Hitting Your Stride: Four Keys to Timing Your Blog
Enzo F. Cesario
A Free-Reprint Article Written by: Enzo F. Cesario
Article Title:
Hitting Your Stride: Four Keys to Timing Your Blog
See TERMS OF REPRINT to the end of the article.
Article Description:
There are a number of important factors that go into the
production of a first-class blog. One that many people
wrestle with is how often should the thing be updated.
Innocuous as it sounds, post frequency is actually vital to
the success of any content project, and especially to blogs.
Time, place, and availability of content all have parts to
play in determining just how often you need to update your
blog.
Additional Article Information:
===============================
895 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line
Distribution Date and Time: 2010-03-04 10:00:00
Written By: Enzo F. Cesario
Copyright: 2010
Contact Email: mailto:ennzo.f...@thephantomwriters.com
For more free-reprint articles by Enzo F. Cesario, please visit:
http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/recent/author/enzo-f_-cesario.html
=============================================
Special Notice For Publishers and Webmasters:
=============================================
HTML Copy-and-Paste and TEXT Copy-and-Paste
Versions Of Article Are Available at:
http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/c/blog-timing.shtml#get_code
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Hitting Your Stride: Four Keys to Timing Your Blog
Copyright (c) 2010 Enzo F. Cesario
BrandSplat
http://www.Brandsplat.com/
There are a number of important factors that go into the
production of a first-class blog. Quality of content, the layout
of the page, how best to integrate video, formal versus informal
tone, each of these is a decision that must be made during the
creation of the project. That all comes before more esoteric
concerns, which include the integration of meta tags, link
building, traffic generation, and keyword/SEO implementation.
Yet underlying these important issues is one that many people
wrestle with: How often should the thing be updated? Innocuous as
it sounds, post frequency is actually vital to the success of any
content project, and especially to blogs. Equally, it is a
surprisingly complex decision that can involve numerous factors.
Time, place, and availability of content all have parts to play
in determining just how often you need to update your blog.
Finding the Right Frequency
Blogging is an extension of the principles of marketing. You want
to get your content the exposure you feel it deserves, so you
market it as best you can to cultivate an audience. This involves
doing the legwork and research necessary to act on good
information, and testing your ideas while allowing room for
adjustment as you work and grow. Chances are you will not hit the
right rate of posting immediately, and that is all right as long
as you're prepared to adjust when it's required.
No single article can cover every eventuality of course, but we
can break down a few core principles to get you thinking in the
right direction. The key is to consider these ideas and
extrapolate from them, using the other lessons you've learned,
to build a solid, whole-picture approach.
1 - Make content king.
More than almost any other community, web users are keenly
attuned to fluff pieces that don't really say much. This isn't
true for 100% of the community of course, but those who can pick
out an airy, pointless piece will almost invariably be sure to
point it out, leading to some word of mouth you probably didn't
want. Don't pick an update schedule that can't live up to the
content you have available. Stick to a schedule that you know you
can provide a quality post for, every single time you sign on.
This has a twofold effect. One, it keeps the 'pressure to post'
at a minimum. Content drives the posting, and you aren't
struggling every third day to come up with more information, or
worse to rehash the information you've already posted. Secondly,
it shows you have respect for the community, and keeps them
interested and coming back.
2 - Set the time and day.
Even though the web never sleeps, a great part of the world still
functions on a Monday to Friday, 9-5 schedule of sorts. Taking
these rhythms into account can help you build the ideal web
traffic for your project. For example, a blog focusing on home
and family concerns and selling books related to it might not
find as much of an audience during traditional business hours as
during the time when people are at-home with their families.
Granted this is only a rule of thumb, as many people surf the web
for their favorite blogs during lunch breaks.
Another part of this element is the Monday-Wednesday-Friday
cycle. Many business blogs and publications settle on a
three-a-week update schedule, and the MWF routine works out very
well for this. They're all business days, and the schedule
covers the start, middle, and end stretches of a workweek.
