Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You're only a stranger once.

October 20, 2005

Consistency In Writing Frequency

Liz wrote this at 11:42 am

Too many people worry about how many times they should write in a day on their blogs when the real question to ask how consistent should you be with the frequency of your writing. What I am talking about is if you decide to write at least once a day on your site then you should stick with that schedule because by doing so you are creating expectations for your readers. They will grow accustomed to your posting schedule and once you start deviating from it you might encounter some problems.

Sure it is scary to think of your readers having any power over your writing, but if we don’t write for an audience, who are we writing for? Over at Whitespace I try to write daily and at times I miss a couple of days. It’s a pattern that I think my readers have come to expect and the site continues to be successful from my point of view. However, I never post more than twice in a day because it would go against the patterns I have set for the site and effectively destroy the discussions that make the site popular.

When starting your site should you begin with a posting schedule in mind? I don’t think so because every site has its own flow and it can be hard to determine how frequently you need to write on a topic for the site to be successful. Over time you will begin to see the writing frequency that you are most comfortable with.





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4 Comments to “Consistency In Writing Frequency”

  1. October 21st, 2005 at 6:57 am
    leon said

    A related note to this excellent post, if you think you might have to cut back on blogging let your readers know (same if you’re going on holiday taking a break etc)! I always check back on a blog if they’ve given me the courtesy of a heads up.:)

  2. October 21st, 2005 at 11:34 am
    ME "Liz" Strauss said

    I agree with Leon. A blog I follow, which usually updates daily, hasn’t changed for over a week. I’m starting to wonder if the guy is sick or something. In a day or so I’ll just quit going to look.

  3. October 22nd, 2005 at 7:25 pm
    Sam said

    That’s a good point, leon/liz, I totally agree. But, okay, pet peeve: when you get *back* from vacation, don’t write a
    “I’m back” post, just…. starting writing again. When you post again, people will get the hint you are back.

  4. October 22nd, 2005 at 8:17 pm
    ME "Liz" Strauss said

    I’m right with you on that Sam.
    I think folks can figure out that you’re back easily enough and they have too many blogs to read to be spending time reading about what they already know.

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