How Often Should You Publish A Blog Post?

Creating blog content, developing premium content, content distribution, email marketing, social media marketing—there's a continuous list of what it takes to create a content marketing strategy. However, one of the most common mistakes among businesses is creating content for content's sake.

You can't crank out three articles a day without defining your audience and creating a content marketing strategy. Once you develop that strategy, one of the first things to determine is how often you should publish blogs. There are numerous studies about why blog posts are integral to your inbound marketing strategy, but there's not much hard data on the frequency of posting. That's because blogging frequency depends greatly on the goals you hope to accomplish with your blog.

How Many Blog Posts Should a Business Post Each Week?

Clients often ask us, "As a business, how many blog posts should we post each week?" Below is the framework we use and recommend. Following it will give you the results you want and need.

Let us start by saying there is no secret formula or magic pill (sorry to disappoint!) to create content that attracts your target customer. It takes hard work and dedication to get your inbound marketing strategy going in the right direction. However, if you implement your strategy the right way, the results will be fantastic.

The key is to not get frustrated along the way and to stick to your plan. It’s not as easy as answering “x number of posts per week will get you where you need to go.”

6 Things That Are More Important Than How Often to Publish a Blog Post

1. Your Starting Strategy

Your strategy is the foundation of your inbound program. But too often we see businesses start without a plan. They're full of energy and excitement and jump into inbound marketing with both feet. The first 45 days are exciting as the content is flowing but something happens between day 45 and day 60. Page views start to taper, and even though the numbers look good, visitors aren’t turning into customers. The next thing that happens is that “this whole inbound marketing thing” gets pushed aside to handle later—but later never happens.

2. Defining Your Audience

Identify whom you are writing to. In other words who is the target persona? Who exactly are you trying to reach with your blog posts? You need to have a clear picture of the person you are trying to reach if you are going to effectively reach them, right? For this to truly be effective write down all the characteristics of this target persona and make sure to share it with everyone on your team.

• Are you researching keywords and key phrases relevant to your industry and topics?

• Do you know your target persona's buyer's journey? Read more about creating content for the buyer's journey here.

• Do you have a plan in place to create content that speaks to your target persona's buyer's journey?

Start with a plan, then channel your energy into creating the kind of content your target persona wants to read.

3. Getting in Their Heads

Determine the types of questions that your target persona has that you are qualified to answer. Think about the conversations you have when you are meeting with new prospects.

• What is it that they often ask you about?

• What concerns do they have?

• What do they want to know about?

The answers to all of these questions are all perfect blog posts for you to write. By focusing your articles around the questions they have you get to show thought leadership and expertise in your responses and you become more easily found when someone does an internet search.

4. Focusing on Quality, Not Quantity

Never publish anything you don’t want your name on. If the quality is not to your internal standards, do not publish it. Focus on creating the highest-quality content possible. That means content that will resonate with your audience, not necessarily Pulitzer Prize-winning material. Mediocre content will get a mediocre response.

5. Aiming to Publish 1 to 3 Times a Week

Try to publish one to three blog posts per week minimum, as long as you can hit your quality standards. It would be better to publish just one really valuable blog instead of three mediocre ones. However, as we mentioned before, blogging frequency depends greatly on the goals you hope to accomplish with your blog.

For example, if your goal is to increase traffic and bring clicks to your website through content, you want to post frequently. If you're more focused on brand awareness, the aim is to diversify content. You want to build a voice for your company, which means one or two smaller blog posts a week on useful information will attract your target audience.

6. Sharing Your Valuable Content

Your blog is a big opportunity to drive traffic to your website and promote your business as well as your products and services, but it needs strategic guidance to be successful in driving traffic and converting leads.

When people ask us, "Where should I share my blog?" we suggest these eight free ways to distribute blog content. There are additional distribution channels that include paid promotion and advertising, but this list focuses on eight ways you can share your B2B blog content immediately, and to places that your target audience is hanging out. Fish where the fish are!

For businesses, blogging does much more than let followers know about recent news and events. When done right, it establishes your organization as an authority in your industry, gives followers an insider look at your company culture, boosts SEO, and generates qualified leads.  How often should you blog? Now you know!

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on September 12, 2014, and has been updated.