I am often asked, “How regularly should I blog?”
I’ve seen plenty of people in the online hive mind recommending weekly blogging. I’ve also had clients coming to me in a cold sweat of panic because their web designer has told them to blog weekly.
While I would agree that blogging weekly is optimal, I NEVER recommend this to someone new to blogging – here’s why…
New to blogging?
If you’re new to blogging, aiming to do it once a week is a little like running a marathon when you can’t even run for a bus!
You’re setting yourself up to fail.
You may do it initially – in the bloom of motivation we all experience from novelty – but you’ll quickly run out of steam and stall.
It’s in these moments, where try as you might, you just can’t bring yourself to blog that those feelings of failure, or shame that you ‘should’ be able to do this, propagate.
A quiet voice gradually gets louder, saying… “writing is hard” or “I just can’t do this”, it drip-drips the poisonous idea that you ‘hate writing’.
You feel like you’re failing.
You’re frustrated because you should be able to do this – you’re an intelligent person, you know your stuff – so why does it have to be so hard?
Pretty soon, the temptation arises to just get shot of the problem. Why not just offload it onto someone else instead of facing up to it?
These are the moments when you may consider paying a copywriter to do it. But, there’s a professional pride stopping you, you really don’t want to have to admit defeat, and from a practical standpoint, can you really budget for such an expense every week?
You want to do it yourself, but it’s all a bit overwhelming – Just another thing nagging you from that endless To Do list: ‘Write a blog post’.
You’d feel like you’re cheating if you paid someone to write it for you, cheating yourself and cheating your clients – and besides, “this is my business. I want it to sound like me!”
Weekly Blogging is tough
Sound Familiar?
I’m a writer, I love writing, but even I still I struggle to write an original blog post every week (and writing is my thing, for goodness sake)!
I publish something at least weekly on my blog, but I don’t always write it!
Check out my ‘Reach Out with Guest Blogging’ course for more on getting content for your blog for free and supporting others, too: win-win!
(It’s cheaper than a copywriter and you’ll get people sending you blog posts for free!)
Because I’ve been regularly blogging for four years now, I’ve built up an audience, a following and a certain amount of influence as a blogger – people now approach me and offer me money to host them on my blog!
I’ve NEVER paid anyone to write for me, but I’ve had people pay me money to be on my blog! So, yes, I do get it. Sometimes it’s a relief having someone else write that ‘chapter’ in the story of my business that week. Even better if they pay you instead of the other way around!
However, it takes time to build up enough credibility for people to offer you money to be on your blog. And while you’re procrastinating, while you’re NOT blogging, you have no chance of building up a library of blogs – which you own the copyright for – to add value to many different areas of your business.
So, for someone new to blogging, how often should they blog?
My advice is to aim to write a blog once a month.
That’s all, just a few hours every month (it’ll take less time as you get into the swing of it).
Something will always happen every month in your business, so you should have no trouble coming up with ideas! Also, from a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO – in other words, getting up the Google rankings) point of view, monthly is enough to keep your website active for search engines. Also, when people visit your site, they will see you have recent content, eliminating that question about whether a business is still operating if they go to a page that’s out of date.
Monthly is enough.
Celebrate that success. Write your monthly post then reward yourself for doing it! If you manage more than that, bonus.
Paradoxically, what you’ll find once you write monthly is you’ll end up writing a blog weekly without even realising it.
You’ll be building a routine into your monthly workflow, and the lovely thing about writing regularly is that you find a flow, you get better, you get proficient and you have more and more ideas.
Before long you’ll have lists and books of ideas for blogs you’d like to write and the problem then becomes making time to write as much as you want to!
You learn to love the process of sharing your ideas and your creativity, writing a blog becomes a reward rather than a chore. It becomes something to savour, something to be proud of and something that brings great satisfaction once it’s done.
One day, you’ll look back, as I did recently, and realise you’ve been writing for years and have hundreds of articles – amazing!
Learn to love your words!
FREE ‘Creating a Content Calendar’ workshop available HERE