OK, so you’ve got a business and you’ve got a blog. Excellent.
But now there’s a slightly nagging question that needs answering: How often should you publish to it?
Since no one needs more nagging in their life, no matter how slight it may be, let’s knock this one out quickly.
OK, this guy seems like he could use some nagging, but it’s still not enjoyable.
The short answer? As often as possible.
Think of every article on your site like a doorway into your site: It’s a way for potential customers to find you via Google, Bing and other search engines. So naturally, the more articles you publish, the more doors that exist. And the more doors available, the more visitors are likely to walk through them and onto your site.
The marketing gurus at HubSpot have some hard facts to back this up. They took data from over 13,000 customers, measuring the number of monthly blog posts against the amount of traffic received. The more blog posts published, the greater the traffic:
Check out the sharp rise in traffic once companies begin publishing about eight or twelve posts per month, which works out to about two or three posts per week (think Monday/Wednesday/Friday). This also passes the common sense test: when you visit a blog that’s updated less than once a week, you get the sense that no one is home. Even worse is companies that have a flurry of blog activity once every six months. Because most blog posts are date-stamped, this sends a strong message that your company is one that starts work, but is not able to see it through. In contrast, if your blog is updated several times a week, it sends a few strong messages. One is that your company is financially strong enough to pay people to blog for you.
Another message is consistency. A regularly updated blog says, “We are a company that delivers good work consistently.” It is a signal that your company is reliable.
Finally, there’s the learning. Each blog post is like a mini-experiment to see what resonates with your customers. Over time, some of these blog posts will rise to the top, generating consistent leads for your business. The more experiments you put out there, the more you learn — and the more chances you have to win. Here’s the data:
There’s one other benefit from posting frequently: it tells search engines that your site is “fresh.” This means the search engines visit your site more often, your content gets indexed more regularly, and all those blog posts show up in more search results.
So, how often should you publish? The slightly longer answer: as often as possible, but two to three times per week, or eight to twelve posts per month, is a great place to start.
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