Tag: Blogs

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Does It Hurt You to Post Three Times a Week?

It may not hurt you to drop from five days a week to three, but go less than posting to your blog three days a week and you will definitely lose readership and subscribers. It is definitely a tough road to hoe to build back up after you have had a significant drop in traffic. It takes time posting five days a week and great content.

Once you have arrived at the level of activity that you desire, then you need to balance the time you expend on your blog with your other business needs. This is what I do. When I had started posting sporadically for nearly six months due to personnel issues and sheer blogging burn-out, my traffic took a dive. To rebuild, it has taken will power and work. For over four months I have now blogged five days a week and now I am simply ready to move back to three days a week. Typically I blog ahead and do one week ahead on Saturday. If I find something great to write about in the middle of the week, I just do an additional post. If the post is not time sensitive, I will simply use it as one of my write ahead posts.

Personally I found blogging five days a week exhausting. For professional clients typically we will break a five day a week gig into a project for two writers. It is simply tough to consistently write great content every single day on one topic. Try it for an extended period and you will understand what I mean.

If you post less than three days a week some portals like My Yahoo will collapse your RSS feed on the page and post a note saying “no new posts in the last seven days” even if this is not exactly true. Post on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule and feed collapse is prevented.

So should you write three, four or five days a week? I recommend if you are starting your blog five days a week for the first three months to build content and readership, then cut back to a long term plan of three days a week to maintain what you have and not lose headway.

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How Many Blog Posts Should You Show on Your Front Page?

This is an interesting topic for blog owners and I have changed my own mind on this point over the years.

It used to be with most of our client blogs on Blogger, we set the blog to show 30 posts on the home page. Now with most of our clients using WordPress and many more home page options, we recommend having five blog posts on your home page.

I have seen some blogs where they just show one blog post on the home page or some that show three, but I personally like showing five blog posts.

If you have WordPress, you can even select to have a static page for the entry page of your blog and I have even seen some blogs where they simply show categories and snippets of posts like a magazine portal page. There are many flavors of what you should use for your home page.

Darren at ProBlogger did a review of this topic and I thought that the comments written in by other bloggers were very good. Here is the vote on the number in a nutshell.

Two Posts 1 Blogger

Three Posts 4 Bloggers

Four Posts 3 Bloggers

Five Posts 13 Bloggers

Six Posts 3 Bloggers

Seven Posts 1 Blogger

Ten Posts 6 Bloggers

More Than 10 Posts 2 Bloggers (1 had snippets the other had 35 posts)

So the consensus seems to match my thoughts five blog posts on the home page seems about right.

 

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The Five Deadliest Things You Do To Your Blog

Mind you I have learned these from experience both from long-term personal blogging and ghost blogging; here are five things you definitely DO NOT want to do on your blog.

  1. Never talk about real-world customers. Never if you change their names and circumstances. They will see themselves in your blog post and be angry. Don’t risk the bad blood.
  2. Never trash competitors or a product. Blog posts are forever, you can do a review and present pros and cons, but trashing is simply crossing that line of providing information. Being vindictive in a blog post can get you sued. Don’t waste time doing it, vent to your friends.
  3. Don’t stray from your main topic. If you are blogging for business stay tuned to that topic and your readership. If you start offering toe nail care tips when you should be talking about Internet marketing you will definitely turn off your readers. You can digress once or twice but get in the habit of digressing and readers will chop you.
  4. Don’t make your blog post a dissertation. Shorter is better, but not too short. My guideline is about 250 words on one thread. Need more space, break the thought up into parts.
  5. Don’t get hung up on comments or lack thereof. People do read your blog. If you are not getting comments or feed subscribers this does not mean that people are not reading. Still only 7% of all readers will be getting your news via feed technology. Just a few will choose to get your blog posts by email if you have this set up on Feedburner and your blog. Most will actually bookmark your blog’s home page and visit using a browser.

I’m sure I have more deadly blog crashers, but this post is getting long so that’ll be another post. :0)

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New Blogging Trends for Clients

Click my post title to read what Darren at ProBlogger feels are the five emerging blog trends from his point of view. His blog is a good read and one that I routinely follow, but his is a focus for professional bloggers. So here is my list of blogging trends for clients to consider (not professional bloggers).

Trends in site and design that you should consider implementing as you set up your own business blog:

  1. Slick magazine portal page style blogs are the rage right now versus the typical one or two column blog layout. Here’s an example of that style to consider: http://www.problogger.net/ Notice the use of multiple columns and blocks of content and advertising.
  2. Multiple writers on one blog. Routinely we have two writers on five day a week blogs, but now we’re seeing blogs that we work on have more guest bloggers or staff writers post occasionally on the blog and all are listed on the mast head as writers. You can take this approach too. We’ll help you get started.
  3. Multi-content blogs. Now on this point, I disagree with Darren at ProBlogger. All we do is focused on search engines. You will fragment your message, your search engine authority when you start blogging on many different topics on one blog. This may be fine for some “magazine” style blogsites, but for the typical client to stay on topic is very important. You do not want a pest control blog to be blogging about shoes or how to find coupons to buy a PDA! You need to stay on pest control and service topics. To do otherwise is to chase away your readers.
  4. Soft monetizing of sites. Yes, blogs are moving to include advertising, but for the typical client the only ads you should have on your blog are those pointing to your products and services. I do not know of many people who are really racking in the cash from monetizing their blog. Additionally ads can be distracting and can affect the “look” of the blog. What would work is small ads for your own products, white papers, and coupons for your services.
  5. Integration with other media. Yes, this is a new trend and one you can certainly leverage for your own blog. Introduce a Twitter feed, headlines, and other widgets in the sidebar of your blog site. Connect in new ways with your readers and provide ability for them to interact with you. Get signed up for Google’s Friend Connect as an easy way to implement these new widgets and features without programming skills.

The world of blogging IS changing but not all of ProBlogger’s recommendations are effective for business blog owners. If you need professional writing services for your business blog, consider us first.