Karen from Delaware emailed me with a question earlier.
“I’d love for you to post on your blog every day like Seth Godin does. Is there a strategic reason why you don’t?”
That’s a good question. The answer is that you need to match your publishing model to the business model behind your blog. Allow me to explain.
My publishing model
It’s easy… very easy, for me to publish something every day. However, my business model doesn’t require me to keep tapping you on the shoulder [reminding you I’m here] with daily posts.
Why?
I market just 2 services via my blog. There’s a limited number of clients I can work with and every post generates client enquiries.
Daily publishing, [which I did a few years ago], caused me to receive way too many enquiries. The huge momentum created by daily publishing is disproportionate to the few additional posts I was publishing each week.
If I decide to change the blog’s business model, so my income is primarily from the sale of products or advertising, I will need to adopt a daily publishing model of at least one post a day. It’s all about getting the balance right for what you want to achieve.
The daily publishing model
Whatever his motivation, Seth Godin uses a business model that rewards daily blogging. His blog is a kind of single author book store. Every post displays a carousel [on the left of each post], which is stacked with around 20 or so books.
His superbly written, daily posts are what create traffic to his book store. Visitors to his book store are also extremely well targeted, because the topics covered on his blog match those in his books. If you like the posts, you’ll love the books. Seth’s daily publishing model also pre-markets his books, by referencing new books in his posts long before they are published.
So…
- You arrive on Seth’s blog.
- If you like Seth’s posts, you may buy a book.
- If you don’t buy a book, you may still decide to share the post you’re reading with your social networks.
- By sharing the post, others will visit Seth’s blog.
- They too may decide to buy a book or share the post.
- A cycle is created, which is fed by daily content.
That model clearly rewards daily publishing. Fewer posts would equal less traffic, fewer subscribers, fewer shares and fewer sales.
Getting your balance right
The key take-away here is this: Your blog publishing model should support whatever you want to achieve. So, choose the best frequency for your business, rather than copy what someone else is doing. Their approach could be totally wrong for you.
If you’d like to get more from your blog or you’re thinking of starting a blog, here are a few free resources to help you.
Here’s how to launch a successful blog.
This explains how to make your blog stand out and build a large, valuable readership.
Ever wondered if you need to write long blog posts or if short posts are OK? Well, here’s the answer.
This is a list of 7 blogging mistakes, which you need to avoid.