Hi everyone -
What are your thoughts on posting frequency and how it affects your traffic/readership? In other words, let's say I get three full stories drafted. Should I post them all the same day? One a day for three days? One every other day? Does it even matter?
Looking forward to your comments!
This Post was written by Laura from The Fro Fro Blog
What are your thoughts on posting frequency and how it affects your traffic/readership? In other words, let's say I get three full stories drafted. Should I post them all the same day? One a day for three days? One every other day? Does it even matter?
Looking forward to your comments!
This Post was written by Laura from The Fro Fro Blog
17 comments:
I own my server/site, so I have lots of ways to check my traffic.
Overwhelmingly, posting everyday pays off. Using Wordpress you can postdate day and hour for something to publish. Use it if you have it. If I am going away, I post-publish almost anything I am thinking of rather than let things fall off.
Certain kinds of posts spike readership and god titles increase search hits. Those also engender the most lasting traffic too. Try to find a software that allows you to see where your hits are coming from, search terms used to find you, and how many readers are reading which posts.
While knowing these things doesn't make me stop posting the other things that are not traffic builders, in the long run I find them inspiring. Posts that pay off come to mind more often when I know what they are.
Now I need to figure out how to make all those voiceless visitors talk back to me!
You'll get more traffic it you post the 3 stories on 3 separate days. I always notice a spike in traffic on the days I post, so I space them out. If I have 3 good recipes, I tend to post 3 days in a row. Sometimes I think it might be better to go every other day, since the amount of traffic hasn't dropped back down fully after only one day. I'm just too impatient to wait that long...haha!
I like to draft up a bunch of posts at once to maximize my time, but I have noticed that there isn't much of a change when I post more than one story a day but when I spread them out over separate days the readership goes up. So I would say 3 stories spread out over 3 days.
I wouldn't post more than once a day since I think, typically, people don't check food blogs more than once a day. Over the past couple months, I've been taking off Friday and Saturday (at the least), after a year of straight publishing every day and notice no difference in traffic. There are plenty of food blogs that only publish a few times a month but still enjoy tremendous traffic. Hope this helps!
My feeling is that you should post them on different days. That way, people have time to see them all.
I find if I leave a post for a day or so, more people take the time to check it out and respond.
That said, I find that my readership stays pretty steady all the time, even if I take a week off.
Then again, my visitor numbers are really low compared to other bloggers. I like to think its really about quality, not quantity. Ha ha ha.
The only reason I would ever post twice in one day is if the first post had really lousy photos and I didn't want them sitting at the top of the blog. :-)
I like to post every other day to give people a chance to read every post. If I post too often, I run the risk of readers missing the post that is lower down on the page. There are just so many food blogs now that people don't have the time to drop in every day. My traffic doesn't seem to depend on daily postings, so I prefer to space things out. (There's no way I could come up a new recipe, story, and photo every day, anyway. I'm in awe of those who can.)
Oddly enough, at one site that I don't post to so much anymore traffic has been quite steady lately and even seems to have increased a bit.
Something I've also found is that traffic falls on the weekend regardless of what I post. So I'm at the point now that I mostly post during the week.
I don't know how this affects the stat counter on sites but I use Google Reader for all of my blog feeds. So, even if you post 5 times in one day I get a number 5 by the Blog name.
I wonder how many people use Reader as well?
I used to post every day faithfully, taking off one day a week. Then two things happened. First, I couldn't keep up with it and was going crazy! Second, a very wise blogger told me that when you post less often, more people notice your posts (if they're well done) and will link to you. I have since cut down to four posts most weeks, and have definitely noticed that it doesn't hurt at all to skip a day between posts. And I think it's true that there are now so many blogs that people can't keep up, and if you keep something there for a few days, more people will notice it.
Great question Laura. I have gone back and forth about this, so it was good to see everyone's comments. I definitely wouldn't post more than one longer article in one day. I tend to be a bit sporadic, posting two or three days in a row, and then taking a day or two off, but I also play it by ear. Like, if I think I have a really good recipe, and it didn't get much traffic, I leave it at the top of the page for another day or two before I post again. If I had other reasons for a particular post, but I knew it wasn't one of my best, I'll post another one the next day. I use Google Analytics to watch where people are coming from and how many there are, and what posts they are coming to, so that helps with the bigger picture. But, of course, the comments you get are the immediate feedback.
Thanks, all, for your insights! Very helpful. I'm using MyBlogLog to track referrers, traffic and clicks out, but I haven't really had the time to analyze patterns and draw any meaningful conclusions beyond the obvious. lewis, I wonder about readers, too. My gut says only a small % of my very small (but dedicated!) readership is using them, but hopefully that will change :)
I definitely agree with the drop-off in weekend visitors. I notice the people who come on the weekends are the die-hards who are sifting through the recipe archives, looking for a particular recipe. They would come anyway.
This is a good discussion, and definitely food for thought. I've turned into a nearly every day blogger. I post Monday thru Friday, and then most often one post on the weekend.
Lately my traffic has increased by almost double, which is great, but I think it's tied in with the fact that I'm now being featured in my local paper about once a month. I suspect that a lot of my new readers are locals, and if I stop posting every day, will I lose some of that local readership?
I've been using www.crazyegg.com to analyze my blog lately, and I've gleaned so much information from it, that I highly recommend it. Nika shared it here a while back, and I've found it indispensible to find out exactly what my readers are looking for.
Do you want traffic or comments? I think posting less is better for comments and posting too frequently can overload readers.
I aim for three a week, but if it doesn't happen, so be it. Aside from building up readership, you also want to continue to enjoy doing this, and if you get going at a breakneck pace, you'll feel compelled to never slow down...and ultimately, you won't be able to keep up and it won't be fun any more. Plus, having a few drafts in the pocket can be good just in case you don't have time one day.
I usually post six times a week (weekdays plus one weekend day). In November I've been participating in National Blog Posting Month, which means at least one post a day. I did it this year and last year, so I can now compare the data as a long term trend.
It really doesn't make much difference for me. So I usually take weekends off. (I need that time for prep anyway.) But you might want to try it for a month just to see.
However, the one good thing about more posts - it means a larger archive. If there's one thing you can observe about your reader is where do they land when they come to your site? Are they coming to your homepage and the most recent posts? Or are they arriving via a search engines to one of your archive posts?
How often do your regular readers visit? I have figured out that about 20% of mine visit every day. 50% come several times a week and the rest come once a week or less. This should determine how many posts you show on your main page. (And only about 1/3 of my traffic is "return visitors" the rest is search engine or single referrals to posts via other blogs/forums.)
If you post three times a week, showing five on your home page is great! If you post once a day, then maybe 10 on the home page would be better, so that they can get the whole experience at once.
The most important thing is when you establish a schedule (three times a week, M-W-F or whatever), stick to it if you can. It's respectful to your readers.
If you start missing the schedule, don't post the "apology post", just start posting again. I have a few blogs that I read that I've eventually deleted from my list that were great, but the writers just lost interest and the scant recent posts were apologies and promises that just weren't being fulfilled.
I agree with Cybele, although I think having 5 posts on your main page is the maximum.
With all these widgets and what-nots, some sites take forever to download all the gizmos and gadgets the home page and I stop reading them after a while.
PS: What's with this new Blogger 'choose an identity' where you can't leave a URL anymore?
If I was blogging using Blogger, I'd be miffed.
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