Of course since this ends up being something of the default, it
means that Tuesdays and Thursdays end up with comparatively
little content for people to peruse. Sundays suffer a lack of
content as well, for the obvious related reasons. If you find
yourself preferring less frequent, longer posts, consider a T-Th
routine to take advantage of the 'gap' between other updates.
3 - Have a conversation.
One of the most interesting contributions to modern marketing is
the blog comments section. Every blogging software out there has
some feature for allowing or disallowing comments. As we've
discussed before, consumer input can have an incredible effect on
any brand, and blogs are no exception.
Taking advantage of this resource requires a certain amount of
patience. Conversations develop in the comments section as people
discuss, dispute, and debate the merits of what you've posted.
In short, you need to not just let this happen, but cultivate the
effect. Allow reasonable discussions to grow, and comment
yourself on the more relevant points. Let the consumer know their
input is being seen, and that you care enough to respond to it.
Posting new blog posts too frequently overruns this tendency, and
could rob you of vital feedback.
4 - Be nimble.
As we've mentioned, you are not likely to get it right just out
of the gate. You may bite off too much to chew, or update too
infrequently for people to care. Evaluate the data, ask your
consumers questions, and be prepared to change as needed.
Flexibility is the ultimate survival tool on the web, and your
blog will benefit if you approach the affair with an open mind
and a willingness to try several approaches. Pick an update
schedule, observe it, and then experiment with others until you
have the one that best fits your needs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and
co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat
creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice"
of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands
more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to
http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at
http://www.iBrandCasting.com/
--- END ARTICLE ---
Get HTML or TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of This Article at:
http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/c/blog-timing.shtml#get_code
.....................................
TERMS OF REPRINT - Publication Rules
(Last Updated: May 11, 2006)
Our TERMS OF REPRINT are fully enforcable under the terms of:
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR:
.....................................
*** Digital Reprint Rights ***
* If you publish this article in a website/forum/blog,
You Must Set All URL's or Mailto Addresses in the body
of the article AND in the Author's Resource Box as
Hyperlinks (clickable links).
* Links must remain in the form that we published them.
Clean links should point to the Author's links without
redirects having been inserted into the copy.
* You are not allowed to Change or Delete any Words or
Links in the Article or Resource Box. Paragraph breaks
must be retained with articles. You can change where
the paragraph breaks fall, but you cannot eliminate all
paragraph breaks as some have chosen to do.
* Email Distribution of this article Must be done through
Opt-in Email Only. No Unsolicited Commercial Email.
* You Are Allowed to format the layout of the article for
proper display of the article in your website or in your
ezine, so long as you can maintain the author's interests
within the article.
* You may not use sentences from this article as an input
for any software that steals sentences from others in
order to build an article with software. The copyright on
this article applies to the "WHOLE" article.
*** Author Notification ***
We ask that you notify the author of publication of his
or her work. Enzo F. Cesario can be reached at:
ennzo.f...@thephantomwriters.com
*** Print Publication Reprint Rights ***
If you desire to publish this article in a PRINT
publication, you must contact the author directly
for Print Permission at:
mailto:ennzo.f...@thephantomwriters.com
.....................................
If you need help converting this text article for proper
hyperlinked placement in your webpage, please use this
free tool: http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl
Would you like to learn how to improve the performance of your
article marketing campaigns? Download our F.R.E.E. 108-page
Article Marketing Ebook at:
http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/advanced-article-marketing.html
*****************************************************************
*
* This email is being delivered directly to members of the group:
*
* Spider-Sear...@googlegroups.com
*
*****************************************************************
=====================================================================
ABOUT THIS ARTICLE SUBMISSION
http://thePhantomWriters.com/ is a paid article distribution
service. thePhantomWriters.com and Article-Distribution.com
are owned and operated by:
Bill Platt
3010 E Raintree
Stillwater, Oklahoma USA 74074
Learn more about our article distribution services by visiting:
http://thephantomwriters.com/x.pl/tpw/info/article-distribution/index.html
The content of this article is solely the property
and opinion of its author, Enzo F. Cesario
http://www.Brandsplat.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
---------------------------------------------------------------------