Content marketing is marketing. So it should serve your business goals, take into account the needs and the behavior of your different ‘audience’ segments and finally be relevant for the audience and optimized from the perspective of the costs, benefits, and resources (for instance, by having a good mix of external partners and an in-house content marketing expert team).
These elements have an impact on the frequency of putting out content via the different channels you use. Frequency is important, but it doesn’t mean you should create content on all platforms every day. Let’s take blogging as an example.
When you blog you create expectations among your readers, also regarding frequency. If you blog a lot for a while, and then you stop, it’s impossible to create a valuable and lasting dialogue. Setting these expectations at the beginning is important. Find the right mix and certainly do the math on the cost and return on your blog efforts, compared to the needs of your readers and direct and indirect goals.
The value of your content plays a role as well. If you are perceived as being a very important source of information and a real leader in your field, you might need to blog less frequent as people will be looking out for your next great piece. However, this is rather exceptional.
Blog frequency, costs and benefits
There is a direct link between the frequency of your blog and the number of acquired customers. So, undervaluing your blog frequency and that of other content channels is leaving business on the table. However: also take into account the cost of opportunity and don’t forget existing customers.
If multiple authors collaborate on a business blog, frequent updates per day work well. Of course, you need to see what the different collaborators can do and help them plan. The micro-communities of individual bloggers also have their expectations. In other case, daily updates or frequent updates per week help you maintain a relationship with your readers and provide other opportunities as well such as the creation of a newsletter.
When you blog less, make sure your content is valuable enough so it gets shared and builds a strong community of readers, which requires you to interact well with readers too.
Frequency is important on other channels as well. For Facebook, for instance, daily updates seem to work best. Although it’s good to know such benchmarks, you should regularly test if your frequency serves your goals and meets expectations of readers, while looking at costs and benefits.
Testing is always important, in content marketing as well. So, what’s the best content and blog frequency? It depends. As content marketing evangelist Joe Pulizzi says: be consistent and compelling.