Eric Kintz’s posting Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore should help me feel less defensive about my sporadic blogging patterns. He offers ten reasons the traditional pressure to blog daily hurts rather than helps. The most important to me are these:
#3- Loyal readers coming back daily to check your posts is so Web 1.0 – As the blogosphere matures, the number of new readers and bloggers will decrease and loyal readers are going to matter more. …. Loyal readers subscribe to your blog via RSS feeds and have new content pushed to them. They will remain loyal because they have subscribed, not because you post frequently.
#4 – Frequent posting is actually starting to have a negative impact on loyalty: Seth Godin (a frequent blogger) has a very interesting theory. According to him, RSS fatigue is already setting in….
#6: Frequent posting drives poor content quality – … Few bloggers have enough time (or expertise) to write daily thought leadership pieces, thus adding to the clutter.
I don’t know how many loyal readers I have, if any, but non-spammers get here primarily in one of two ways: straight from a Google search, which presumably might lead them to something relevant, or, as noted above, within their RSS reader. Whether I post daily or monthly, whatever I do write will still reach both sets of people.
So, like Kintz,
As for me, I will continue to post only when I have something to say.
Or when I’m in the mood.
Dennis
This is an interesting item to have found. Some frequent posters have a habit of providing a list of found items without providing extracts and commentary as you have, or even without qualifying in any helpful way. Why does anyone think a link is worth following when it could be anything? I agree with your sentiments here. That said, it is also sad when revisiting blogs in a lengthy anticipation of something to come.
Jeff.