I’ll just start by letting you know this is going to be a rather long post [and lots of images!] compared to its on-point findings.
I will take you through multiple blogs from all kinds of industries so we can identify primary trends and preferences when it comes to how often we publish articles on our company blogs.
Spoiler alert: There’s no common rule that says companies from the same industry need to opt for the same post frequency.
I’ve chosen my own approach to analyze hundreds of blogs that are actively publishing content in order for us to get a realistic look at what a successful content schedule should look like.
The short version on how often you should blog
Yes, I know you don’t have time to read it all. So if you just want the key ideas of this post, here they are:
👉 Every company has a different content publishing pattern so relying on what your competitors are doing is not a solution. Find your own goals to define exactly what types of posts you’ll incorporate into your content strategy.
👉 Most brands have adopted a blogging schedule based on the resources they have. More in-house and freelance writers = more content.
👉 Companies who are not able to produce written content on a regular basis turn to filling their blog with other media such as podcasts and videos.
👉 Blogs and writers with evergreen content pieces that rank for several years regularly update their articles and even republish their posts to bring more attention.
👉 Blog post frequency remains one of the least important factors to take into account when crafting a long-term content strategy. Consistency, CTAs, quality of research, promotion, and freshness are just a couple of the elements to pay extra care to.
Read on to see exactly how often other blogs post and what kinds of content they prefer to focus on in their strategies. [Plus, a couple of my own secrets. 😉]
So how many blogs should you post every month?
The complete analysis on how often you should post content on your blog
How often you should blog is a debate for a handful of reasons:
- It helps you maintain your thought leadership
- It provides a steady stream of visitors and leads
- The right post frequency helps you reach your general business goals
- It gives you enough time to plan your content and know when a new post should be up
- Your regular readers can estimate when you’ll publish new articles
Below you’ll find an in-depth analysis of multiple patterns you can opt for.
Pay close attention to the examples from your industry to benchmark the stats against your own plans. You can use your competitors’ experience to see what’s working and what’s not.
For instance, if a competitor posts an article/month and sees no engagement from these attempts, you might want to consider a more frequent post pattern or more comprehensive types of content.
These common approaches for scheduling content include:
Daily
While not realistic for most startups, this remains the way to go for news and media outlets that live off their blogs.
Some examples include:
Crunchbase
Content Marketing Institute
Envato Tuts+
Moz
Companies who have a large pool of writers to work with also attempt posting on a daily basis and even twice a day, like ClearVoice:
Once or twice a week [as much as possible]
This is the safest approach for most companies. Ask anyone how often they think blog posts should be published and they’ll answer with “once or twice a week”. This is because it seems to be the most logical approach, allowing you to publish regular content while also having enough time to prepare it.
BuzzSumo is a clear example of this approach that gives their writers just enough time to research a topic without feeling the pressure of delivering content faster:
Brands like Ben & Jerry’s also opt for this content publishing strategy:
2-3 posts/month
Figma is an example of a company that opts to keep their posts at a 2-3 articles/month frequency. How often they post does depend on the new features and announcements they have to make. So you’ll often see companies with an irregular pattern that changes in time.
On the Animalz blog they deliver content on a weekly basis by also turning their podcast episodes into written posts.
Irregular pattern with few posts
This is really the “whenever inspiration or need strikes” method.
See Adobe Spark:
Clearbit:
Or Fleep as companies who opt to wait until the right idea or opportunity comes around:
Most individual writers and freelancers turn to this approach too. Including myself. This is because we don’t have the time and resources to post high-quality articles often. If you see an individual posting long-form content on a daily/even weekly basis chances are they’re using other writers to keep up with the workload.
Irregular pattern with lots of posts
Bespoke Cycling takes this approach and opts to post whenever they’re launching something new or simply having an announcement to make.
The same idea lies behind the Lyft blog:
And Buffer:
While Etsy doesn’t post on a regular basis, they made it a habit to share seller stories and spotlights. With millions of sellers, they will always have someone to feature:
The Dropbox blog also doesn’t seem to have a strict pattern but they mix in news, customer stories, product tips, and educational content:
Regular updates on a monthly basis
This is honestly the approach I recommend as it involves writing one large evergreen piece of content/month and going back over your past posts to update them.
Despite all of our efforts, a simple search on Google for your keyword of choice will reveal an average life span of 2-3 years for most blog posts. The good news is that this life span can be extended with frequent updates and even opting to republish your evergreen content.
Backlinko is a go-to resource if you want to see this strategy in action:
Blogs like these opt to tackle evergreen topics that are less likely to lose interest from people in time. Google can rank a single piece of content indefinitely as long as readers find it relevant, spend more time reading it, or link back to it.
And yes, non-evergreen articles can be “re-written” and turned into evergreen pieces that will stay relevant for years to come.
Crazy Egg also opts for the regular updates pattern.
And another example from BambooHR:
Plus one from Box:
Brands like ConvertKit where a huge team is behind the content strategy can also take the super regular approach and publish 8-10 times/month. Since they have enough resources to put together pretty much whatever type of content they want, you’ll also see lots of highly researched posts and studies on their blog:
CoSchedule also works with both freelance and in-house writers alike to deal with the workload:
Evernote manages to mix in different goals for their content while also sharing case studies and reports of their own findings:
The Chanty blog is a great example of a company that’s gathered lots of writers and professionals [not too mention the illustrators] to release new content every one or two days. Have a look at their blog posts for just one minute and you’ll notice their clear interest in getting all of their content to rank for a specific keyword.
This blog post frequency does seem to be the one most large companies prefer.
From Drift:
To GoPro:
Regardless of industry.
