The Myth (And Danger) Of Posting To Your Blog Every Day

You’ve probably heard this before…

They say that it is a good idea to post to your blog every single day. They say that the more you post, the more Google will like you and that your audience will grow faster.

Some people don’t even start blogging or doing content marketing because they think it will be too demanding. They don’t have time, or so they think.

I’m going to bust the myth right now. I’m going to free you from that trap. It is blogging advice that others give that I think really misleads people and does a lot of harm.

You Create Your Own Rat Wheel

Blogging all too easily becomes this thankless rat wheel. You hop on it and start writing. And you write. And you write. Not necessarily because your audience is demanding it, but because you think you need to do it. You give yourself quotas.

It is inevitable… at some point, the fact that it is an endless rat wheel becomes apparent. You have one of those days when you struggle with what to write about. You’re just not feelin’ it. But, then, you try to force it so you can meet your quota.

And then…

Your Content Quality Suffers

Again, unless you are God’s gift to blogging, this is inevitable. Your posts will be shorter. They’ll repeat themselves. They’ll be only surface-level stuff.

You’re not creating “epic shit” (as my friend Corbett Barr likes to call it). You’re just creating shit.

But, also look at your audience and what you’re doing to them…

Your Audience Yawns It Off – Or Goes Cross-Eyed

If you’re publishing “blah” stuff, your audience will think it is “blah”. Sure, you might get a few loyal followers… but those people are probably there because of those few really killer posts you’ve put out there when you were REALLY compelled to write those killer posts. The stuff in between – the stuff you wrote just to feed the rat wheel – is stuff they probably don’t care too much about.

And so you get very few comments. You get little reaction and acknowledgement.

But, let’s assume, for a minute, that you’re one of these magic workers who can post incredible stuff every single day. Is that a good idea?

Well, you can also OVERRUN your audience. You can give them so much stuff that they can’t keep up. You become a source of noise to them – even if the stuff you’re producing is awesome.

So, instead of hanging on your every word, they look at your blog like a firehose and they’ll just check on it every now and then. When they’re in the mood. In terms of having an audience that ACTS when you want them do, that’s not a good idea.

You’re basically hypnotizing your audience through constant, unending inflow.

A Few Observations From Personal Experience

I’ve done both.

My tech site still has a 5-day posting schedule, and we post 2-3 posts per day over there. I can tell you that it is difficult to keep up with that. And I have to pay people to help keep up that volume. Now, that niche almost requires that kind of volume – so I keep rolling with it. But, honestly – I’m beginning to plan my exit. In fact, I’m probably going to put the plan into action fairly soon to sell that site. One of the many reasons for this is because I’m ready to step off that rat wheel that is the tech niche. The tech niche is awesome in a lot of ways, but I’m ready for something different.

Then we take this site. I used to post every day. Now, I post maybe once or twice per week. In fact, I’m seriously thinking of moving it down to a once weekly schedule, but just making sure each post has some serious meat to it.

Interestingly, as I’ve adjusted my volume on this site, I’ve had NO negative consequences in the site’s traffic. So, in my experience, posting every day was just a waste of time. I know friends of mine who saw their traffic steadily INCREASE as they posted LESS.

How could that happen?

Well, consider how SEO is changing. It used to be that you wanted as much fuel for the search spiders as you could. However, today things are changing. Google is looking for quality indicators. One of the indicators they use are social signals such as +1’s, retweets, shares, etc.

In order to get people to share things, you need to write epic stuff WORTH sharing.

Not only that, you want to have a volume that people can easily consume. You want them to see the release of a new post as an EVENT. Something worth paying attention to. Leave them wanting just a bit more from you at all times and they’ll be hungry to hear from you.

Here’s the other positive side effect of posting less…

It gives you more time to concentrate on what will REALLY build your business. Things like promotion, product creation, marketing.

If you’re so busy feeding the rat wheel, you’ll never have the time to build your assets and your business.

It is the 80/20 rule all over again. For most bloggers, they spend 80% of their time feeding the rat wheel and it only leads to 20% of their results. Time to flip that bad-boy on it’s head!

You Are Free!

So, I give you permission, as it were, to post less.

Post less, but make the stuff you publish really worth somebody’s time. Give them take-aways. Make sure your posts will help them achieve a result they want.

Blogging isn’t a business model. It is just a marketing vehicle for a business. (click to tweet that)

If you’re spending no time building the business behind the blog – and spending all your time just feeding the blog – then you’re completely wasting your freakin’ time.

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Before I leave you, I’m super-excited to soon announce some big changes for this blog and my entire business. In fact, it has a lot to do with that quote I asked you to tweet out above. 🙂 Stay tuned for that. M’kay?