Sunday

The Challenge of Blogging Daily

The August Blogging Challengers are halfway through their contest of blogging every single day. Most of us are getting a bit tired of dreaming up exciting new posts, and are wondering whether we can keep this up after the month is over. The question is, do we have to?

A blog post per day is a good way to get some additional traffic to your blog, which is a particularly good idea before a blog book tour. But, it might not be necessary to keep your blog fresh quite this often as a normal practice. It's important to post at least twice a week, and three or four times is even better. But, unless you have a group blog and share the job with other people, it could become too much of a ... dare I say it?... drag to keep up the pace.

The point of this exercise is to develop a good habit over a period of thirty days. But, you can continue a very good habit three times a week, and that might work just as well. That's the number of posts that would work for me, especially since I like to pre-schedule several posts for the week on Monday.

What about the rest of you? Have you given any consideration to what your blogging schedule will be come September and for the remainder of the year? Do you have events or any special reasons that might make you increase your regular blogging? What are they? Give it some thought and tell us why and how you plan to continue your blogging practice when our contest is over.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have given this much thought. I (we - it is an anthology) have a book release party scheduled for October 10. I've been trying to come up with blog topics that are not hard-sell, but would allow me to mention the event at least once a week...still working on that list.

Dana Fredsti said...

I'm thinking of cutting down to three a week, but definitely want to keep up the good habit of regular blogging!

Helen Ginger said...

I have a feeling I will go back to 5 days a week, although an occasional blog on weekends might be good. It would be easier if Blogger will go back to letting me schedule posts. And if I can carve out time to put up a week's worth again.

Morgan Mandel said...

i didn't sign up for the challenge, but I'm trying to get into the habit of posting more often to see if my numbers increase by doing so. I'm shooting for at least 5 times a week.
Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Well, I must admit I have not done nearly as much writing in my (3) ms's I have in progress during this month as I usually do. Ok, practically NO writing in them. - lol Part of that is though, that I'm going thru such a learning curve at the same time. I think it's a most valuable exercise to go thru, and when Sep hits, I'll have a lot of new tricks mastered and feel "relieved" to "only" post 3 or 4 times a week. Which is about 20X as much as I used to post, and the resulting traffic to my blog reflects those same numbers. It's time and effort well spent in the long run.

CA Verstraete said...

This has been a good exercise though I feel it starting to drag now. I will probably cut down to several times a week though I also have to begin posting my miniature stories/interviews again once this is over. I'll probably do more photos, quizzes, etc.

JA Konrath said...

I haven't found that frequent blogging increases traffic. Twice a weeks seems to get as many daily hits as once a week or five times a week, according to my Statcounter.

What increases hits are the posts themselves. Controversial topics, or entries that evoke a lot of comments, can kick my hits up 20% above normal, and that percentage can stay up there until the thread dies down.

Because of this, I believe it's a disadvantage to blogging more than a few times a week.

If you owned an ice cream truck and sold one flavor, you'd sell a lot of that flavor. Once you offer too much variety, every flavor gets a lot less attention.

Dani said...

I agree that posting 2-3 times a week is optimum. This exercise of daily posting serves one purpose - to develop a good habit in bad bloggers. Simple as that! However, it is noted by all of us that getting comments to good blog posts, promoting on Twitter, and pinging definitely does boost ratings. Definitely on my blog. In short, this is a training exercise that's working for the participants.