More Content Or Less Content? Wrong Question.

This is a question I get asked and see debated all of the time. I’ve worked with a few clients who were just starting a blog and they all asked how often they should post. What’s too much, and what’s not enough?

I’ve read quite a few articles with various experts claiming that you must create and share a certain amount of content per week or month or year. They try to back up their position with hard data, but more often than not, it comes down to personal opinion.

Here’s my take…

There’s no right or wrong number that can be universally applied to all businesses, and you can always ramp up or scale back.

Just focus on creating quality content and sharing it consistently.

Quality Is More Important Than Frequency

I’m a one-man shop and I update my blog once per week. Web.Search.Social. has a small group of regular writers and posts original content a few times per week. The Content Marketing Institute has a staff of writers, plus regular contributors, and distributes new articles every day.

None of us are wrong. Actually, we’re all right.

I’m not naïve. I won’t say frequency is completely irrelevant. But if your content isn’t special, frequency doesn’t matter.

In other words, frequently publishing original content that sucks just reminds people more often how much your content sucks. Your audience will quickly become numb to your content’s suckiness.

So will Google.

There’s one algorithm-proof SEO strategy – create high quality content. Instead of publishing content just for the sake of maintaining a certain frequency, focus on the problems, needs, questions and concerns of your customers.

If you post original content twice per month and it’s well-received, shared and remembered, that’s infinitely more effective than sharing drivel twice per week.

Post as often as your budget and resources will allow – as long as your content remains fresh, relevant and valuable. Many businesses get all gung-ho when they launch a blog, post more than they should, and run out of topics after six months.

Have a brainstorming session and write down as many topics as you can think of in five minutes. See if any of these topics can be broken down further. Do a little basic math and you should be able get an idea of a reasonable frequency based on that list.

Consistency Is More Important Than Frequency

If I was forced to recommend an absolute minimum frequency for small businesses, it would be once per month, at least as a starting point. This would enable someone to get used to the process of creating, publishing and sharing content on a regular basis.

Once a comfort level is established, I’d recommend bumping that up to twice per month or more – again, depending on how much your budget and resources allow, and how many compelling topics you can cover.

But you have to get that content out there every single month without fail. Consistency is critical. The less you publish, the more important consistency becomes.

If you share content less than once per week but do it consistently, you can create the perception that you’re churning out content more than you really are. And when that content is special, you create an expectation and build anticipation for your content.

Are you old enough to remember that old Master Lock TV commercial with marksmen firing bullets through the Master Lock padlock on a target? I remember thinking I saw that commercial all the time as a kid.

That commercial ran exactly once per year. Every year. During the Super Bowl.

But they created the perception of higher frequency because it ran every year when everyone was watching.

You can’t get away with creating original content once per year – unless you’re sharing it during the Super Bowl – but you don’t have to be a daily content publisher either.

Publish high quality content, do it consistently, and do it forever – or as long as you want to stay in business.

What factors determine how often you create and share original content?