Blogging is a hustle. It requires your mind, heart and soul to produce content and have it truly reflect who you are. With so many bloggers out there, you’re unlikely to see any returns from your writing without a lot of effort and a lot of time. Building a blog is a labour of love, and you need to mould it into something outstanding. But if you’re a blogger putting content out and relying on consistent frequency and not consistent quality, I’m sorry, but you’re doing blogging wrong.
Is Consistency King?
These past few years of immersion in social media haven’t been passive for me. On top of all the events, the tweets and the new relationships I’ve developed over that time, I’ve attended many webinars and conferences; read ebooks and blogs, and spoken with many “thought leaders” about social media and being successful with it.
Much of it points to the same thing—be consistent with your content. Let your audience know when to expect the next instalment so they’re subconsciously ready for it. Expectation is key.
And I agree—I’d love to move to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday format, putting content out at 9 every morning, ready for all the people who want some content to consume before they start their busy days. But that’s not going to happen.
Not yet, anyway.
Thirst vs. Truth
I’m a mix of a few things when it comes to my blog—a realist, impatient, and an ambitious perfectionist.
The realist side of me knows that there’s only so many hours in a day, and that blogging isn’t my top priority. My marriage; my relationship with family and friends; and maintaining enough income to support my lifestyle (among others) far outrank it, so I must be realistic about how much time I can put toward my blog.
My impatient side, however, wants to see this change. It wants importance now. It wants to make blogging a higher priority and for all of it to amount to something today—to call his own shots and be seen as some authority in some industry somewhere. He has no plan (he hates planning) and wants everything to happen immediately, without fully realizing how much work it takes for anyone to get anywhere.
Especially in social media.
But it’s the ambitious perfectionist side of me that’s really running the show. He refuses to release content until he’s added tags to the images; scanned the text to make sure it delivers as powerfully as possible; and feel like it’s the best possible effort that he could put out. Sure, he’d like to put content out regularly, but to him, blogging is an art form and he’s not about to compromise it by trying to force something mediocre out to try to hit an arbitrary schedule.
And that’s where I see the problem—too many bloggers are using an outdated rulebook and focusing on hitting that schedule without making sure that what they’re putting out is the very best that they can produce.
Quality Over Quantity—Every. Single. Time.
Blogs have been around for well over a decade, and it’s not like the market for people’s attention has shrunk since then. If you want to make an impact, you’ve got to give people a reason to want to pay attention to you. Engagement isn’t a natural by-product of creating content consistently—you have to earn it by making stuff that you stand behind. That you’re passionate about. That you believe in.
And you won’t get that if you half-ass your craft to hit a quota.
To those of you who’ve managed to balance quality and frequency, I applaud you. You invest the time, you don’t cut corners, but your time management skills are stupendous enough to keep it consistent. You are the type of bloggers we need to aspire to become if we ever want blogging to get the respect we so obviously crave.
To everyone else—it’s time to wake up; mediocrity isn’t going to cut it anymore. The Internet is flooded with content—most of it mediocre—and convincing an already-swamped audience that you’re the person to listen to will need info and content with the highest calibre of authority, entertainment and value available to them. It’s like I said before—stand for something or you’ll fall for anything, and guess what:
if you don’t step your game up, you’ll definitely be falling behind.
Totally agree with what you’re saying.
After three years of blogging, I’ve learned that it’s better to consistently put out quality content on a regular basis than feel like you have to blog X amount of times per week…..especially, if you’re like me and use your blog as a writing portfolio of sorts.
That’s precisely it, Simone — if you keep posting the good stuff, the quality shines through and your audience forms an expectation that you’ll post at that calibre of material each and every time!
Always try to outdo the last thing you did!
I have a hard time with stuff like this. I guess I’m on the downward slide of my “peak” blogging, where I used to obsess about it and spend a lot of time on it, to where now I’m just overwhelmed by it. And I hate reading advice like this because it makes me feel like a shitty blogger and I feel guilty and so much pressure to post consistently, and sometimes I can’t, y’know? The words aren’t there. The content’s not there. And I just sometimes don’t want to. And given that my blog doesn’t really provide revenue and it’s not really successful, I don’t really feel like I owe anyone a regular posting schedule, because, whatever. It’s mostly for me.
And I know that sounds really cranky and bitter but mostly I’m just annoyed at myself because I’ve been neglecting it so much lately. And I will never, ever meet the recommended blogging “standards.” I hate that there are rules, because it’s just another way to fail, you know?
Sorry to rant all over your blog. Blah.
I welcome the rants, Kelly — that helps me know I’ve struck a nerve in at least SOMEONE 🙂
There was a time where creating content (drawings, journal entries, songs, etc.) was everything that I lived for, but time passes. We get more responsibilities. There’s much more that complicates things, and with so much that craves our attention these days — both online and off — that the world of blogging today is nowhere near the same as it was years and years ago.
What you need aren’t rules. What you need is PURPOSE. A reason WHY you write. Something that spurs you along to hit a certain goal. That’s what keeps me going. I haven’t written the post for it yet, but MY goal is to create a better standard of blogger. I don’t know what things are like where you are, but Toronto’s a cold city — people will use any means they can to get noticed, and I’m tired of people believing that you can’t be successful through simple, honest, good work.
That’s what keeps me going.
What gets you going?
That’s my problem – I don’t really know anymore. I feel like I’m standing on the brink of major change, but I can’t see any farther than the next step and so I feel so utterly purposeless. It’s horrible. I hate it.
I’m happy to chat about purpose and such if you ever need an ear lent 🙂
For me, I’m still figuring out a lot of things each and every day. Ever feel like you’ve spent so long learning who you AREN’T that the only idea of knowing who you are is simply the default after taking all of that away?
That’s what I worked at getting past — and yes, I’m not quite at the point yet where I know what my path is supposed to look like, but I’m getting ready for that change, whenever it comes, so I can embrace it and do something different with my life 🙂
Sometimes the best option is to just do what you’re not already doing.
I couldn’t agree more, Casey. Quality is absolutely more important than frequency! In fact, the lower quality a blog is, the less often I’m going to read it – so frequency is basically irrelevant in my mind!
I wish more people thought like you, Casandra — you’re right. I think frequency is good to set an expectation, but if you can’t live up to that expectation with something GOOD to experience, then what’s the point?
Thanks for stopping by 😀
Heads up: the best time to post your content wouldn’t be 9am but 1230am. It gives it enough time for google to pick up by mid morning and your article has an entire day to do its rounds as a “new post”.
12:30 am, huh? That means I’ve already missed my window for today and should likely push my post back another day. Hm.
Good to know, though!
Also, the reason it’s good to choose a day(s) when you dish out new content is because it’s sorta like branding. A reader knows they can visit your site on a specific day for new content and it may become part of their routine. We are creatures of habit 🙂
…you did read the post , yes? I made that argument early in the post — but I’m not thoroughly convinced that we’re all that sheep-like. It plays a role, yes, but is it the be-all and end-all of HOW we should go about blogging?
Oh yeah, silly me. I guess my brain just registered the part when you said you didn’t want to do it. Haha Anyway, I’m tired. Lorenzo signing off…