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A while back I wrote a post about quality versus quantity in terms of content. The basic argument was, that given the amount of rubbish online, people will seek out reliable sources of good content and stick with them.
It’s all over in the first round – quality is the champ.
But now quantity is fighting back. Technorati’s recent State of the Blogosphere report points out that the tops bloggers produce a tremendous amount of content. The top 100 by Technorati rank produce an average of 310 blog posts per month.
310!
This is blog post number 201 since I started blogging and I think I’ve done OK. Of course, that’s only the top 100 – the uber bloggers. What about the next rung down the ladder? Well, the top 500 bloggers post an average of 125 posts per month – that’s 4 a day – everyday.
The good news that you probably never need to crack the Technorati Top 500 in order to achieve your goals, but even the top 5000 deliver a (much more reasonable) average of 25 posts per month compared to the average blogger who posts just ten times.
The more you put in the more you get out
So, is quantity really where it’s at? It does make a certain amount of sense:
- More content gives Google more to search through
- More content gives other sites more to link to
- More content gives a wider range of readers something to be interested in
- More content keeps people interested over a longer period of time
- More content allows you to cover more topics – good, in many respects, for all of the above
Ultimately the answer has got to be both quality and quantity (I bet you saw that coming didn’t you?).
If you churn out piles of keyword laden rubbish, the search engines might love you but no human will ever stick around long enough to care.
Likewise if you take weeks perfecting that perfect post, your fickle readers will likely have popped off somewhere else in the meantime – that is if they ever found you in the first place.
Creating great content is no easy solution but like anything worth doing …
How do you come up with content ideas for your blog or website? How do you motivate yourself to produce it consistently?
Help your fellow readers and share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Great information here regarding the number of posts that the top bloggers are doing per month. It obviously pays off long term to maximise posts, but that is surely for full timers.
I blog about UK small business and have to say in the current business climate it is hard to find relevant info that is anything less than depressing!
@smebus – I feel your pain re: the current business climate. IMO though it does give us the opportunity to highlight the businesses and ideas that are bucking the trend.
As for the number of posts the top blogs turn out, you’re right that 300+ posts per month is certainly a full time gig – although I would say that even the smallest businesses can put aside a few minutes each day to deliver interesting content perhaps a post a day could be a useful starting point for many.
The trick is to change the mindset from thinking about posting to thinking about marketing – a few hours a week to help marketing your business and grow your brand should be on every small business’ agenda.
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