Why you should blog less

by Carl Natale on January 19, 2011

Why you should blog lessI find a lot of people asking me how often they should update their blogs. Part of me wants to tell them that they should blog as often as possible. The more they blog, they more content they create. Which means:

  • That’s better for SEO value. More people should be able to find your blog.
  • More content translates into more traffic. If you have a lot for them to read, they will read more.
  • You will look smarter. If you don’t write stupid things, people will respect how much of your expertise you share.

Those aren’t guarantees. Look at those as rules of thumb. But how much success follows a lot of blog content depends on a couple things.

The big limitation is time

You only have so much of it. You can’t spend all your time on your blog because you have a business to run. How much time you should spend depends on a lot of factors. Regardless, you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to blogging.

The audience & the law of diminishing returns

Your readers don’t have a lot of time either. So they’re only going to read so much. Usually just the post that has the answer to their question.

This is different if you’re in the news business or writing about sports. Those readers expect a constant flow of information and spend a sick amount of time consuming content. They will constantly check news and sports sites for new content. You’re not going to gain that kind of loyalty even if you post new content each hour on the hour.

How to turn less into more

There are two casualties of a lot of blogging. You will lose:

  • Time
  • Focus

It’s easy to see that blogging takes time. It also becomes harder to keep your focus the more you blog. That’s because you will run out of things to say. Or you get tempted to start writing about things that have nothing to do with your customers. (Remember, your blog is about them not you.) An aggressive posting schedule will lead you to stretching the topics just so you have something to write. It waters down your message.

By restricting the number of posts you publish in a week, you make it easy to stay on message. You have fewer opportunities to connect with your audience and convert them to customers so you will make the most of the opportunities. Your focus will narrow when you blog less. Each post becomes more valuable to your audience.

Next, think about scarcity. You know your time is valuable, and that you have a lot of important things to do. To communicate that to your audience, make your content look scarce. Keep your content up to date but don’t try to overwhelm the audience with it. Fewer posts help make your content look more valuable.

It all comes down to time

You don’t have a lot of it. Use it to create the best content that really helps customers. Frequent posts will not gain you the respect of your audience. Fewer posts that help your readers will gain you respect.

That will give you a better chance of converting readers to customers.

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