Can frequent blog entries actually drive loyal subscribers away from your site? Time and again we hear how important your blog posting frequency is for traffic generation. Although this is true, can publishing content too frequently also contributes to subscribers leaving as well? Well the answer to that is absolutely and especially if you allow your haste to compromise a good solid effort when you are creating and publishing content to your blog. As the site administrator you must learn to be equally focused on both traffic generation and reader satisfaction since subscriber loyalty is the foundation to your site.
Here are 3 factors that can affect reader loyalty if you maintain a frequent blog posting schedule of which you need to be aware.
Lesser Quality
Unless you outsource your blog posting, which is not always a good idea, it can and will become increasingly difficult to maintain quality in your content. Based upon the sheer frequencies of your posting, little time is left to conduct any deep or meaningful research upon which you can base your content.
Swamping Readers with Feeds
How often have you opened up your email to be swamped with unread messages compelling you to instantly unsubscribe from different lists you are on? Much like an overloaded email box, if your feeds begin to build up on your readers they may skip many of your posts or worse, decide to simply to unsubscribe. When the quantity goes up and the quality goes down, as mentioned above, you may be forcing loyal followers to make a decision you will not like.
Not Enough Time
Let's face it life is busy, for everybody, and to expect readers to be able to read and absorb every update of yours is unrealistic. Allow them some space and do not make them 'dread' opening up your feeds if they have not been to your site for a while. Once again this dread can compel people to take more drastic measures (unsubscribe) to simply rid themselves of the clutter (stress) in their feed box. Like email marketing there is a legitimate argument for giving readers 'breathing' space.
Here too, if the quality of your efforts decreases when publishing content to your site, there is little motivation for someone to read through all your updates.
Although frequent blog entries are great for traffic generation there is a point where you could possibly compromise the loyalty of existing readers. Having an overly 'ambitious' blog posting schedule can simply overwhelm or dissuade people due to the 3 various factors discussed above. Care must be taken however when trying to compensate by easing back too much on your schedule when publishing content since this too could have undesirable affects as well. Finding a frequency that is appealing to both you and your readers schedule will take time, experience and plenty of observation. It seems the best approach would be an aggressive blog posting schedule early on in the 'life' of your site to establish a base. After that point it would be reasonable to ease off a bit as both you and your subscribers become more familiar with what to expect.