A solid content strategy involves many components, including goal setting, audience research, content production, and monitoring. While most content creators focus on the quality and usefulness of their content, there’s something else that will help your content strategy deliver better results: consistently publishing content.
There is plenty of content already floating around the internet, so you don’t want to publish too often because it will likely get swept away in the flood of mediocre content. It could also turn regular readers away because they might get annoyed with the overwhelming volume of content.
Therefore, it is critical to determine the optimal content frequency, so your content can garner maximum traction. Let’s take a look at how and when you should post.
Before You Create a Schedule
While some pages only post a few well-researched articles per month, other websites post multiple trending articles throughout the day. Therefore, it is important to consider the following factors before you create a schedule:
- What is your end goal?
- How big is your team?
- What is your marketing budget?
- What is your target audience?
For example, if you want to boost organic website traffic, posting multiple articles per week is ideal. When you optimize posts using the right keywords, they will have better visibility on search engine results. It’s also better to include a mix of long and short-form articles. Longer articles give you credibility, and shorter articles help you maintain consistency and traction.
Find a Happy Medium
Your content schedule will vary depending on your answers to the questions above. However, there are general rules to follow to boost your site’s performance. According to HubSpot, publishers who post more frequently generate higher traffic. But you have to find a happy medium to avoid over-posting.
HubSpot’s research found that companies that post over 400 articles per year attract three times as many inbound leads as those that post under 200 times annually. Even if you don’t have a large company, your small team can still produce striking results.
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A small company with one to ten employees can see dramatic results when increasing publishing rates. Small companies posting over 11 articles per month get twice as much inbound traffic as those posting six to ten articles monthly. The big jump might be because readers start to rely on the content as a regular source of information, and your company becomes more skillful at writing and promoting the content.
Don’t Push Yourself Too Far
Posting often generally boosts SEO, but you need to ensure you have quality content to post. Here are ways to create consistent content without setting impossible goals:
- Aim for consistency: Be realistic about how often you will be posting. You should remember that quality is more important than quantity, so blend the two as much as possible. Don’t aim too high, so you don’t stress about meeting impossible goals. It’s best to post one to two consistent articles per week to build and maintain an audience.
- Write concise, high-quality content: Post a mix of long-form expert articles with shorter texts to find a balance between quantity and quality.
- Re-use old content: Don’t be afraid to go back to old content. While new posts matter, you should also be writing for the future. It’s an added benefit if your content is more enduring. Make it part of your schedule to revisit older posts and update them. You’ll see a traffic boost as regular readers find them and an SEO boost because Google up-rates previously outdated content.
Get Your Timing Right
Depending on your audience, peak hours such as lunchtime and evening garner more traffic and engagement because readers are more active. However, there will be a lot of competition during these hours. Try posting late at night so readers can see it first thing in the morning. Then monitor your audience’s activity to tweak your posting schedule.
Photo by Claudio Schwarz/Unsplash
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your publishing schedule to find the optimal time for your audience. As long as you post consistently, you can still boost traffic as you adjust your timing to get better insight into your readers’ online behavior.
Final Thoughts
Frequency and timing are the foundation of a content plan. Understanding when and how often your audience will be active is essential in determining the optimal frequency for posting content. Publishing between two to five posts per week (depending on the team size) can greatly impact traffic.
Maintaining a steady publishing schedule isn’t easy, but it is doable. Create a plan, build a schedule, and don’t be afraid to play around with it to monitor your audience’s activity for the best results.
