Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Blogging rule of thumb

You need to post more than once a week to have any hope of attracting readers to your blog. Daily postings are even better.

Tom Parker, Rules of Thumb: A Life Manual (New York: Workman Publishing, 2008), 224.
Further reading
Rulesofthumb.org
Rule of thumb (Wikipedia)

[Yes, this post is very meta.]

comments: 4

Tom the Piper's Son said...

You're probably right there; I read yours every day!
I aspeire some day to get one out more than once a month!

Michael Leddy said...

Thanks, Tom.

For the record, I’m not convinced of the truth of this rule of thumb — I’m subscribed to many blogs whose writers post infrequently, and I look forward to their posts. I thought it was amusing though to get a blog post out of this advice. : )

Matt Thomas said...

It depends. Tim Ferriss, for instance, advocates posting more infrequently. Then again, most of the most-popular bloggers post multiple times a day, e.g., Andrew Sullivan. But that can lead to burnout. I suspect one of the reasons 95 percent of blogs are abandoned is that the pressure to post something everyday is just too much. Less is more, right?

Michael Leddy said...

I wasn’t prepared to be impressed by Tim Ferriss’ presentation (I’ve heard too many students tell me with complete seriousness that they plan on a four-hour workweek), but I am. Thanks, Matt.

Did you see that Andrew Sullivan is taking off the rest of August? He said that he’s going to read books, on paper. I couldn’t imagine being online as he is, day after day.

Less can be more. But more can also be more. : ) There’s so much to notice and “rescue” for possible attention.