Less Random = Easier Blog Posts
written by Gary Jones
You have heard it time and time again that post frequency will dictate the success or lack of success for your blog. So how do you produce quality content on a daily basis without spending hours and hours hunting for a random idea?
Looking for a random idea that applies to the niche of your blog is very time consuming. Setting up weekly featurettes is a smarter way to blog instead of hunting for random idea’s everyday to post about.
A featurette is my way of saying a post you do each week on the same day on the same topic. Our own blog is setup with 8 featurettes that we post about once a week. An example would be our Geek of the Week which we run a weekly quiz for a yearly cash prize and trophy. Another example is Shoemoney’s Free Shirt Friday.
The benefits to setting up featurettes is it makes it a lot easier to know what topic you will be blogging about today and finding something to post about is a less daunting task. If you do not have a featurette currently on your site, consider adding one or more today.
If you do have featurettes on your site which one’s have worked best for you?
This post was guest blogged by Gary Jones from BlueFur.com. BlueFur provides Dedicated Servers in Canada like the one that runs John Chow’s site.
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am i the first to comments?
Muhahaha!
ROFL now that was spontaneous and funny too
Ah, the glory of being the very first to comment!
Reminder: Be sure that you also add something of importance/worth to your comment!
Shine on,
Aaron
Aaron you took the words right from my mouth! Spot on!
Oh! I have worst post of the week, and you are about to win!
Just joking… good tip!
Not funny dude
Great article!
A couple of the companies I SEO for run blogs for link building purposes and they have huge problems with new content. I normally recommend a posting schedule where a certain topic is covered the same day of each week. As long as they can find 5 sub-topics of their business (they don’t post Sat & Sun) it works very well.
It will be too predictable… if you come up with a “boring friday” you will loose a lot of traffic, because people will know that they won’t miss much if they don’t visit your blog on friday. So it’s better to keep it unpredictable, who said full time blogging was an easy job?
It doesn’t have to be boring at all. For example, I do Reader Question Sessions on Mondays and since the topic can change each week, it never becomes stale. You just need to be creative.
Yes it all depends on how you organize the session… but unfortunately not all can come up with a great idea. So it’s better to stay out of this kind of thing if your idea is not “that great”.
Some my say the opposite that relaibility will grow a community that want to see your next weeks post on that particular topic.
I know I look forward to the Sunday cartoons in the paper.
That’s true, and I guess it depends on how you structure it. What I mean is if you do something as restrictive as Free shirt Friday every day of the week you’re not going to have a whole lot of flexibility. Also, newspapers might have cartoons in the paper every Sunday but the front page doesn’t feature stories from the same section every day you know? It’s not like sports leads on Saturdays, Entertainment on Fridays etc etc.
Good way to put it
I have my weekly weigh in called Tipping the Scales. That works well for me on tuesdays, just one day less that I have to worry about. I also have a weekend thing to just post short posts usually mentioning other blogs. I plan on adding a weekly review and possibly a weekly sports post, so that leaves me with only 3 days of hard blogging. I find it easy to come up with stuff, especially when I right down in advance what I think of. I have about 50 days worth of topics written down, it just takes me time to actually write them. That way I always have something.
I’ve got a few regular “featurettes” set up and even wrote about this very topic in my post Introduce Regular Features. However, I have tried to avoid filling my week with too many of these because they don’t allow for much flexibility and in my experience it can inhibit my creativity. Overall though, if you don’t currently have any regular features on your blog, I definitely suggest implementing one and seeing how it goes.
Adding regular features is a great way to generate more traffic and attract/retain a new audience. I recently added “The Resume Hunter” (which gives a 90-second critique of a public resume), The Cubicle Continuum (a weekly column on the world of work) and The Forward of the Week (we expose one of those annoying, circulating messages) - and they have already paid off! It also makes my life easier when it comes to planning evergreen posts…
I agree but I still think you have to be careful to leave yourself some wiggle room. Also, I’ve found that the fewer features you have to tie to a day (for example I do Friday Phrase Auctions) the better off you are. That way if a big news story hits on thursday night or something you can post about that rather than having to either wait or double up posts.
Thanks for the article, I think this is a good idea. Personally, I’d keep the featurettes low so you can keep some randomness in your blogs to keep your readers interested, but have 2 to 3 a week so you have easy ideas to play off of. Mashable’s toolbox posts are a great example, and I think it’s added a lot of traffic for them.
