When it comes to blogging, for me, it’s always quality first, before quantity. I’ve heard the questions come up from my audience, both at conferences, online forums, and in my own website’s comment area, “How often should I blog?” My usual answer is split into a couple answers. Bear with me as there is a method to the madness, and you’ll have to choose what works for you.
The first answer is from an SEO perspective. In this situation, ideally, you’d want to blog at least once a day. You want to search engines to keep coming back and gobbling up that new content. That’s rough for a lot of people if they have a lot of other commitments that have more priority than blogging.
The next answer is from the Average Joe Blogger perspective. The Average Joe Blogger is going to not have time. They usually have a family (or not) and a job or two, or be in school. There’s a lot of scenarios that the Average Joe Blogger has, but he certainly doesn’t have blogging at the top of the list. However, he still needs to get content out to keep his readers interested. I’ve always answered that you should be blogging at least once a week to 3 times a week in this situation.
The Art of Blogging: Quality First, Before Quantity
However, as confusing as this next answer might be after I just gave 2 answers already, what matters is the quality of your blog content first, before quantity. You could pump out 365 posts in a year, but in the end, you need to make every word count.
It doesn’t matter if your post is 300 words, or 1500 words, because for every article you write, there are hundreds more on the same subject. Sounds daunting, huh? Don’t let this discourage you because I’m not done yet.
Quality of content comes with time and learning your niche better. Quantity also comes with time, but it primarily comes from experience. This experience is in what you are writing about. Most niche in the blogosphere have content that will always be evolving, and with practice, and passion for learning the new material, your content will only get better. This is why when it comes to repurposing old blog posts in other mediums, or republishing it after you’ve updated the content with fresher material, you’re going to be leaps and bounds ahead of others who’ve let their posts stay stagnant.
Sometimes you don’t need to create a brand new post. Maybe you need to pick an old post and see what you can do in order to make it better? Maybe you need to spend a little time doing some keyword research? Maybe you just need to go out and read other blogs, ebooks, and books in order to enrich your mind, and thus enrich your blog content?
Your readers probably read a lot of other blogs in your same niche. They come because they are interested in what you have to say. However, if you’re not delivering a quarter of the effort that your blog peers are doing, your readers will disappear, and you’re left standing alone desperately getting their attention back. Yes, I get it that you like to blog about things, and your blog does deal with you, but if you’re trying to make money with your blog, or run any type of business alongside your blog, you’re not going to get attention to those places you want them to go. For example, those places you want them to go are:
- Buying your product or service
- Subscribing to your newsletter
- Fill out your lead or contact form, or calling you
- Sharing your blog posts
- Commenting on your blog posts
Your purpose to write content, is to be seen, so you have to try to think like your readers. Even if your purpose with your blog doesn’t deal with making money, you are still publishing it online in order to be seen. Don’t kid yourself if you are trying to say otherwise. You still have to think about what people are searching for, and write unique and quality content that attracts them to your website, and gets them to stay.
So next time you’re blogging, remember: quality first, before quantity.
How often do you blog? Have you been stressing about quantity more than quality with blogging?
I strongly agree with a quality first focus. And the biggest quality focus should be on your readers.
You can also look at SEO quality for example, and that matters too. But the most important quality is do your readers enjoy your posts and want to read more. Great SEO quality for a blog I don’t want to read isn’t of much value. Great quality posts I would love to read but never find also is of limited value (though for those that do find it, it is of great value).
I personally think the post frequently mantra is way overblown. it is beneficial to post weekly but it is also perfectly fine to post great stuff once a month. SEO does favor more frequent posting but it really is a very small additional bump – great quality less frequently will do better over the long term. Sure post weekly, or more often, if you can create great posts that often. If not, worry about quality not frequency.
Hello Nile,
You are absolutely correct that in case of blogging if someone wants to survive for long run then he/she should focus on quality of his/her blog, articles, activities rather than the quantity.
What is the use of tons of useless articles in a blog if they don’t have any value or do not provide any solution? A good understanding of the target audience, their needs and wants should be preferred than posting something random. I did this mistake in my past which almost broke me and demoralized badly.
So, If you want to survive for long run and want to be successful then build a quality blog first.
Thank you for this useful article, it means a lot to many newbies who have just started blogging and want to pursue it for lifetime.
I have always wanted to include videos in my blogs to increase by blogs quality but I found that I take a huge amount of time to create an attractive video. Can you suggest any tools or methods that I can do it the easy way ?
Thank You Miss Nile.
Yes quality is always prefer in comparison to quantity in terms of better blogging. Writing an high quality article daily is a good strategy to reach your audience. It is that what i was experienced in my one year blog journey, many things to learn. And yes i am totally agree with Nile Flores on writing 1 quality content per day instead of 2-3 low quality post a day.