What’s more important than the frequency of your blog posts
Frequency is far from being the #1 influencer of a post’s success with over 5 factors ruling over the content creation process.
Consistency correlated with goals
More than obsessing about how often you post, aim to maintain the consistency that best suits your goals.
What does this mean?
If you want to create brand awareness and have people remember you, post more often, diversify your materials, and use multiple networks to showcase your content.
If your goal is to bring in traffic and rank high in Google’s SERP, you’ll instead want to focus on long-length posts published anywhere from every 3 weeks to once a month.
Ultimately, a solid evergreen post will help all of your goals. But you do need to choose one main goal you can’t give up on to focus on as you’re creating your content strategy for every single piece.
Don’t raise your hopes just yet!
It can take years to see such results from your content.
That’s why you need to stay committed to creating regular content even when the first posts aren’t bringing in any results in the first months.
Remember that any post matters.
Google adds up all content on similar topics to position you as a leading expert in that subject matter. One year, 30 posts, and a couple of updates later and you’ll see your very first articles ranking well and helping you reach your goals.
Quality of research
There’s no such thing as a high-quality blog post. It’s the research behind a post that conveys the quality and makes the difference.
Taking this simple but overlooked fact into account, it can take months to put together a solid piece of content.
From identifying buyer personas to spotting their pain points, coming up with solutions, and providing a go-to strategy to educate and help your audience. There’s some form of research behind any post. So an article that’s low in quality likely has no research at all and is merely written for the sake of filling up a blog.
Calls-to-action
I’ll just say this: your content is useless if you don’t have a call-to-action (CTA).
Use CTAs strategically to guide blog visitors to relevant pages on your website, redirect them towards landing pages where you can get their email or even sell something to them, or simply keep them on your blog to increase the time they spend on your website as well as your thought leadership.
In the latter situation, they’ll get to see you’re in expert in your field since you’ve tackled multiple related topics and maybe even ran a couple of surveys. Reports, eBooks, podcasts, videos… all of these add up to turn you into a top-of-mind resource for whenever they want to research or reference a topic.
What better way to gain people’s trust? After all, content clusters work for humans as well, not just for Google.
To copy or not?
In general, copying what your competitors are doing is a bad idea. Still, some fields rely more on organic search than others [see ecommerce websites and stores].
Similarly, if your business model is based around your blog or you notice all of your competitors get most of their leads and clients from the content they publish, you’ll want to analyze what competing outlets are doing.
This being said, look to emulate competitors’ blogging activity to keep up with trends and changes. A simple case study for this situation is for you to look at any news outlets. Most of them have a similar publishing schedule that ensures they’re among the first to make an announcement.
Updates and promotion
In other words: everything you do after you publish an article. Just like you make a commitment to publish content regularly you should also aim to keep content updated and promote it.
Anything from getting a simple brand mention to putting together an expert guide that can provide 20+ backlinks adds up to keep your content higher and in front of as many eyeballs as possible.
But promotion isn’t limited to one share on Twitter. You can distribute the same post even a year later if it’s still relevant and you’ll have to spend considerable time to get higher-authority websites linking back to your article in order to strengthen your thought leadership and rank higher.
You can also learn from what others are doing to involve their audience in the sharing process. As an example, freeCodeCamp adds the following CTA buttons at the end of every post:
Similar approaches include adding visible social sharing buttons, highlighting important statements and paragraphs you want people to remember, or prompting people to share them with a single click as in this example from the Content Marketing Institute:
In addition, there are roughly 16 on-page SEO elements you’ll need to update as often as possible. Keeping your posts fresh involves doing regular checks on the keywords you’ve used to see if anything’s changed, adding relevant internal links when publishing new content, making sure facts, numbers, and reports are still valid, and so many more little details that are sure to raise your article in time.
What’s next for you
So how often should you publish new articles on your blog?
Don’t let anyone’s research dictate how often you’re going to publish your blog posts. Take into account the realistic resources and time you have available as well as your goals. You clearly can’t put together daily posts with limited resources, rank for all of them, and provide a steady influx of leads.
To create your first schedule and editorial calendar, balance your resources with your goals. Deciding how often it’s best to publish new articles is largely a matter of how often you’re able to write new content while maintaining it’s quality.
Don’t set your hopes too high expecting a boom in traffic after the launch of just one guide. As a rough guideline, next are some hands-on examples your business might fall under:
1. Startup or small business – Your budget is limited and you don’t have enough resources for weekly posts. Have a content strategist develop an editorial calendar for articles and guides that you, your team, or guest posters can write to showcase their own knowledge. After all, content that’s written by your team is always authentic since readers can trust their knowledge. Once a week or every other week will do for the first few months.
2. Enough funding for marketing – Hire an in-house or freelance content strategist/manager [even an on-page SEO expert can help with this] to craft your content strategy. Work with external freelancers, partners, and guest posters to publish at least once/week.
3. “I’m not sure I believe in the power of content.” – 52 articles. One article/week for a year. That’s the maximum you need to test out until you start seeing some results. Work with a content expert [again, an SEO or marketing manager might have experience with this too] for 2-3 years and you’ll be glad you read this piece of advice.
4. “My competitor posts twice a day.” – This is indeed no rare sight in competitive industries. If your resources are limited though, you’re stuck at point 1 of this list. Have a decent budget? See point 2.
Remember these are just recommendations and, as I’ve mentioned throughout the article, you’ll have to go your own way. But you can always trust a content strategist with this too. 😉
In all cases, your marketing strategy will benefit from a higher content flow only if what you write provides value. If it doesn’t, you’re wasting time and money on a strategy that could rack up millions of views and sales when implemented correctly.
Alexandra Cote 🚀 