this out there!!
I always thought it was total bullshit when people said things like, “You need to stick to a schedule so your readers know when to expect your posts.”
Whaaaaatttt??
I seriously don’t get that at all. Why is it important that your readers know when a post is coming?
I say screw schedules. I’m not going to force myself to post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the sake of being predictable. I’m going to post when I actually have good content to publish. Sometimes that means Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Other times that might be Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And other times that might be only Wednesday.
I used to post thrice a week, then twice a week, but not with uni, my posts are running out, and I do feel like just writing when I do have something to say. That’s not happening these days, but when I do feel like writing, I will.
I know it can be hard to deal with feelings of guilt/failure/etc. when you’re not posting on your blog. But I think it helps to remember that if you post just for the sake of it, you’re not doing any favours.
If you don’t really want to be posting, it will show in your blog posts. Then you’ll feel guilty about THAT and people will feel all bleh about your content.
So as much as it can suck to not be posting anything, I think it’s the best way to go if you’re not really feeling it. I’d rather have people thinking, “I miss Nose Graze. I wish she posted more” than “Wow, the Nose Graze blog has really gone to the dogs. It’s just not what it used to be.”
In one case they miss you, which is sad but okay. They’ll be there if/when you come back.
In the other case they stop loving your blog and might unfollow you.
HELL YES, I cannot agree more, Ashley! I used to worry a lot about my posting frequency and the thing I discovered over time is that my readers could not care less about how many times I post a week as long as I post good stuff on the blog. Maybe frequent posts can help gain pageviews in that there are more posts to open but great quality posts are the best way to create awesome engagement and loyal readership.
Yeah people might stop by more often if you post more often, but people will SHARE more often if the post is actually awesome, and those shares eventually lead to a lot more page views!
I could not agree more! It’s all about what you’re offering your followers. If you’re offering bad posts, they’re not going to read them, and really, you’re probably putting people off. I know that on some days, when I’ve been a little behind on posting, or posted on a different day than usual, my views are still higher than a bad post day, so it’s worth waiting and then posting. Great honest post Ashley, love it! 🙂
Yes! If your posts are bad, people might unfollow you or mourn over the “degrading quality”. If you post less often, your followers might miss you, but they won’t unfollow you because of it.
I could agree more with you. Awesome post Ashley! 🙂
I am irregular poster. I try to post three times per week, but if I don’t have time I skip posting. It’s better option then posting something half-done. I put as much time and energy as one post needs until I am satisfied with it.
For review posts that’s usually a couple of hours, since I like to think and revise it a couple of time before sending it to my editor (aka my husband) for check-up.
I am planning to write more non-review posts, but they take more time so I have a couple of drafts that I am working on… Maybe my problem is I am neat-freak and I need to cover all the holes before posting the tutorial. 🙂
I usually post 6 days a week, of which one is a discussion type of post, one recipe post, one recap and two or three review posts. It takes a lot of time, but I like this frequency and can keep up with it, if I read less books I might skip one of the reviews in a week. I also like being consistent in when I post what (discussion post on thursday, recipe on friday etc), but I think that’s for for myself than my followers.
I think focussing on quality instead of quantity is important, it doesn’t matter how often you post, it matters what you post. Great post Ashley! I remember when I first started blogging how obsessed I was with having to post every day and feeling like a failure when I didn’t make it. It’s good to emphasize that the quality is more important than how often you post.
I completely agree. There are many meme posts that I don’t even open the posts because I know I won’t be interested in them. I like to read reviews and discussion posts, mostly. I will sometimes comment on some memes depending on what they are (like the Sunday posts where people talk about their week, that is like a personal discussion post, IMO), but it just isn’t my thing.
This is such a brilliant post! There’s SO many blogs out there saying something along the lines of “I started writing every week day and now I have x more readers” – I can’t see how people can do that. I’d rather read a post that took a couple of days to write, but really is QUALITY, than read a post that you can tell has just been published for the sake of publishing. Readers can tell if a post is just filler post.
Quality of quantity, really.
Oops, that was meant to read quality OVER quantity 🙂
I have ran into that problem at my deviantart account! There has been nothing raelly worthy of critiquing the last month or so, and It has sat empty, with me having nothing to say, on nothing that gives me anything to say!
I really just committed to my blog, so I’m trying to keep momentum up — and build a bit of an archive (so my site doesn’t look empty). What would you say is a good posting schedule for someone with a brand new blog to fill?
I don’t really believe in schedules. 🙂 I only believe in posting when you have something to say. Don’t confine yourself to a quota or certain times of week.
I’d rather see an empty blog full of awesome posts than a filled-to-the-brim blog full of fluff and filler posts!
Preach! I completely agree with you and can say that I do not post very often (approximately once/twice a week) and my traffic is higher than it used to be as well. I discussed consistency of blogging on my blog couple of months ago and many poeple agreed that fewer posts but high quality posts are better way to get more page views.
I am learning this. I just CAN’T post 7 days a week anymore. It use to stress me out to not post everyday, but I like the relax feel of blogging better.
And this is why I love you Ashley, I never know when you will send a post, you don’t have schedule and that is ok with me. I hate all the rules, sure some a good but most are crap. Do what you want, what your audience wants. It may take time to figure it out but you’ll be better off. I tried posting 3 times a week, 2 times a week, every tuesday, but it just doens’t work for me, especially if you have kids. Every day is unpredictable and schdules go out the window.
Go Blogging Rebels!!
Wonderful! I’ve been feeling bad that I don’t post as much lately. This made me remember that I shouldn’t 🙂
It’s funny, I’ve had a philosophy of only posting when i had something to say and for ages i posted like once every three months 🙂 This year i challenged myself to post once a week. Some months I post every week and some months I post twice… but it’s been good for me to focus on posting consistently because I do have enough to say to post something once a week. I just don’t always have the time to sit down and write what I have to say 🙂
I’ve heard the adage that posting more is the way, but I’ve also seen many bloggers burn out trying to maintain that. I try to have one post scheduled for each week, and if I happen to think of another that’s nice too.