Starting a blog is difficult. Strategic planning is required to consider what to publish and how to advertise it. And will your content appeal to your customers and inspire them?
We haven’t even covered how often companies should post – a factor that can make or break even the greatest content.
You might be surprised to know that the frequency of publication is not very high, although there is an excess of hard data about why blog posts are an integral part of marketing. That’s because it matters.
If ambiguity makes your heart beat faster, don’t be afraid. Here we offer suggestions and statistics to support you in your decision.
How often should you blog?
The frequency of blog posts depends on what is best for your business. Smaller companies have found posting comfort and success one to four times a week, while larger companies can post daily and sometimes multiple daily posts.
If you’re a marketing team of one, you don’t have to pump content out all the time. Doing so will likely burn you out and post content that is not beneficial to you or your audience.
Keeping a blogging schedule is important for two reasons. First, it builds organic traffic. Next, it helps with brand awareness. We’ll go into the why below.
Organic traffic
Blogging is important for SEO if you want to increase visits to your website. However, if you already publish valuable content, it can be helpful to update this content again, especially if you want to give certain posts a boost after a short time.
Blog post traffic is increasing, which means that it will produce organic results over time. For this reason, updating posts is important. This gives you more readings, more recognition and possibly more fans.
Brand awareness
Since Google can crawl every page of a website for SEO, every blog post you write can improve not only the optimization but also the awareness of your brand. For example, if you work in the beauty industry and publish high-quality articles on applying eyeliner or mascara, you have the option of being displayed in these Google search results.
Make sure you produce high quality content to strengthen brand loyalty. By creating content with images, keywords, and industry-relevant content, you can increase your brand awareness.
So blogging is still very important for brand discovery and lead building. If you are trying to determine the correct publishing frequency for your team and company, read on.
Blogging frequency
The frequency of blogging ultimately depends on what you want to achieve with your blog. So let’s look at the basics of how often you should blog to achieve what you want to achieve.
Organic traffic
If your main goal is to increase traffic and get clicks on your website and content, you want to post often. Ultimately, it’s up to you to determine what this schedule looks like.
As a small blog with a limited team, creating, creating, and promoting a new post every day can be difficult. This is where planning comes in handy. When coordinating your next launch campaign, plan blog posts together and take the time to outline these posts.
Saving and organizing the material before you start writing will save you time. Think of content that educates your readers because you want to publish as much as possible. This can look different depending on the blog. However, some blog ideas include industry guides, campaign summaries, and lists.
You can find more ideas for blog posts in this list of 101 HubSpotter’s ideas put together.
Brand awareness
When you focus on building your brand, the key is diversifying the content. Think about how blog posts can highlight and define your brand. How can a blog post tell your audience who you are?
Because you focus on building a voice for your business, these posts don’t need to be published as often as an agenda for building traffic requires. Instead, smaller companies should try to install them about once a week.
By building brand awareness, you have the opportunity to provide your target group with useful information. Providing branded infographics or statistics about your industry that are branded are great ways to build loyalty.
The content can vary even further, from an employee of the month post celebrating your team to a summary of a recent company outing or an infographic explaining your core values.
Below is a graph that summarizes some of the goals you need to shoot for when considering the frequency of blogs. Keep in mind that updating posts with new information is a great way to create SEO regardless of the goal.
With the right planning, you may be surprised by the volume of blogs you create. We chose the soft target three to four times a week for smaller blogs that focus on organic traffic, as blogging should be a priority if increasing clicks is the goal.
In 2019 HubSpot found that marketers who prioritize marketing efforts are 13 times more likely to achieve positive ROI. Making blogging a serious part of your everyday life is hard work, but it’s worth it if you collect visits and leads.
Larger blogs with some team members can increase volume, but should be careful about burnout and over-saturation of search engine results. That is why the goal is four to five times a week. This ensures that new posts have time to generate traffic, and updated posts are properly strengthened to complete your campaign goals.
Since content is more specialized for brand awareness and doesn’t focus so much on attracting traffic, the frequency of blog posts is not that high. We recommend smaller, brand awareness blogs that are published once or twice a week. While they may not work as well as researched, traffic-related content, they give your blog a voice and a holistic medium.
For blogs with more resources, it’s easier to increase the frequency of brand awareness posts, especially since large blogs are likely to already have adequate organic traffic. There’s more room to focus on content that strengthens a company’s brand and pioneers.
Starting a blog and keeping it consistent can be very difficult, but there is no exact science. Because of this, you can be flexible in maintaining your blog as long as you stick to your business goals.
Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in November 2019, but was updated in August 2020.
