The Blogger’s Blog recently commented that Excessive Posts can Turn Off Readers – and for the past few days, I’m really feeling what he felt. I personally use Google Reader to read the feeds I am subscribed to, and sometimes its overwhelming to see over 100 unread posts.
So what I end up doing is just browse the headlines, and only read the ones that really interest me, which could be just 5 – 10 from the whole list.
As commented in the post,
If traffic and inbound links are your goal you will need to post frequently while keeping in mind that an exorbitant amount of posts — especially if some of these posts are forced garbage — could turn off readers.
This really reminds me of one of Darren’s recent post about If you have anything to say, be quiet.
I think its near and dear to many bloggers to need to stick to a posting schedule, and it is important to! However, I think one has to take in mind that excessive forced (and garbage) posts will annoy readers too. Like what Darren said, I think it is better taking a few days off and then saving your energy for a good post!
Some may argue that every post is one page added to your website – and since search engines love sites with lots of content, this allows you to get more hits every day.
However, if you think of it from another perspective, having one post with real quality content may potentially reap in more visitors than ten mediocre posts, because it has a better potential to be referenced by other bloggers, and maybe even the potential to get into the front page of social bookmarking sites likes Digg or Reddit – and these can send thousands of visitors your way!
So ask yourself today – are you posting for the sake of keeping up to your blogging schedule? Do you think you are really providing quality to the blogosphere? If you aren’t then maybe its time to take a break, read some jokes, play some games or spend the day out with your family. Who knows, you might come back with more drive than ever, and with interesting experiences and insights to share, that people will be interested in!
I don’t really mind long posts I’m happy to read it all day as long as they don’t have more filler than good content if you get what i mean.
I post to keep up my schedule, after maybe a year when you begin getting the benefits of all your posts then i would have to agree to taking a break, but first i think if your new post post post don’t stop.
Thanks Mike! Yeah I guess if you have something to post about, its great to be keeping up with a schedule… the only issue comes when you start feeling that you have been saying the same things over and over again 😛 at that time, its probably good to take a break… or maybe restrategise and think how to proceed forward.
My young blog student, you will in time you will get to the point of information saturation and be able to skim 3 times the feeds you think you have today. We constantly hear about the “echo chamber” of blogging. This is at the point when you have reached that threshold when you get tired of reading the same story 20 times written by 50 different linking authors. I have so many feeds I have forgotten how many. My unread items could take a normal person a week to go through if they wanted to read each post. That is of course if they are a “speed reader on steroids”, now you will have to Google that term to find what blog I put that statement on, because I don;t have time to link to it. 😉 Man, now I have to do a post on this! See why I can’t get into the reading part? I get all inspired!
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Thanks Jim!
Haha.. it looks like I’ve got a lot more to experience in my road ahead. I’ve not been reading my feeds for 4 days because I was away in a seminar, and now its brimming with unread posts… man. 😛
Hi.
Nice to be here…I’ve visited this blog for the first time and I’m posting here already :-). I don’t think it is a question of too many posts or few posts or long posts or short posts: it differs from blog to blog and readership to readership. Yes, longer posts should be fewer for two reasons: your readers can only assimilate a certain amount of data, and, if you write too many long blog posts then when do you do your actual work?
If you publish the latest buzz and updated news and its mostly links you are putting there then having multiple posts daily gives you are more “updated” look.
Wonderful Amrit. Yesterday I attended a workshop on article marketing, and the speaker said that it is best to keep an article to a maximum of 400 – 500 words – because that length is when people start to get tired of reading 😉