An Experiment: Develop an efficient blogging timeline
Thanks to Darren and Skellie for the inspiration behind this, but I’ve decided to do a little experiment with my blogging.
For those of you who might not know, along with the work I do that comes in for Ginkgo Consulting, i also blog on two sites for b5media, my personal weight loss blog, a personal finance blog (because hey, it’s popular right now), and a few other blog projects I have going on. Yes, I’m a busy girl!
One of the biggest problems that I’m finding myself and other bloggers go through is how to develop a good routine with blogging. I’ve talked to some bloggers who just post whenever the mood strikes them. They get an idea, write it, hit publish, and move on. Other bloggers do loads of research and writing and re-writing before they’re happy enough to publish something - bringing their frequency down to even less than once a week.
It’s a pretty well known fact that posting frequency is one of the many crucial elements to your blog’s success. If you post too much, you might “flood” your readers and annoy them. If you don’t post enough, you risk losing their interest, which is super hard to get back once it’s gone.
I’ll point to the two “inspirational” posts now, but I’ve decided to do an experiment to see if I can, first of all, get myself on a good routine, and also see how it affects things like readership, traffic, and income.
Tips on Finding Your Blogging Rhythm by Darren Rowse at Problogger
How to Develop an Efficient Post Frequency by Skellie
So here’s my plan:
Ginkgo Consulting - 3 posts per week
Weight Loss Blog - 5 posts per week
b5 Blog #1 - 4 posts per week
b5 Blog #2 - 6 posts per week
Personal Finance Blog - 5 posts per week
(I’ll worry about the other projects once I get these nailed down, but only because they’re not really “live” yet anyway.)
So, that’s quite a bit, eh? 23 posts per week. It sounds a lot worse than it is, because by my own nature, I’m more of a get the thought, blog it, social media mark it, and be done with it type. Not that I don’t respond to comments on the posts (because I do), or that I just forget about the post once it’s done, but rather that I can sit down for two hours and crank out some decent quality stuff most of the time. Other times it takes a while, given research and so on, but I fancy myself a decent writer, so 23 posts per week doesn’t sound so scary to me.
Besides, if I can do that many, plus manage all the “regular” work through Ginkgo, and YOU, dear reader, have only one blog and/or a full time job… well, you can see where I’m going with this! You’ll have no excuses! 
My goal is to mark out chunks of time to write for each site throughout the week. I love WordPress’s post-dating feature, so I can sit and write three posts and post date them for throughout the week, and be done with it until either something newsworthy comes up, or I reach my next chunk of time writing for that blog.
So, starting Monday October 27th, I’ll be posting weekly updates on “The Experiment” through the end of the year. We’ll see how things go, I’ll post traffic results and so on, and we’ll go from there!
Wish me luck, and let me know your thoughts in the comments…
- Do you have a regular blogging schedule?
- Are you a researcher/rethinker or do you just write, publish, and market as you go?
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Great strategy. I like that you are being purposeful with your posting frequency. I also think that you are using a very moderate strategy in your posting frequency. I like that I won’t open my Google Reader to find six thousand new posts over two days from you. That is just too overwhelming!
[...] An Experiment: Develop an efficient blogging timeline [...]
I enjoyed your writing style and I’ve added this blog to my RSS reader. Keep up the good work.
Great plan Lara! My plan is to publish 3 to 5 times per week, but lately, my busy schedule has been keeping it to more like 2 to 3 times per week. I need to push myself more! If I can require each of my students to blog daily for the first 90 days of their blog and then backoff to 3 to 5 times per week thereafter, I should do the same! The great part for them is that when they follow these instructions (including the 6-step process for driving traffic that I share with them — which includes social bookmarking that you refer to), they get between 1,000 and 5,000 unique visitors per day to their blog. I’ve been there, done that, myself and need to get back to it! Good luck!
Thanks for your comments, all… as you can see by this site alone, my plan has failed me. Er, I failed it. Er, something. LOL
Going to be blogging about the process of failure and procrastination soon. HA!
Lara - We sound too much alike. I have my design business but also have 6 sites of my own to keep fresh and alive (I just let my b5 one go because something had to give).
As much as I try to keep a schedule, it doesn’t work for me. Instead, I keep a running list of tasks - one for paid client work and one for my own sites. I dedicate a certain block of time each day for each based on which one needs my attention most. I try to get the most pressing tasks done first and then cross them off the list. So far, it seems to be working ok.
I don’t have a regular blogging schedule, but it certainly couldn’t hurt to have one. I do map out my posts and save them as drafts. I usually have an idea of what I want to write in advance but I don’t commit myself to posting it on a particular date/time.
I commend you for dishing out 23 posts in one week and still having time for everything else in between!
Excellent content…keep up the good work!
My belief is that 3 a week is the best number. This way you have new stuff often enough to keep your readers coming back for me, but not too much to annoy them. Of course, I usually only find time to post 1 a week, which I think is not nearly enough. I suppose I may have to kick it up a notch.