How often should I blog?

The question is as old as blogging itself: How often should I blog?

We hear so many of our clients ask this question and you can almost see them quaking in their shoes, terrified of the answer. Many small businesses shy away from blogging because of the time commitment. But the answer to this question may surprise you. Let’s dig in…

WHAT to write about?

Before you set up a blogging schedule, you need to have some idea of what to write about. There are two types of blogs every good editorial calendar should have:

Evergreen topics:

These are the topics that will be relevant to your potential customers today, tomorrow, and well into the future. It is helpful to write several evergreen blogs before you begin posting them to your website. Stockpiling blogs before you begin posting them helps to take some of the intimidation out of a blogging commitment.

Trending topics:

What topics are trending on Google, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook? Can you tie a trending topic into a blog title for your business? This can take a little creativity, but if you can figure out how to incorporate a trending topic into your title, it may result in more traffic to your blog. Be certain to use the trending hashtag in any social media posting you do.

We also just wrote, How To Generate Content Ideas For My Website, which has lots of great tips in it.

How often should you blog?

The good news is that you can set your own blog schedule and still play nicely with Google’s ranking signals. The answer to how often you should blog is: routinely and consistently.

How is that for vague? What I mean by that is once you decide how often you can blog – whether that is twice a week, once a week, twice a month or once a month – stick to that schedule. What Google is looking for when it comes to ranking is consistency. So even if you only blog once a month, just make sure you are posting a blog every month.

One thing you DO NOT want to do – and this happens all the time – is blog dump. We see lots of small businesses with new websites that post like crazy in the first couple of weeks. The business leaders are excited, have great blog titles, and post away for a bit. Like so many small businesses though, the dedicated blogger gets busy doing something else, and the blog page on the website is abandoned. Google is not a fan of this. Not only does this not help your website from a ranking standpoint, but it can also make your website look spammy, which may ultimately damage your online reputation.

It helps if you can start blogging before you actually post to your website. Set up a blog folder and as you have time, write blogs and save to that folder. Once you have six or so saved up, begin posting on a routine basis (of course this only works with evergreen topics). Schedule time each week to blog moving forward. Prioritize your blogging time the same as you would paying bills, or performing another important business task. If you don’t prioritize the work, your website will suffer.

As the Nike brand says, just figure out a reasonable schedule for blogging and just do it.