Hello Nile,
I agree totally with you that QUALITY should always come first in blogging. We should see our blogs as a business and our readers as the customers, if you don’t give your customers quality at the first visit, you can be sure there will likely not be a second visit.
I wish i could write a post everyday, but that would wear me out. My longest streak so far is 11 days.
Quality content remains king in blogging.
Hiiiii,
I strongly agree with a quality first focus. And the biggest quality focus should be on your readers.
Thanks for blog.
Well said Nile,
With years of experience in blogging, I have similar thoughts like you. I believe in quality and not quantity. As said in this above post, quantity can be achieved with mixture of experience and patience understanding our niche.
Several great points as usual Nile!
However, there seems to be this growing myth,
that practically anybody, including glorified hobby
blogger, can suddenly switch over to self hosted WordPress
platform and magically become successful bloggers!
When truth told, they really lack the necessary expertise,and or patience or a
true desire to serve their chosen market!
They were convinced, online riches of some kind, are just over horizon,
but they truly aren’t emotionally and or financially prepared to pay the full
price!
So it really doesn’t matter how much or how little they attempt the concept of blogging,
because they’re glorified sprinters, not marathon runners!
And sprinters practically always burn out on their way to glory!LOL!
Interesting post Nile.
I’ve always believe in giving out value (quality) so as to get the valuables (quantities) in return. Quality contents will always drive in quantity readers. Though, it might be difficult at first, but with focus on consistent posting of quality content, readers will drive in in quantity.
Thanks for the master piece!
It’s not just satisfify reader, quality satisfify blogger as well. I’m trying to start blogging with quality. And it suprises me…building engagement!
Hello Nile,
It’s my first time here on your blog and indeed i can say you are an example of this topic, mere looking at your blog alone, one see’s quality.
Quality makes a blog look like a brand and thats what all of us want.
Thanks for sharing and do have a wonderful day ahead.
I personally think the post frequently mantra is way overblown. it is beneficial to post weekly but it is also perfectly fine to post great stuff once a month. SEO does favor more frequent posting but it really is a very small additional bump – great quality less frequently will do better over the long term. Sure post weekly, or more often, if you can create great posts that often. If not, worry about quality not frequency.
Hello Nile,
I agree with you and always I hear “I have to write as many posts as possible because of SEO” I open my eyes and think why this myth is so popular.
I think it’s better to have a gold nugget than a pound of rubbish, even if some people earn money with rubbish…
Yeah! what’s best in blog is the quality of the content. I actually don’t feel stressed about the quantity but in quality. What’s mindful of me, is the interest of the reader and how can I make a blog that is mind blowing, that though people don’t really like it, then they find it very interesting.
Quality is always the first and foremost important thing. There are 1000s of blogs and articles and what people look for is something that is in quality and satisfies the search.
Well! Its difficult to follow right thing in life but if we are Bloggers, we have to. Its rightly said here that the quality matters more than quantity and I also follow this. Thanks for such a lovely blog.
I couldn’t agree more I think it’s wildly important to make sure you’re creating quality content. I like directing people to check out my portfolio, as that’s really my call to action.
Nile,
As an online marketing professional, I can tell you that you hit the nail right on the head: quality before quantity is no doubt the rule.
Some people post 10 posts per month hoping that they will rank well in Google and generate tons of page views just to be terribly disappointed.
In reality, if they took the time to create 2 posts that were 1,000+ words and extremely interesting to their readership, they would generate a ton more page views and be putting out phenomenal resources.
Also, I like your idea about tweaking an old post. This too can be a great way to generate extra traffic without reinventing the wheel.
Great post! 🙂
I was certain That, quality matters more than quantity. It literally does not make sense posting dozens of contents on a day while most of them only worth flushing out. Single piece of good content is highly required.
Neil, i agree quality matters. Posting a half-ass post that’s never read everyday is worthless. But putting an evergreen resource once per two weeks is pretty enough. What do you think?
Hi Nile!
Thanks for sharing this post about the Art of Blogging: Quality First, Before Quantity. This awesome article has inspired me a lot which you have shared in this post. As I inform you that this awesome post helps me in my work because, recently; I have joined my new job in IT Sector and this awesome post inspired me a lot.
In my next comment, I will inform you everything clearly that how can your blog help me, what I had learned from your blog.
Thanks a lot once again…..!
i agree that so long as you have quality information you can blog often as opposed to blogging several times in a day and there is no sense in your posts.very educative literature for all the bloogers
It’s so important to have a great content on the blog so that can help readers better. Recently people would say writing long content would be better, but I believe in short and more helpful with it.
Good one!