Stop Counting Your Blog Posts

Thursday, December 11th, 2008 by Roderick Ioerger

Stop Counting Your Blog Posts

Developing quality content has become the primary driver of success for many online businesses that rely on SEO. Investing the time and energy to author a blog has become an extremely popular tactic when it comes to implementing a content strategy, but often a newly created blog fails to have an overriding purpose. Many online marketers view blogs as a strategy instead of as a tool that has a much more significant purpose.

Josh Klein a guest author at ProBlogger.net suggests:

Thinking tactically – writing a one-off post, promoting yourself, optimizing for search, building links – is all well and good, but won’t matter in the end unless it moves you towards the right goal.

So the question then becomes what is the overriding purpose of your blog? Josh has a number of excellent suggestions on what the end goal of many blogs might be. I highly recommend reading his article and taking the time to think critically about your own blog if you have one or are thinking of starting one.

One of the things I see most often with new bloggers is that they cling to this idea that the quantity of blog posts is what is important in establishing a blog. I tend to read a lot of blogs and I do a lot of writing but I do very little publishing.

I hold to the belief that every day there are only one or two really good articles / blog posts related to internet marketing and or SEO and more often than not I am not the first person to cover them for this blog or I fail to locate them, so many times a week or more goes by between my blog posts.

My posting isn’t sporadic because there isn’t news to write about, there is always news to write about, but the topics that interest me and the topics that I feel I can add some level of value to are few and far between which leads me to I choose not to publish posts just for the sake of publishing.

Josh Korr suggests that many media outlets and journalists, bloggers are included in that description, need to:

…practice innovation-by-omission. That is, they need to stop writing stories that don’t deserve to be written.

This concept seems to get over looked by new and or overzealous bloggers looking to implement blogging as an SEO tactic. What this also means is that maybe some bloggers have selected the wrong SEO tactic.

If the majority of a bloggers posts are a brief, and I emphasize brief, rehashing of news that many other online outlets have already covered then how will this add value to the bloggers audience? Build audience share? Or generate back links? What I am saying is that if you don’t have value to add then why expend the energy to blog when you could be doing something more productive with your time?

One of the authors from a Big Red Notebook tells us:

One of the most frustrating things about this business is the lack of solid data supporting various content-based strategies. Some of us have a very good idea of what works, but we don’t always have the numbers to prove it. Even when we do have numbers, the inherently subjective nature of relative content quality complicates even the best efforts to generate good data. Additionally, the variable-rich marketing environment makes it very hard to put that much faith in the stats we have.

The truth of the matter is there isn’t one right answer for everyone as to which content strategy will work best for which business. What I do know is that blogging like so many other forms of online marketing requires a level of commitment and focus that often just gets lost in the shuffle of how many posts did I make today?

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21 comments on “Stop Counting Your Blog Posts”

Kenney and Kim Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 7:34 am

Good post.

…”if you don’t have value to add then why expend the energy to blog when you could be doing something more productive with your time?”

True. Content is important, but interesting, quality, helpful, valuable content is even more important. Plus most bloggers could be spending some of their time marketing their blog or they won’t have anyone to read it anyway.
What Is The Purpose Of Your Blog? | Shaun Low Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 9:06 am

[...] Comments [...]
Adi Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 11:46 am

I quite agree. The tech industry in particular is ripe with dozens of blogs all covering the same bit of news, often in the same way. From a reading point of view it’s always better to have unique insight into an issue rather than regurgitation of the facts.

Adi’s last blog post..Are you Mahayana or Hinayana?
Vlad Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

As for me, I think that blog is a tool for earning money
LEADSExplorer Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

A blog can be used for two purposes:
- To generate advertising revenue
- To generate interest in views of company in order ot eventully generate a lead.

There is too much remixing of content of others.
It is hard work to create new content several times a week.
In the end the cost for blogging for a company will be probably the same as paying for advertising. There are no miracles.
Erwin Tan Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

To me.. blog is a very useful and important medium

Erwin Tan’s last blog post..Unleashing The Niche Genius In You
Matt Helphrey Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 10:52 pm

I’ve pondered this too and have tried several different ways to blog. In the long run, informative helpful, content rich posts that are theme relevant is what I aim for. Overdoing the keywords and just posting to get MORE content may harm your blog more than help it in the long run.

