Keeping your blog up to date is one of the most challenging aspects of blogging, and also among the most imporant, since regular blog visitors expect to find new content on a regular basis. Not all readers expect to see new posts daily, but most blog readers expect that the content on a blog will be updated regularly and frequently.
Most visitors expect new blog content on at least a weekly basis. However, depending on the blog’s subject matter the visitors may expect updates on a basis which is even more frequent, if yours is a niche which is constantly changing or constantly has breaking news.
At the other extreme, some visitors may not be interested in receiving updates more than a few times a month. Blog owners should be aware of the frequency that readers expect new posts and should make every effort to oblige their readers with updates this often. This article will discuss methods for keeping a blog up to date including scheduling a regular time to post blogs, using publishing tools wisely and hiring guest bloggers when necessary.
Finding Time to Post Daily
One way to help to ensure that a blog remains up to date is to set up a scheduled time to post on a daily basis. This is especially important when blog readers expect new information on a daily basis or at least several times per week. Bloggers who allot a specific block of time daily to researching, writing and publishing new articles are more likely to have a blog which is up to date than bloggers who plan on accomplishing tasks when they find time to do so. There may still be days in which the blogger is unable to publish a new post on the blog but these days will be less frequent than if the blogger does not have a block of time strictly dedicated to keeping the blog up to date.
On days in which the author is unable to devote time to blogging, he or she may wish to at least publish a short message explaining why it was not possible to post a new article. This will at least let readers know that you are aware of their desire to read more information but are simply unable to publish a new blog post. As long as this does not become a regular occurrence, blog visitors are not likely to stop viewing a blog simply because the blogger skips a day or two.
Taking Advantage of Publishing Tools
Some blog publishing tools enable bloggers to write blog posts ahead of time and specify when each post should be published. This is an excellent feature for those who want to publish new posts daily but are unable to dedicate time each day to writing blog posts. Simply dedicate a block of time each week to write blog posts and schedule the posts to be published throughout the week.
Hiring Guest Bloggers
You may also want to consider hiring guest bloggers to assist in keeping a blog up to date. This can be a worthwhile method for those who are not only having difficulty keeping their blog up to date but are also interested in providing readers with a little variety. However, blog owners who opt for this method of keeping their blog up to date should carefully consider how the dedicated blog readers will react to this change.
This is important because some readers may not be interested in reading blogs written by a guest blogger. Therefore the use of a guest blogger can actually be more detrimental to the blog than not updating the blog regularly. Bloggers can gauge reader reaction to the use of guest bloggers in a couple of different ways. The simplest and most straight forward method is to poll the readers about the use of guest bloggers. This can be done by asking readers to comment on the issue and tabulating the comments received. Another method to gauge reader reaction is to introduce a guest blogger and compare the traffic the guest blogger receives to the traffic the blog owner receives.
While controversial, autoblogging is a viable alternative for some people. Autoblogging simply consists of installing a plugin that will “scrape” content from article directories, video sites, and places like Yahoo Answers and post it to your blog on a schedule of your choosing. While this cannot be the primary content on your blog, since it is, in effect duplicate content found on hundreds of other sites, it does provide a way to fill in the gaps and reduce the workload of providing fresh, new, unique content on schedule.
Whatever method you choose, you will definitely benefit in the form of increased readership and revenue if you make a point of keeping your blog up to date.
