The Problem With Posting On A Schedule
I have a posting schedule. You probably have a posting schedule. Probably every blogger and their mum has a posting schedule. If you’re a total newbie blogger and don’t know what I’m talking about a posting schedule is essentially just a plan where you set out to post consistently on certain days of the week. It’s pretty much accepted now that posting consistently will create more traffic going to your blog and in turn make it grow.
SHOULD YOU HAVE A POSTING SCHEDULE?
I’ve been blogging for almost five years now and I’ve had a consistent posting schedule for most of that. While I’ve found that posting regularly did help my blog to grow. Having that schedule caused more problems than I expected.
The problem with having a posting schedule is you need to be quite organised for it to work. Some people write great stuff the day they want to post. But I’ve found that doesn’t work for me. I usually start planning posts around three weeks before they are due to go up. But for this to work I need to be really strict about getting certain things like first drafts, and photos done by a certain date. If I don’t do this I can get thrown off my whole schedule and end up getting further behind with posts.
Getting behind is a problem with posting schedules. This happens to me quite a lot. I don’t like being in a situation where I have to write a post which will go up on that same day. I feel those posts are never as good as something I spent more time on (this isn’t always the case thought). In these situations I’ve written ‘update posts’ which are never usually that interesting*. Or simply posted something saying I didn’t have a post and would be back next week.
MAYBE NOT?
I’ve seen numerous other bloggers do the same. Posting something not because they have anything worthwhile to share but because they want to keep to their posting schedule. It took me a while to realise if you don’t have any worthwhile content to share, you’re actually better off not posting at all. If you want your blog to do well you have to write about subjects that people want to read, and you’re probably not going to do that if you’re writing a post just to keep on your schedule.
There is also the fact that they don’t work well with spontaneous posts. You could have a really great idea for a post and want to put it up as soon as you write it. Or maybe you write a post reacting to a piece of news. But then you have to wait until the day you post on your blog. Depending on your schedule this could mean waiting a few days. This doesn’t always work with current events. Especially considering how fast news moves on in this internet age.
FINALLY
Don’t feel like you need to have a posting schedule just because others have one. Or because your blog might do better with one. Or because it’s better from an SEO point of view. I got more hits in January of 2017 posting three days a week than I did in August 2016 when I posted every day. Blogging is far more complicated than just posting consistently.
*There is a time and a place for update posts. But there is no point writing an update just because you have no other content to share.
11 Comments
bostonbookreader
Great post, thank you for sharing!
Yvan
I tried a blogging schedule before as well. It got exhausting for me I had to stop blogging for a while… So now I just make sure my ideas are all in one place, so I can schedule posts in advance. I still don’t have a schedule, though, but I’m blogging more regularly now than before. 🙂
MissKymmiee
Hey Emma!
Loved this Post you shared, I experienced this too at times but my rescue has been having a monthly detailed schedule rather than weekly that way I know what exactly am supposed to do, and the Incase Of spontaneity I always fix it in between and move the then expected post to a later date. thank you for sharing
Dana Ellington, MAPW
Thank you :-). I’ve been struggling to stick to an “editorial calendar” for my more business-y blogs. I think I’m going to relax that a bit, and post when I have relevant content that I think my readers will benefit from.
nerdywordybirdy
I feel your pain so much! My issue is too I go through spurts of time where I have a ton of ideas, and then weeks where I have nothing. It’s hard to keep to a schedule that way too. But I definitely agree that not posting at all is better than posting crap just to keep up. I’ve unfollowed several blogs because of that.
gruundehn
I try to post daily, not on any specific subject but more as a journal. However, daily life keeps getting in the way. My other blog, where I post my writing, I try to post weekly; but again, life gets in the way. I will be posting Chapter 2 of High Treason today instead of yesterday, as an example, because of other commitments to friends.
Another reason that I do not post on my journal blog daily is that my life is quite routine, so the variance from one day to the next is minimal. It is hard to have profound thoughts about any one day if the changes from any other day are not great.
cordeliasmom2012
I used to have a posting schedule, and I even published the list of pending posts on the first day of each month. But then I decided to ask my readers if they were really impressed by that, and no one was. The consensus, at least for my readers, was that they’d rather I post when the urge hit me because those posts were more entertaining, interesting, or meaningful. These days I tend to post about once a week, but sometimes I’ll post several days in a row. Sometimes, I’ll even post a couple of times on the same day. And sometimes there’s a fairly lengthy lag between posts. Seems to work for me and for my readers.
Aimer Boyz
And here I was congratulating myself on keeping to my schedule.
You’ve given me something to think about…
Magpiemakingdo
I struggle so hard with schedules – life always ends up interfering and I get behind, and then some of the seasonal posts I had originally planned aren’t relevant anymore, and… and… and… Lol. I admire those who can stick to one, but idk if it’ll EVER be me.
Emma
Yeah everything moves on so fast. I almost never do seasonal content because it takes so long to do.
Crafty Rat
Every now and again I think about trying to implement a schedule, but I know that even something as simple as “always post on a Wednesday” would get missed and then I’d just get annoyed with myself and frustrated and be even less likely to get posts written on time! So I’ll stick to writing when I can and sometimes that means blitzing through a backlog of things and sometimes that means a quiet period when I just can’t focus on writing.