Matt Helphrey’s last blog post..Develop a Link Building Strategy
SeoBrain Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 11:29 pm

Its hard to get popular for new blog right now, we must take triple times energy to promote our new blog now. I think that way we just do not all of time, when we think our blog is enough popular we just take action to maintain that, because its not really hard to get new backlink if we have popular blog, other people will do that.
Josh Klein Says:

December 11th, 2008 at 11:55 pm

Your title (“Stop Counting Your Blog Posts”) really succinctly conveys exactly what I was talking about in my post — clearly, you get it

As bloggers, we tend to obsess over the littlest things. How many visits did I get? How many links do I have? How many posts can I churn out in a week?

Perfectionism can be an asset… unless you spend time perfecting the wrong things. Josh Korr’s idea of innovation-by-omission is smart (why didn’t I think of that line?) — we need to spend more time deciding what NOT to waste our breathe (and more importantly, our readers’ eyeballs) on.

As Roderick says, blogging is just another online marketing tool you need to think about holistically — how does it fit into the bigger picture? A blog is almost always a means to an end… but what end?

Josh Klein’s last blog post..Ranking highly in search engines has nothing to do with SEO
Internet Marketing Strategies Says:

December 12th, 2008 at 2:50 am

Interesting post. I hate when I see rehashed posts of same stuff, or the same story over and over on different blogs.

Internet Marketing Strategies’s last blog post..THE Tip to Staying Organized in Internet Marketing
Ami Ohayon Says:

December 12th, 2008 at 8:17 am

It’s a very good point … now, it’s possible to post too little, and unfortunately my blog is an example of that. Time has been so short, but I’m hoping to up my posting regularity a little.
Nicole Price Says:

December 12th, 2008 at 8:49 am

The famous “Find a niche” advise is becoming extremely difficult to implement. Frankly, this whole blog business is getting to be quite crowded! Perhaps over crowded. I would not be surprised if like all other businesses, the weak ones start falling off!

Nicole Price’s last blog post..Festive Discounts
PS3 Says:

December 12th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

I agree it shouldn’t be a matter of counting. If you have relevant content to post, then post it, but don’t go searching for things just to fill space or time.
Utah SEO Pro Says:

December 12th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

One of my biggest things is the more you publish the more you push older post away, and people tend to think older content is stale content. It’s only stale if the post is timely. Older resources can be great.

Utah SEO Pro’s last blog post..SEO and Usability – SES Chicago 2008 Presentation
myrtle beach apartments Says:

December 14th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

i see bloggers posting 10 and 20 posts a day, how do these things even get found? and soon as they are published they get pushed to the 2nd page. the only way it is found is if google crawls it
AIDS Drugs Says:

December 21st, 2008 at 3:39 pm

I think too often bloggers don’t take a second to think who would want to read these posts? so they end up with tons of blog posts, sometimes even decent quality but no audience.
Breakline Marketing Says:

January 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm

[...] of your blog, you must take steps to ensure you are on your way to continually meeting the goal. Many bloggers have the impression that more posts equal a solid blog. As quantity becomes the focus, quality and importance often drop. As you write your next post, read [...]
Sarah Says:

January 2nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm

A blog must be genuine…or appear to be genuine. Points already touched upon- blogs for advertising, keyword usage, content- are only successful if they also are useful to the reader. The advertising will then follow along as a secondary advantage.

Sarah’s last blog post..Does your blog have a goal?
Joel Brown Says:

January 15th, 2009 at 7:04 am

I do very much agree with your view here. When i started my blog i started it with the thought of posting 1 or 2 posts a week. Daily never even came into the consideration for me, i wanted to provide something of quality not something people found tiresome that they needed to visit every day.

Joel Brown’s last blog post..Keeping Good Records
Does your blog have a goal? | Costa Rica SEO Blog Says:

February 1st, 2009 at 10:26 pm

[...] of your blog, you must take steps to ensure you are on your way to continually meeting the goal. Many bloggers have the impression that more posts equal a solid blog. As quantity becomes the focus, quality and importance often drop. As you write your next post, read [...]
Does your blog have a goal? | Costa Rica SEO Blog Says:

February 1st, 2009 at 10:26 pm

[...] of your blog, you must take steps to ensure you are on your way to continually meeting the goal. Many bloggers have the impression that more posts equal a solid blog. As quantity becomes the focus, quality and importance often drop. As you write your next post, read [...]

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