How Solo Bloggers Can Publish More Regularly

How Solo Bloggers Can Publish More Regularly

Random and sporadic publishing results in much less traffic than you could have if you published more reliably (and more often). Have a look at this bar graph from seven days of traffic on my own blog. Which day do you think I published a blog post?

It’s not a huge difference, but it is a noticeable one.

When you blog, more people come and read. You have to publish to get visitors.

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All the drafts, ideas, or SEO magic in the world won’t help you if you do not publish blog posts. Blogger Kevin Duncan recently (and humorously) shared his findings on what happened when he blogged every day. What did he discover?
No surprises here. He found that by publishing on his blog daily, he had:

• An 84% increase in the social shares of his blog posts.
• A 119% increase in comments on his content.
• A steady bounce rate (meaning he didn’t trade low traffic for more visitors that left quickly)
• A 46% increase in traffic in general.

Heck, publishing every day must be the solution! Maybe twice a day!
Noooo.
A team blog might be able to publish every day, but that’s asking a lot of a solo blogger, particularly if you’re really into long-form content. Maybe you’re a real whiz kid, and you can pull it off, but most of us can’t keep that kind of publishing schedule up on a regular basis, particularly if you have a full-time job or freelance clients to attend to.
So no. This isn’t an admonition to blog every day. Please, let’s not mistake the problem of haphazard publishing with one demanding daily publishing.
At the end of Duncan’s experiment, despite the increase in traffic and shares, he realized that kind of schedule was too demanding on him, and that it left him little time to promote or build social proof. It is possible to publish regularly…once a week. Or twice a week. In fact, regular publishing has no numerical definition. It just has two qualities that need to be met:
1. You publish on a regular schedule so people know what to expect.

• Do I know who my audience is? (distracted and want something new every few days vs. reading once a week is fine)
• Do I know what is expected or typical of my niche? (breaking news every hour vs. nothing changes in a decade)
• Have I created categories that I can regularly write on? (giving each category equal attention)

2. You publish on a regular schedule so you don’t find yourself forgetting to publish.

• How much time do I have to create new content? (get a calendar, look at the clock, and do the math)
• How many words can I handle per post? (sit down, write a few posts without fussing, and see what your typical word count seems to be)
• Do I have a list of headlines ready to go? Have I brainstormed ideas before hand? (planning ahead is hard if you don’t have anything to work with to put on your calendar)

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