I have read many opinions by many professional bloggers on this subject. One point that remains consistent is to publish at least 3 posts a week. The reason for this is to keep your readers interested. The other point consistent between all the opinions is to keep your posts at a regular interval - such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That way your readers know when to expect a new post.

I have heard many opinions that say to post at least once a day. This sounds difficult, but really isn’t. You can write several posts on one day and schedule them to be published in most blogging platforms. I would caution you that if you are going to write once a day (or more) that you ensure you have a topic to write on that will be beneficial to your readers. The very longest time interval even mentioned was once a week.

I find it helpful to have a calendar to schedule my post publications on. I now have 5 blogs (including this one) to keep up. I try to schedule them two on one day, two on the next, and the fifth my plan is to do one post a day (the blog reviews) as I have blogs to spotlight. I also use Google documents (spreadsheet) to list all the topics I can write on for each blog.

Recently I wrote a series on one blog. Since it was a series, I scheduled the posts to published every 2nd-3rd day. I didn’t want too much time to pass between so my readers wouldn’t lose interest. It was a really great idea, I thought. My traffic slowed tremendously - so maybe my readers didn’t think my idea was so hot. The month was July, and right around the 4th of July, so perhaps my readers were on vacation. Or maybe it is just that summer is not the time people focus on diets. What I learned from this was to not write a long series. In this case, I was stuck finishing the series even though it seemed to bomb.

As a final note - keep your blog focused. If your topics cover too wide an area, start a second blog that can contain some of the topics. For example: If your blog about food goes into decorating a kitchen, you might start another blog about kitchen designs. If your blog about dogs goes into cats, birds, and monkeys, you might want to split it into one for each type, or one for domestic pets, one for birds, and one for exotic pets. Your readers come because the are interested in the subject. They can loss interest if you stray too far.

How often do you post to your blog?

Happy Blogging!

Having a blog on the Internet is great.  It is enjoyable.  But why do you have a blog on the Internet?  If it is your personal diary, why would you have it out there for everyone to see?

If you have a blog on the Internet, it is because you want people to see the blog, read it, and get something from it.  You may share your personal life experiences so others can find hope and help through reading it.  If you are selling something, you want them to read about what you are selling, see that it would be a help  in their life, and buy it.  If you are very knowledgeable in an area - an expert - you want to present this information and share it with others.

Your goal cannot be reached if the traffic, the other people on the Internet, can’t find your blog.  And to find your blog, they have to be looking for it.  So, if no one knows that your blog exists, why is it there?  That defeats your purpose.

In the brick and mortar world, how would you let people know your new store exists?  Signs, talking to people, leaving your business card, ads in the newspaper, on the radio, on the TV - these are some of the ways.

How can you do that on the Internet?  One way is to work your way up through the search engines.  If you do a search on the main point of your blog, you will find there are hundreds, even thousands, of sites listed there.  This is a little hard to climb through.  You could spend hundreds of dollars trying to purchase a more visible position and then still not get traffic.

One way to drop business cards on the Internet is to comment on other blogs with subjects that relate to yours.  Leave a link to  your blog - but don’t try to sell your blog.  Instead, make the link part of your signature.  Go into forums and do the same.

Another way is to make friends on the Internet.  Join Stumbleupon, Digg, Mixx, Delicious, Technorati, Twitter, Plurk, Blogcatalog - these are just a few of the social networks on the web.  Join in discussions, vote up others submissions, gather friends.  If you don’t believe this is powerful, try googling your name or online nickname after you  have been doing this a few months.  You will be surprised how many links you will find.

The more your name and URL is on the Internet, the more visible your site becomes.  The more trust you get from others and recognition of knowing what you are talking about, the more people will want to go to your site.

Just jump in and start joining.  A word of caution - watch what you disclosed about yourself personally.  And about what you leave as comments.  I guarantee there are things you don’t want published in a search engine when your name is googled.  Also bookmark your site URL where-ever you can.  Good luck!