Frequency in Blogging for PR
There are plenty of people blogging for different reasons, whether that be to market a company, service, or product, earn directly from blogging through ad revenue or other means, or blogging for PR value for a person, organization, or business.
One thing that all of these blogging models or motivations have in common is the fact that they can all benefit from more traffic, visitors, readers, or whatever you prefer to call them. More traffic equals more potential customers, more potential ad revenue, more exposure, larger audiences, etc.
Whether you post once per day, once per week, etc., consistency can make a difference (something that I fully admit I don’t adhere to well on this blog).
I’ve also found that frequency can be just as important as consistency in blogging (at least in my case). For example, when I took my freelance writing blog to an increased frequency (now posting one or more times pretty much daily for a few months), traffic (and income) quickly more than doubled.
I’m wondering if those of you blogging solely as a PR function (whether for your own blog or a client’s) have found similar things to be true as far as the effectiveness of the blogging goes. How do you determine things like frequency and consistency when blogging for PR? Do you only blog when there’s news to share? Do you encourage more regular posting to keep visitors coming back? How much do you feel these things should depend on the specific audience (in other words, do all audiences need you to blog frequently or regularly to keep coming back)?
Do you consider RSS feed availability to be a substitute for regular posting, because readers can be automatically notified (my experience shows that regular blogging still has a significant effect, even on increasing those subscribers, but I’m interested to hear what other people think or have experienced)?
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Comments
Terrific post, Jennifer. I’m a one-man band mashup of novelist, journalist, podcaster, blogger and self-marketer … which gives me a unique perspective on how RSS evangelism engages audiences, and cultivates new consumers.
I’ve found that the frequency of posting new content — be it podcasts or blog posts — in my RSS feed absolutely makes a difference with an audience. The more I blog, the more page views (and opportunities for readers to listen to my podcast) I receive. Comment activity goes through the roof. Conversations emerge. Knowledge is shared.
In addition to maintaining a lively blog (I now post new content at least every other day), I leverage the power of Twitter to announce these blog posts to the folks who “follow” me in that space. This also drives traffic and enthusiasm to the site.
I do agree with Jill’s comment above: quality is key, as is subject matter. Finding “sweet spot” topics to blog about is critical, and finding those perfect topics requires a knowledge of your audience, and what they’re hungry to read (and comment on).
Thanks for the thoughtful post. Keep up the great work!
I am very new to blogging. I am studying public relations at a university, and have begun to learn about the social phenomenon. It has yet to become a part of my daily routine, but as a potential public relations practitioner, I feel it is bound to play a part in my career at some point in time. As technology advances, computers have become more than just a simple word processor. They have created a completely new genre of mass communication.
After reading your post, I agree that consistency and frequency are both important. This seems to hold true in several areas of life. As the rest of your post, I think that an audience looks forward to new and updated posts. As they get used to visiting a particular blog, they get in the flow of reading and commenting the sites. I agree that is an effective way to increase traffic, or maintain an already high level.
As both previous comments state, it is always about the quality of a piece rather than the quantity.
I truly found your website interesting. Thanks!
Catherine,
Thanks for bringing my attention back to this post. I actually had an odd experience over the last two months with this very blog on the issue of consistency.
I took a blogging break for those two months on Naked PR. While monitoring my stats I found it fascinating that my unique visitors actually INCREASED while I wasn’t blogging! Traffic overall seemed to stay very close to where it was before, but nonetheless I didn’t expect to see that (and it’s never happened on any other blog I’ve managed).
I can’t explain it. A friend mentioned possibly search engine traffic increased, but as it turns out, it really didn’t. So I’m baffled, and my blog made a liar out of me. lol Or perhaps people just like me better when I’m quiet. 
At inmedialog.com, our goal is to publish content everyday during the workweek. Sometimes we miss a day or two but in general we meet our objective. Since we started blogging in September, our schedule hasn’t changed much but we have seen our traffic steadily increase.
When our shop shut down over the holiday break, we didn’t blog for a few weeks. During this time we saw our traffic drop off.
Our traffic seems to peak mid week and slow down on the weekends. While this may have something to do with the fact that we don’t blog on weekends, I think people also tend to spend less time reading blogs on Sunday and Saturday.
In general, especially when starting a new blog, I think it’s very important to post frequently and establish a schedule your readers can depend on. However, it truly is a matter of quality over quantity.