Blogging is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Blogging should not be an exhausting, burdensome task--it should be fun and engaging.  If it's not, you're going to burn out, tune out and drop out.  Beth Kanter points to Eric Kintz's great post on Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore, which is full of good advice on why less is more.

Fittingly, we just passed the one-year anniversary of Keith Robinson's Be A More Productive Blogger, which dovetails nicely with Eric's thesis and is even better advice now than the day it was posted.  Keith's final point is one I put to use myself at the turn of the year when I revamped my blog and merged my personal and professional sites:

• Try something new. If you’re finding that you’re falling into a rut, or talking about the same-old, same-old, get out there and try something new. This is exactly what I’m doing with To-Done and it’s not only opened up a whole new world for me with new friends and new things to discuss, it’s also got the creative juices flowing on other fronts. Write for a different audience, take up a new hobby or learn a new technology. These things all come with ideas and things to write about and they’ll keep your mind sharp, creative and ready as well.

Comments

[Beth]

I tend to go in spurts. But in March and April, I had a death in the family and caught the mumps. I didn't feel much like doing anything let alone blogging. Now, I'm back in the swing and in looking over my stats - there is not major difference ... so consistency doesn't every day ..

[Ed Batista]

I'm sorry to hear about the death in your family, Beth. And I'm glad to see you writing again--I'm learning something new from you all the time.

[Ann Handley]

Hi Ed -- Thanks for picking up Eric's post! You are quite right -- it offers some great perspective. As I told Eric, frequency is largely dictated by your blog-goals; the Huffington Post has a different blogging strategy than, for example, Eric Kintz or MarketingProfs or Ed Batista. Eric offers a good reminder that all blogs are not the same, and therefore all bloggers needn't follow the same prescription.

[Ed Batista]

Well said, Ann. We all need to find the blogging strategy that's right for us. Our sites should reflect our interests, our goals. And Eric's focus on how feeds can free us from worrying about "site visits" is right on target. Long live RSS ;-)

[zhonghuarising]

Hi, I'm a new reader here. I just wanted to say that while I found Eric Kintz's post to be informative, some blogs may still depend on frequent posts to stay alive. As other commenters have mentioned, it's all about finding the strategy that works best for you and your blogging needs.

[Ed Batista]

Hi, Bill. It's definitely about finding the right strategy for you, so you should always ask whether a particular guideline meets your individual needs. There's no "right" way to do it.

That said, I'd pose this question in response to your comment: How many of your readers are feed subscribers? The percentage is probably low...but increasing. More and more of our reading is going to be done via feeds rather than via actual site visits. And in the context of that infrastructure, you don't need frequent posts to keep readers engaged--you need high quality and highly relevant posts to give readers a reason to subscribe and stay subscribed. There's not necessarily a negative correlation between post frequency and post quality, but quality can easily decline if you post too often--and even if it doesn't, as Eric made clear, too many posts can drive away subscribers by contributing to a sense of clutter and information overload.

So although I agree that we all need to find the strategy that's right for us, I suspect that frequent posts are really only going to be important for the very biggest blogs that depend on millions of readers to support their advertising-driven model. For the vast majority of us, the value of blogging won't come from a large audience--it will come from an ongoing relationship with the right audience. Thanks for your comments.

[Eric Kintz]

Ed,

I am happy you enjoyed my post. Every one should decide for himself but I was reacting against the general pressure to absolutely post every day. I thought you would enjoy my follow up post on the human face of blog traffic
Eric

http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/kintz/archive/2006/06/16/1186.html

[Ed Batista]

That's great stuff, Eric--I'm inspired to do something similar, both here and for my "day blog." Thanks for pointing it out.

Ed

[Eric Kintz]

Ed,

I thought you would enjoy the follow up analysis on how this post spread virally throughout the blogosphere.
Eric

http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/kintz/archive/2006/10/01/1683.html