I feature my Speedlinking or “link love” post every Monday where I highlight five interesting posts that I found from the previous week. The feature has gone over well with my readers and everyone appreciates when they get linked up.
It is also a nice way to kick off the week of blogging.
I do have similar posts sometimes but when I do that I keep writing about the same subject for about a week.
Great post Gary! My featurette is my Sunday Chatter posts… people tend to like them.
Yeah great post.
What are featurettes? I am new to all this
Its when you make a regular post on something every week on the same day. John’s and Garys views on this are perfect and it’s a great way to reduce your time writting when you should be working on growing or what ever the case may be.
What is a featurette?
Its a posted based around your nitch. Like it you are saying your an exspert in SEO it would be your regular post regrading this topic on what ever day that happens to be.
Why are my comments not showing here? I have tried to post and it is not working.
[...] I was developing this post, John Chow posted a piece on easier blog posts and I think it ties in nicely here. The post talks about scheduling content each week so you have [...]
I made a post a week ago or more giving my outline for my blog and what days I am making certain posts. I even went as far as to make a page dedicated to my outline so people can see whats happening and when. Here is the link to it and what I have done http://yourworldgallery.com/?page_id=59 and I know it has worked for some of my readers as they are only reading my blog on the days where I post on marketing yourself. So thats good I think they can spend more time reading other peoples blogs and hit mine when they know there is something there they are looking for.
It’s hard to be the first person to comment!
You don’t have to be, its better but just comment on what the first person said and then the last spot. That works too
Lol, that sounds pretty cheap.
Honestly I haven’t thought about it in this way. But now that you made me think it is much easier to manage and keep a standard daily posting. Thanks for the tip/idea.
[...] Less Random = Easier Blog Posts - John Chow talks about how your blog will be more successful and easier to manage if you post on a regular basis. [...]
Indeed, a posting schedule (or scheduled featurette) works wonders! And sticking to one can be a really good draw for new readers.
People like regularity in their reading availabilities; that’s why magazines became so popular!
Shine on,
Aaron
Yes, of course a regular thing to do will ease the work and you can surprise readers with a longer post the day after.
This has worked great for out site. We do many projects that we break up into a series of posts and it gives us time to work on the next project while we write the previous project we worked on. You can see some of our projects at http://www.justbuildstuff.com.
everybody is commenting non-sense… here I am too
I totally agree with you Blogging Success journey.
Well, I liked your idea John.
I think readers do enjoy this type of constancy. As long as you remember to add something shocking from time to time
I’ve seen a few bloggers who strategically blogs about a specific topic of their niche everyday of the week.
I’m starting to lean towards this system as its easier and more efficient with my blogging.
Nice post Gary.
Cheers,
Carlo
Yes, this is possible when the blog itself restricts itself to one specific subject. When it is a catch all blog it is very difficult.
I don’t really see the point of this post
This is a very good idea. It is true that blogging daily is a tiresome process when you have to keep hunting for ideas.
Like every Thursday, my total-E! Thursday featurette peaks above the other days. E! covers any celebrity hot in the news.
I love Derek’s Linky Love Monday, I do a Blog of the weekend with only 1 link, maybe that’s why people are not over-curious.
Only Wednesday hasn’t a featurette, although “unpredictable”, it doesn’t draw I a big crowd either.
Other than that I need John’s help how to cash in my weekly visitors spike on Thursday. Adsense for sure doesn’t give contextual ads that day
I strongly agree that the frequency of the posts plays an important role for the traffic, but let’s not forget the quality as well. If you don’t have to say something meaningful or something of great value and importance, you’d better not say anything.
Yeah, post a funny u-tube video instead
I stronlgy disagree with the immediate corrolation between posting more post will get you more visitors.
The site attracting the most visitors in my daily toplist directory hasn’t updated her blog in a month (now this is really what I love when it comes to ROI where I stands for amounts of posts)
I usually have an interview with a new web company every day. It helps me keep in touch with my contacts and my readers tend to like the interviews alot..
That’s a lot of interviews
Short post, but I do like it. I have not followed the golden rule on every “how to blog” site about finding a niche and sticking to it. I like a lot of topics so I have blogged about them. I get some decent hits for a few of the topics (finance, blogging, photography, and video games). Anyhow, I would definitely like to try this on my site. Stick to a topic certain days of the week.
I would be happy if John teached us how to monetize each different featurette day, as now he only teaches me how to monetize the entire blog.