I’ve been debating the issue of changing my posting frequency for quite some time now. I’ve considered both writing shorter but more frequent posts, as well as writing longer posts less often and really hadn’t come to any conclusions. However, Darren Rowse recently published another one of his one question interview series in which he asked several bloggers the question “What one thing did you do on your blog in 2007 that improved it the most?”

Surprisingly, several bloggers mentioned posting less often as the one thing that improved their blog the most. Leon Ho from lifehack.org’s response was:

“At lifehack we’ve ditched short introductory posts so that we could focus and write long articles. It has a positive impact to our referral traffic from search engines and social bookmarking sites.”

Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine weighed in with this response:

We’ve tried to improve the quality of our articles. In 2007 we’ve spent more time on research, we’ve refined our requirements and expectations from the sites we cover in our articles.

Skellie was one of them saying:

The best thing I’ve done for Skelliewag.org has been reducing my post frequency from (when I was able) 7 days a week down to 3 - 4 times a week. It’s allowed me to start freelancing, but it also doesn’t seem to have hurt the blog any. By posting less, I can pack a lot more into the content, making each post more link-worthy and more valuable for readers. It also gives the content more time to snowball on social media — and to gather comments.

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits continued the emerging theme with this advice:

Now, instead of doing 5 posts a week, I often do 4, and I write about whatever I feel like writing about. That’s really transformed my writing, because it allows me to follow my passions, to write about my current interest, and the writing is the better for it.

What I’ve done might not work for every blogger, but it’s something I recommend at least trying. If you’re doing shorter posts, try writing some longer ones, exploring the topic more, linking to other resources, giving lists of tips, making the post truly useful. If you post frequently, consider cutting your schedule back a bit — it’ll give you more time to write great posts, and your readers will probably appreciate having fewer posts to read.

Now I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but when several successful bloggers list writing longer posts and writing less often as the action that improved their blogs the most, I take note. So, it is with these ideas in mind that I’ve decided to scale back the posting schedule here at least for a while. As has been my style on this site, I’m planning on testing the more relaxed schedule for about a month and report back the results I experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be writing every day. However, I’m hoping the extra time and more relaxed schedule will allow me to spend some time writing guest posts on other blogs as well as delving a bit deeper into the topics we discuss here.

Talk Back

Have you experimented with writing less frequent but longer more authoritative posts? Have you tried posting more often, even to the point of several times a day? Do you think changing from my schedule of a post per day during the work week will end up harming the blog? I’d love to hear about any experiences or opinions you might have on this issue in the comments below.

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