This is a timely post for me as I’m halfway through a 30 day blogging challenge right now. It’s a well-named challenge because it’s… well it’s a challenge, and a tough one for me at that. I’ve committed to writing a blog post every day for 30 days and it’s hard. It’s led me to ask myself, am I blogging too much?
I’ve worked long days and had late nights / early mornings for 15 days now and it’s taking its toll. I’m tired, irritable and frustrated (sometimes) that I’m locked into something I have to see out to the end.
As a rule I normally write and publish between 3 to 4 times a week. Sometimes I’ve found that to be a punishing enough schedule. However the 30 day blogging challenge has taken me to another realm entirely… and one that has led me to this post.
Is blogging too much actually bad for you?
There are two ways of looking at this:
- The personal impact.
- The impact on your blog traffic.
I’m going to explore both of these points, partly so I can weigh up the overall cost / benefit for me and my blog. The other reason is to understand if the ends justify the means.
I’ll explain what it has meant for me personally and what the industry consensus is around how often should you blog.
I also hope by sharing my experiences of this increased blogging activity, it will help if you’re planning on upping your blogging output on a short or long-term basis.
Is Blogging Too Much Bad for You Personally?
Blogging intensively might be okay if you don’t need to carry out any research to back up what you say. A more discursive type of blog post, such as this one, is relatively undemanding to produce.
In a discursive type of post you’re only pouring out your own thoughts. You don’t have to stop writing to double-check something. Neither do you have to create images like you do for a tutorial. If I only ever wrote posts like these, I’m pretty confident I could knock out a dozen each week.
Unfortunately for me, the direction I’ve chosen for SideGains means most of my content takes a long time to produce. Hence 3 to 4 posts per week helps me to post regularly and gives me time to do the other things I need to do:
- Blog maintenance.
- Social media marketing.
- Link building.
- Research.
Adding to my normal posting schedule has meant I have had to work long hours to get everything done… and sometimes I simply can’t do it all.
Blogging too much for me appears to be anything over 4 times per week. This is assuming I’m producing the type of content I normally publish. But I don’t enjoy it!
I also think that working long-term at this rate would see me having to devote all my time to blogging. I already give up a substantial amount of time in my normal schedule. So for me personally blogging too much is a bad thing.
If I were to continue, I’m sure that blogger burnout would be a pretty regular thing to deal with. Right now I only have half of the challenge remaining so I can see an end to it.
If I had to post every day like I’m doing now I’m pretty sure my mental health would suffer and my relationships would be hit hard too.
Is Blogging Too Much Bad for Your Blog?
Conversely, it’s pretty much the general consensus that blogging too much is not bad for your blog at all. Of course this assumes you don’t write spammy fluff and focus on high quality blog posts. Don’t forget… high-quality content is important for search engines to take you seriously.
In mid-2019, the Marketing Insider Group carried out multiple studies across a range of websites and determined among other things:
- The more posts you publish the more traffic you get.
- Publishing 11 posts and above each month leads to tangible results in traffic growth.
You might think this isn’t rocket science. However this research also shows that on average, those who publish 16 blog posts per month see 3.5 times as much traffic as those who publish 4 times per month.
Love-him-or-loathe-him uber-blogger Neil Patel advises he only writes one blog post per month in this video:
This might be great for Neil because he has over 4,000 posts stacking up behind him. So perhaps he’s not a great example for most of us mortals. However, he also tells us that the more competitive your niche, the more posts you’ll have to publish to compete.
The point is here that as long as you’re producing high-quality, unique content, the more you produce the better. It would appear in this scenario that you can’t publish too much content for it to be a problem. The opposite in fact.
Of course there’s a resource problem when you’re a lone-blogger, since there is a limit to what you can do.
For me that’s 1 blog post per day of between 1,200 and 2,000 words… but only for 30 days!
The Benefits of Publishing 7 Posts a Week to SideGains
I’ll publish a report on the benefits of blogging every day for 30 days when my challenge has finished. At that point, it’ll be interesting to see if there has been a tangible traffic benefit as a direct result.
My gut feel right now is that it’ll be difficult to directly attribute any traffic gains to this posting schedule. Especially since Google ran a core algorithm update on 4th May… but we’ll see.
Summary
- We know that the more content you produce, the better you’re chances are of competing in your niche.
- The blogging sweet spot for growing traffic appears to be 11+ posts per month.
- You need to find a balance between producing enough content to grow and being able to do everything else you need to to support the other things going on in your life.
Blogging more than 4 times a week for me is not good. It takes a lot of time for me to produce the kind of posts I write. Any more than this over the long-term is too much of a commitment for me.
This might be different for you depending on your niche and the type of posts you usually write.
That’s all from me now!
Paul
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What’s your opinion? Can you blog too much? Let me know your thoughts in a comment below.
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