In a recent post (Something to Blog About), I briefly mentioned the results of blogging more frequently. While it will take some time to accurately guage the long-term results, I mentioned that blogging 4-6x/day (versus maybe 1 post/day) increased unique visitors by ~50% almost immediately.
Jason Cain (aka Goldblogger) gave me a link to an interesting article titled Secrets of the A-Listers. While this article was written a year and a half ago (May 2005), it's interesting nonetheless...
The author, Tristan Louis, analyzed the blogs of the current A-Listers with two questions in mind: How frequently do they post? and What is the average size (or word count) of their posts?
The blogs that he focused on for this article were:
- Boing Boing, which is not written by a number of people
- InstaPundit, a libertarian weblog run by Glenn Reynolds
- Daily Kos, a left wing weblog run by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
- Gizmodo, a weblog about gadgets
- Engadget, a competitor to Gizmodo for the gadget audience
I decided to pick a 24 hour cycle and analyze data from that cycle for the five blogs. The day I picked, May 19th, was a good day for gadget news and political blogs: in the gadget space, the E3 show was closing down. Meanwhile, the potential of a dramatic showdown in the American congress made for a lot of material for political bloggers.
His results showed that the top five bloggers created an average of 30 entries per day, with each entry being under 150 words.
Obviously this is a great way to gain favor in the major search engines, and to constantly attract a diverse group of new readers to your site. A bloggers next major objective is to turn those visitors into loyal readers that keep returning to the site, of course.
If you are a loyal reader of any of the major "A-Lister" blogs, I would love to hear your opinion of this method. Does the frequency of posts keep your interest, or do you find it overwhelming? What is it about your favorite blogs that appeals to you most? Is it the hot/current topics, the writing style of the author or the great ideas/resources that you glean from their posts?
Technorati Tags: a-listers, bloggers, blogging, post frequency, popular blogs, boing boing, gizmodo, engadget, problogger, tristan louis
About Lynn Terry
30 posts a day? Sheesh, I thought I was doing well with up to half a dozen a day. Admittedly, most of them are much more than 150 words.
As far as the A-listers go, I do find it a bit overwhelming, sometimes I'm afraid my feed-reader's going to blow up! 😐
I wonder whether it would actually be more value to the readers to have half a dozen more in-depth articles?
Hehe - he chose my birthday 🙂
As for me, I find it overwhelming to keep up with that many new posts per day and actually unsubscribed from Boing Boing for this reason. (By the way Lynn, I think you meant to say Boing Boing is "now" written by a number of people. If I'm not mistaken, there's five.)
Most of the time, I prefer to cruise the A-list blogs from my browser whenever the mood strikes me. The sites I subscribe to in my feed reader generally have less posting frequency.
~ Teli
That was his list actually, so I assume it was a typo - it was written 1 1/2 years ago though so maybe not?
I'm with you, at any rate. I check in via browser every now and then, but there's just not enough there for me personally that catches my eye to stay subscribed and scan it all daily.
I'm guessing that for a 'normal blog' (?) that has regular readers that 4-6x/day is plenty...
Anyone know the post frequency and average word count at ProBlogger.com - or any of Darren Rowse's other blogs?
I would guess that Darren posts 2 to 4 times at problogger. Not sure about his other blogs, as I don't read them.
This seems just the right amount to me. I can't see how these guys can come up with good, fresh content 20 times a day.
Multiple bloggers... short posts...
20 posts a day - that sounds like an addicition. It sounds like maybe they need some connection with people and should walk away and hug their family or something.
I think 1-4 posts a day is pretty darn good.
I would think it would be hard to find 20 significant thoughts to share in a day.
Maybe they drink Red Bull or are drinking too many lattes at Starbucks when they post?
Its multiple bloggers doing multiple posts, so you probably have 4-6 bloggers doing 4-6 posts/day....
I'd be interested in hearing the answers to these questions, if anyone cares to share their thoughts:
1) Does the frequency of posts keep your interest, or do you find it overwhelming?
2) What is it about your favorite blogs that appeals to you most?
3) Is it the hot/current topics, the writing style of the author or the great ideas/resources that you glean from their posts?
Reviving an old entry 🙂
If a blog has more than 3-5 posts per day, especially if they're more than a hundred words a piece, it tends to overwhelm me.
Most of the time, I'll glean the titles and click through on the ones I want to read. If it becomes too overwhelming, then I simply unsubscribe and visit whenever the mood hits me (or whenever I remember).
Short, tight entries (usually 100-200 words) with a witty writing style. For the blogs that have longer blog entries, the writing style must be strong and entertaining.
Or I need to be interested in the author (aka know her personally).
Depends on the blog, however, I do tend to follow blogs that are blogging about current events. Then, the informational - mainly "how-to" - blogs, I follow strictly for the content.
~ Teli
This is great feedback indeed, Teli - thank you 😉