Is there such a thing as too much daily content?
April 25, 2007 | Comments (18) | Filed under: Blogging
Digging through my Google Reader list of feeds last night, I noticed a few of the sites I visit regularly have a pretty insane posting rate. For example, Engadget easily posts 15 articles a day (although granted multiple authors) and John Chow sometimes posts 5 or more. In terms of habit, I would classify myself as a once a day feed reader. There are many sites I visit multiple times daily, but I usually fire up my reader in the evenings and go through most of the updates to blogs and news sites in a single sitting. I’m sure other people are different, but that’s the way I usually do things.
What I noticed yesterday, however, was that many of the feeds with really high update rates were not getting as much of my attention as the ones that update once a day or even once every 3 days. In most cases, I was either skimming quickly or simply reading the latest post and marking the rest as read, sight unseen.
On the other hand, most of the sites that release one or two posts a day I found myself reading all of the content and even taking the time to follow links and comment on some posts. I thought this was interesting and did a little searching to see if others had experienced the same thing. Sure enough, over at Problogger, I found a good post highlighting 34 reasons why readers unsubscribe from your blog. Guess what the number one reason is?
Too many posts.
So I guess it’s not just me after all. It seems like a strange issue to have with a site, too many updates, but it’s something to definitely keep in mind when starting. If you’re going to publish a feed that is updated dozens of times a day (like DZone) you might want to devote a very little amount of your web real estate to advertising your feed. If you’re starting a new blog and are enthusiastic and posting like crazy, spread your posts out so you don’t overwhelm potential new readers. It’s being conscious of these types of little things that can really elevate your site in the early going.
What do you think, is there such a thing as too much daily content? Have you ever unsubscribed from a feed because it was just updated too often?
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18 people have left comments
I agree with you, flooding the reader with content is not the best thing. I try to concentrate on quality rather than volume. 2 posts/day seems to be the perfect balance for me.
Same here. I didn’t subscribe to LifeHacker simply because I knew I couldn’t keep up with that kind of pace. As evidenced by their subscriber base, though, there are thousands of others who feel differently.
Good question,
I used to read blogs that posts once a day more than others with more daily content, although I have never unsubscribed from their feed because of these… just mark their posts as read
In my opinion post once a day is perfect.
I try to keep myself between 2-4. It really depends on how busy I am. I agree that Engadget, Gizmodo, and other big blogs just a bit too much….but then again as Shane pointed out….some like that.
Yes! When I find a new blog, the first thing I check is it’s post frequency. If it’s significantly > 1, I won’t keep up and don’t subscribe. I do, however, dump it into a google custom search, so I can still tap the hive-mind of good blogs.
I’d love to know how many people actually read all the articles at LifeHacker, Engadget, Gizmodo, etc. I am currently subscribed to engadget, but I probably read 1 in 100 posts there, usually only if an image or title catches my eye.
I guess subscribers are subscribers when it comes to landing the big advertisers.
I find this to be a very interesting topic. I think sometimes it’s hard to balance post quantity and overall content quantity, especially in the beginning. I’m trying to create a lot of useful stuff and am not 100% sure how quickly I should be adding it.
Lately, I haven’t been posting often enough. However, for those times when I am spending more time writing, that’s when it comes in handy to use the Wordpress timestamp option to post things in the future.
This is very interesting to me. As a new blogger, I’m never really sure about this.
Thanks for the great info my friend!
Ryan
I guess most of us don’t have enough time to read everything that we would like to read … we would have to filter out what interested us the most.
i disagree. I dont believe that too much content drives away readers. Im confused why anyone would think it would.
As long as the quality of posts remains the same i believe that more is better.
Seriously, would you get pissed off with a blog owner because he was posting more often? Would you unsubscribe because of it?
adding too much content is something im never going to worry about. not adding enough is something i will. More content means more content for readers to read and more pages for search engines to spider - ie. more traffic.
I agree I’m less likely to stay subscribed to a blog that posts numerous times a day. Just gives me the feeling I can’t keep up. Once a day is plenty - two at most, in my opinion.
It will definitely mean more traffic from a search engine standpoint.
I don’t think the consensus here is that people would be pissed off by too much content. It’s more that too much content makes it difficult for people to keep up with every post. Once they start to fall far enough behind, everything either gets ignored or they unsubscribe and move on.
I personally would, and have unsubscribed to a blog because I just couldn’t keep up with their pace of updates. There are obvious benefits to posting tons of content, but if one of your primary goals is to establish a consistent readership and community, your post frequency is definitely something to look into.
I go through the titles of blog post from high frequency blogs.. like Engadget. if something intereting i find then only i go to read all of its content under that title. but seeing so many entries bugs me sometimes and when i dont have enough time to read to titles i just mark all of them read.. but for low frequency blogs i definitely wont miss reading all the contents.
I don’t get pissed off — I just know that I can’t keep up. So, I usually just take the site off my list of things to read daily and add it to the ‘if I’m ever bored’ list.
I think it depends. If somebody is running a website as a business and getting revenue from it, he or she will definitely benefit from more content. Take a look at LifeHacker. Now they are getting over 418000 unique visitors a day! I believe just two months ago this number was about 380000. Even though the average visit length is only 7 seconds (means people don’t really read all their articles), they are making tons of page impressions every day. When you are monetizing you site with CPM ads, each impression counts! So, I think too much daily content works very well for them.