Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Slow and steady


(courtesy www.flickr.com)

I'm back after a long break. When I started this blog, my friends and family had warned me that blog creation is done in a jiffy. Maintaining the blog and to keep it interesting depends the ideas and frequency of the posts. The higher the frequency factor and the blog will survive. Does this mean I should write one post everyday? Or ten posts a day? What is the average blogging speed? Let’s leave the news feeds for they are churned out every hour.
With idle time on hand and some online web searches later, I came to know that there are blogs like that of Chris Brogan who types out 3 - 4 posts per day, apart from the twitter updates. In the blog that I frequent regularly, India Uncut, Amit Verma churns out 2-3 posts every day. I’ve also heard of people who post more than ten posts a day! Consequently their blog readership is also very high. Well, they are professional bloggers. While they write to improve readership, I write to improve my writing... and also share some thoughts.
Another blogger, Will, in his blog series on ’11 things to consider before you start blogging’ introduces the term ‘publishing frequency’. At the end of the analysis, this is what he says –
“Overall deciding what publishing frequency to post articles on your blog is totally up to you and no one else. Although you can look at competition and your chosen subject for inspiration or ideas it comes down to the amount of time you have spare and how much of that time you are willing to dedicate to writing articles each day.”
His publishing frequency is 5 posts per week. Another blogger who shares similar thoughts is Keith Burtis, who aims at one post per day.
I maintain three blogs and churn out three different posts every week. My aim for this blog is 2-3 posts a week, which is slightly lower than average; but I don’t mind because, as Will says, ‘it’s totally up to me’