The monthly time to run a blog is simple math. Multiply the average hours you spend per article by the number of articles you intend to post. Then add an overhead percentage for the nurturing time to promote your blog, moderate comments, participate to the blogosphere, …
Time per article
Typical blog articles vary in length between 300 and 800 words (2000 ~ 5000 characters). Articles shorter than a few 100 words belong to microblogging. Articles longer than 5000 characters become white papers. Asking the question in Mahalo, bloggers spend between half an hour and 2 hours per article.Another benchmark comes from Forte, a professional copywriting company: 1000 characters/hour for quality content.
These benchmarks provide us a range from half an hour (the lower estimate from the Mahalo crowd) to five hours for a longer article by a professional copywriter. This range sounds about right.
Typical uses for the lower end will be for quick bookmarking posts where you post a few paragraphs and a link. It could also be posting social media releases that require minimum edits. Or it could be a comment to another blogger’s article that you prefer to place on your blog to retain control on your content.
The higher end is for longer articles that require some research, where complex information needs to be well structured and that are posted with bells and whistles (pictures, links, videos).
Hence blogs can have both ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ content. Fast content – like fast food – is a commodity with a short lifetime. Still, as with fast food, it serves a purpose. However, with time, it’s the slow content that provides the pillars of your blog.
The blogging compromise
Blogs need quality but also frequency. Especially starting blogs tend to attract visitors only when new content is posted. In this start-up period, until you have background traffic from your reference articles, there is pressure to ‘post or perish’. This tradeoff between frequency and quality is every blogger’s dilemma.Personally, I prefer to give articles the time to mature. The internet does not need more fast content. But being too strict on content means that your blog will not take-off within your lifetime.
Blogging is more than writing articles
Another tradeoff is between publishing and participation. Blogging is much more than writing articles:- Managing your blog, especially if you self-host
- Moderating comments – the internet can be a wicked place at times
- Reading and commenting on other blogs or social media
- Promoting your blog
- Researching articles
- …
Takeaways
Taking a few fast (half an hour) and one slow (2 ~ 5 hours) article per week takes around 1 hour per day. Blogging is not a casual venture.Therefore:
- Pace yourself and do not rush. A better article next week will be more valuable than a quick article today. Give (some of) your article ideas time to mature.
- Build a pipeline of articles, so that you have a portfolio of ideas in various stages of development.
- Do not post everything. At each stage, be ready to sacrifice ideas that do not make your standard.
- Re-purpose content regularly. Provided a good foundation, renovation is easier than innovation. Revisit and upgrade your articles regularly. For example, revisit each post in your archive once per year and bring it again on top of the blogging stack again after upgrade (if the topic remains relevant, otherwise retire). And while doing so, your fast content can gradually become slow.
- Float ideas first in social media. Ask questions on twitter, LinkedIn or Mahalo to develop / crystallise your thoughts.
- Beware of over-engineering. The longer you work on an article, the higher its standard for release becomes. Articles can always improve, but decide to release when they’re good enough. Remember #4, you can always revisit later.
No comments:
Post a Comment