Have I told you lately..........
Phew! My computer screen was starting to glare at me for not posting often enough.
"Thou shall post every day” is the most fundamental and most well known principle of blogging....
Originally when I first started my blog over two years ago, I was posting and pushing posts through in a frantic pace practically weekly; re-hashing news from other sites. It takes me way too much time to do my posts as well as research, creating the Flash simulations, preparations, etc and I'm surprised that I was able to do it so crazily then. Generally I didn't post unless it's something that I find interesting.
I sustained that feverish pace for a while until I was feeling the tension of always trying to push something "on time". I was starting to get burnt out, and didn't want to write anymore since it was such a chore, etc. Then, I decide to take it a bit easy and try posting less frequent until I finally think I've settled on posting once a month. Later I've learned to keep it topical and try to come up with original content.
This is something that's been floating around in my head for about 3 or 4 months now. I have been so busy at work and been travelling, I haven't posted on a weekly/monthly basis as I used to... and lo! and behold! my traffic didn't suffer a bit. I soon developed the new found opinion, eh! "Write when you have something worth saying, write to your audience, and do your best to write well. It can't get any simpler than that".
Every new blogger is warned about “the” ultimate rule and is confronted with the pressure of a day going by with no new post. Every one has in mind the examples of successful bloggers, like Robert Scoble at Microsoft, who post several times a day. Daily posting shows that you are serious about blogging, generates traffic and drives reader loyalty, as readers come back daily to check your new posts. You cannot be successful if you do not go by the rule, right? RIGHT?
"Thou shall post every day” is the most fundamental and most well known principle of blogging....
Originally when I first started my blog over two years ago, I was posting and pushing posts through in a frantic pace practically weekly; re-hashing news from other sites. It takes me way too much time to do my posts as well as research, creating the Flash simulations, preparations, etc and I'm surprised that I was able to do it so crazily then. Generally I didn't post unless it's something that I find interesting.
I sustained that feverish pace for a while until I was feeling the tension of always trying to push something "on time". I was starting to get burnt out, and didn't want to write anymore since it was such a chore, etc. Then, I decide to take it a bit easy and try posting less frequent until I finally think I've settled on posting once a month. Later I've learned to keep it topical and try to come up with original content.
This is something that's been floating around in my head for about 3 or 4 months now. I have been so busy at work and been travelling, I haven't posted on a weekly/monthly basis as I used to... and lo! and behold! my traffic didn't suffer a bit. I soon developed the new found opinion, eh! "Write when you have something worth saying, write to your audience, and do your best to write well. It can't get any simpler than that".
Every new blogger is warned about “the” ultimate rule and is confronted with the pressure of a day going by with no new post. Every one has in mind the examples of successful bloggers, like Robert Scoble at Microsoft, who post several times a day. Daily posting shows that you are serious about blogging, generates traffic and drives reader loyalty, as readers come back daily to check your new posts. You cannot be successful if you do not go by the rule, right? RIGHT?
Wrong. Daily posts are a legacy of a Web 1.0 mindset and early Web 2.0 days (meaning 12 months ago!). The pressure around posting so frequency will ultimately become a significant barrier to the maturity of blogging. It engages with the audience you want to have a relationship with is a much smarter strategy than posting frequently and also the pressure of the first months to write frequently certainly contributes to people abandoning their blogs. As the blogosphere matures, the measure of success will shift from traffic to reader loyalty.
So now as for me, I will continue to post only when I have something to say!
