Post Frequency, Case Study on 5 Blogs

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Posted in » Articles, Blogging Tips - by Ades on November 25th, 2007

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This is a follow up case study on the 3 parts series that I had previously blogged - “Guide on blog posting frequency”

Lately, it seemed to me that, post frequency for the blogs that I read regularly, started decreasing i.e they started posting less. In order to to prove if my assumption was correct, I selected five blogs and recorded their number of daily posts, for each day starting from October 1 through November 22 (about two months).

Overall, the trend showed that, it was in fact reducing. Almost all blogs showed downward sloping graphs.

However, the reasons for the post frequency reduction stays unclear. Whether it is due to the year-end slowdown, or the recent Google PageRank punishments or the blog life cycle of the selected blogs is not known.

Here is how the graph looks for these blogs:

ProBlogger dot net

Darren’s blog ProBlogger.net has the highest blog post frequency among the five selected blogs. On average he posts 2.88 posts per day. Here is the daily graph for Darren’s blog from October 1st to November 22nd.

The maximum number of posts per day recorded was 5, and minimum he posted at least one post a day.

As you can see (above), the trend line (red line) is downwardly sloping. It means that, based on the latest two months’ data, number of daily posts on Problogger.net has been decreasing.

Trend line is a line that is auto generated by Microsoft Excel based on the given data, in this case problogger’s data. So, it’s not just any line that I drew myself ;)

From the two months data that I have collected, I also generated a graph for posts for each day of the week.

Problogger posts the most on wednesdays, averaging about 4 posts on wednesdays. And he posts the least on saturdays, averaging 2.87 posts on saturdays.

Darren’s one week trip that he took starting 18th November did affect the post frequency of his blog, even though only 4 days of his trip were included in this analysis.

Guest bloggers were also posting at least one post a day during this four days, but it was still below the 2.88 posts per day average that Problogger had. Therefore as you can see from the first graph, there is a sharp decline for Problogger at the end of the line.

But this four days was not the only days that pulled the line down. Actually since November 1st, the number of posts per day never reached five, almost all the time it was four and below. Therefore, it can be concluded that, Problogger’s daily post frequency is decreasing.

Tomorrow, I will talk about the remaining four blog findings, including my own blog. So, stay tuned!

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8 Responses to “Post Frequency, Case Study on 5 Blogs”

  1. By uncle sha on Nov 25, 2007

    Excellent article, I await your conclusion based on your data research

    For me, I believe the more posting frequency = good SERPs presence

    There has been case study before, that lessen in frequency will result in traffic coming to a halt or reduced detrimentally

    I’ve always been amazed by ProBlogger output, quality to it too.

    But do you take in mind the guest bloggers too? And how about paid posts vs ‘real’ posts

  2. By Ades on Nov 26, 2007

    Sha, I have not taken into account guest bloggers’ posts and paid posts in this case analysis. I think the number will be very few anyway (maybe John’s would be more than the rest). Because ProBlogger does not do paid posts, neither DoshDosh (I think). As for Yaro (EJ), he has very few paid posts, and it’s the same with me. I have only two paid posts.

    I will see if I can include that for JohnChow’s case though. Thanks.

  3. By Darren on Nov 27, 2007

    while it’s an interesting topic - I think you’ll find that the results are skewed not only because for the last week I’ve been on vacation and have left the blog with guest posts with just one post per day - but also because October was an abnormally high posting month due to me running my birthday giveaway competition for the first week and a half of the month. The posting frenzy associated with the giveaway will explain the spike at the start of your graph.

    My own posting frequency on ProBlogger does go up and down from month to month. I aim for at least one post per day on weekends and at least 2 per day on week days. I try to limit posting to 4 posts per day.

    This of course varies depending how much news is going around in the niche or what series I might be running at any given time.

    Here’s a graph you might be interested in - it maps out my last year of posting.

    As you’ll see there are peaks and troughs. October was the third highest for the year and November looks like being around the 4th or 5th lowest for the year. Peaks can be explained by me running series of posts and competitions while troughs are almost always explained by vacations/business trips (often the days before and after a trip are lower as I prepare/recover).

    So while I think your analysis is interesting - I’m not really sure that your conclusion that my posting frequency is that major a trend. Perhaps if the trend was downwards over a consistent basis over a longer period of time I’d think it a significant trend - but I’m not so sure on this occasion.

  4. By Ades on Nov 28, 2007

    Hi Darren,

    Thanks, very interesting insights you have given. From the graph that you have provided, it does look like a normal occurrence.

    Now, I would like to analyze the remaining four blogs. If most of the blogs are behaving in the same manner, then it does say something about the behaviors of all blogs in the blogosphere. That would mean that, all blogs are somehow affected by the same happenings (i.e major changes on the net) that are happening every day.

    I am sure findings should be interesting to many, regardless, my assumption holds true or false.

    Thanks again.

  1. 4 Trackback(s)

  2. Nov 28, 2007: AdesBlog.com » Blog Archive » Post Frequency, Case Study on 5 Blogs - part 2
  3. Jan 25, 2008: Frequenza di post: postare meno o postare di più?
  4. Jan 30, 2008: Seos.it » Blog Archive » Frequenza di post: postare meno o postare di più?
  5. Jan 30, 2008: Seos.it » Blog Archive » Frequenza di post: postare meno o postare di più?

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