I always tell people they should be consistent in their business. Especially when the talk is about a blog posting schedule. In this post I will showcase this blog’s traffic for the past months and you will be able to see how posting consistency influences the traffic.
Unfortunately I don’t always practice what I preach. I go around telling people they should post new content to their site or blog at least once a week – yet I haven’t posted much since March. Of course, I try to come up with excuses for myself.
At this very moment I am traveling Europe and I am often too tired and distracted to write a new blog post. I do manage to work on the most important things but I neglect my blogs. When I get in front of my computer with a thought of writing a blog post – I end up watching YouTube videos. So in the end it’s not the “lack of time because I am traveling”, it’s simple laziness and lack of motivation. Once again, I should follow my own advice from a blog post called: Fight Procrastination With a To-Do List.
Let’s get back on topic.
Here are my traffic stats for the past 12 months:
As you can see the traffic is pretty consistent for the six months of 2013 (April-September), 173 to 244 unique visitors per month. However, there is a little spike in traffic in October (338 uniques). That’s simply because I published 2 new posts in October.
Starting from October you can see the traffic growing (most of the time). That’s also because I keep posting new content to the blog. Here is the break-down of posts and traffic:
- October 2013: Two (2 ) posts – 338 uniques
- November 2013: Five (5) posts – 551 uniques
- December 2013: Eight (8) posts – 675 uniques
- January 2014: Fourteen (14) posts – 1,315 uniques
- February 2014: Six (6) posts – 1,134 uniques
- March 2014: Four (4) posts – 761 uniques
- April 2014: One (1) post – 1,527 uniques
You have probably noticed that in April 2014 I only made one single post, yet it was the month with most traffic. This happened simply because one of my posts got a lot of shares (not a lot but more than usual) on a social network. So it’s not something to rely on.
Besides April ’14, which was kind of a glitch, January 2014 was the month with most visitors, also with most posts. A big drop in March (down to 761 visits) because March also has a low number of posts. What’s really interesting is that in January I followed my own advice (Create a Posting Schedule) and actually created a posting schedule. I came up with 15 blog ideas which really helped me with creating that many posts. I should do that for the upcoming months. You should do it as well.
I understand these are not some scientific stats and they are not 100% accurate but they go along with my theory of consistent posting. The more consistent you are – the more results you get. Of course let’s not forget that frequency of new content matters as much as consistency. I strongly believe that posting at least a few times a week will bring greater (and faster) results, compared to posting only a few times a month.
Have anything to add? Comment below!
– Alex
I think the importance of posting regularly slowly diminishes as a site’s authority increases. When a site is new, I’d say it’s 100% vital and probably the best thing you can do for ranking, but later on, you get a bit of leeway and can post less often, sometimes once a month is all that’s needed to maintain traffic, as in your case!
Dominic, I must agree with you on this point… When I think about it, only multi-million dollar portals post many times a day every single day (like HuffPost and BuzzFeed). However, in my case, I am sure that if I don’t post for 3-4 months at all, I will lose a lot of readers over the next 6 months.
You have some great data here Alex! I am already envious. I would firmly agree that posting more than a few times a month is preferable, several times a week is even better. I am experimenting myself at the moment with a number of short sharp posts. I am somewhat different to your previous contributor in that my strength lies in Google+ at the moment and I am struggling with Twitter and Facebook.
Thanks for your comment 😉
Now I gotta make sure my own post motivates me enough to keep on posting as much as possible. I prefer to post 2-3 times a week but with “more-in-detail” posts. However, I might experiment with shorter, 200-300 word posts but I’d try to post 4-5 times a week. And social media… I learn something new about it every day…
Interesting post. I post weekly almost all the time since I started blogging in December but I think my issue has more to do with promotion through social media. Google+ has helped my views a lot but there is an art to Google+ which I haven’t mastered. My field is different than yours but if have a blog post on this or are going to write one I am all ears.:-)
Kathleen, THANK You for reading my post. But most of all, thanks for giving me an idea for another post 😉 I will try to write that one soon!
Cheers,
Alex