How often should I post on my painting blog, and why?
As a painting contractor, you’ve probably already heard about the importance of having a painting blog and keeping it regularly updated.
A painting blog comes with numerous benefits including building rapport with customers, increased leads and sales, and much more.
Ultimately, the more prospects you attract through your blog, the higher the chances that those prospects will become paying customers.
Posting relevant, valuable, and high-quality blog posts, establishes you as a thought leader or an expert in your industry.
You can use your blog to answer questions that your customers are asking while staying top of mind as a business that engages its customers.
I’m often asked,
“How often should I post blog posts…and why?”
This is a huge question, and it comes in many different forms:
- Which posting frequency is best for my painting blog?
- How often should I blog to get the most leads on my painting blog?
- How often should I be updating my existing blog posts?
- etc…
Luckily for you, there is a lot of advice out there on this subject, however it varies case by case…
Some experts recommend “quality over quantity” and they believe you can post once per week or even once per month, “–as long as you keep the frequency and quality consistent.”
Other say, “It doesn’t matter how often, as long as they’re well-written, long blog posts, with authoritative research, and statistics.”
Some also have an idea that a blog should be, “updated as regularly as possible, at least once per day, even if you have to throw in some repetitive sentences just to make the word count.” (yikes)
I say, sure, Google loves fresh, frequent, content… but that’s not all their is to it…
So which is it?!?!
Which posting frequency will keep both your visitors and the search engine happy and coming back to your blog again?
One thing is for sure -both Google and your site’s visitors love fresh and regular content.
Google tends to favor blogs that are regularly updated because the frequency of your blog posts impact your SEO and Google rankings.
As you may already know, the higher you rank on Search Engine Results Pages the more leads you’re likely to get.
So, What Is the Magic Number?
Unfortunately, there is no magic number… BUT your posting frequency is influenced by several factors including:
· Blog Performance
Find out how your blog posts are performing by looking at the blog statistics.
You can use a free tool like Google Analytics to view statistics of your blog posts such as:
- Which blog-posts/pages receive the most visitors
- The average amount of time users read your blog post before leaving the page
- What time and day users read your blog posts
- etc…
If you don’t already have your Google Analytics set-up, this is a MUST.
Click here to learn how to set it up before continuing.
Once you’ve created an account, the easiest way to track your analytics from your WordPress dashboard is by using the free plugin “Google Analytics by MonsterInsights“.
To install it, go to your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New > Search “Google Analytics by MonsterInsights”.
· Number of Existing Posts on Your Blog
According to an analysis by Hubspot businesses that have over 400 posts receive 2x more traffic than those that have less than 400 blog posts.
If you’re just starting off with a brand new painting blog, pump out as much content as you can so Google can begin “indexing” your website as soon as possible.
You need to build up the volume of content on your blog, big-time.
You could start by posting 2-4 blog posts per week until you attain about 100-200 blogs then reduce the frequency to what you can manage easily.
If you have trouble coming up with things to blog about, here’s my 101 blog post ideas to help get those wheels turning!
Or, if you simply don’t have that 3-4 extra hours throughout your week, our team here at DYB Virtual not only provides a blog writing service, but we actually specialize in painting contractors; and we’re happy to handle this for you as you focus on the core operations of your business, as we do for many other painting contractors just like you!
· Resources
Whether you’re writing your own content or delegating this to a virtual assistant, like DYB Virtual, you need to determine what you’re capable of creating.
If you can’t seem to keep up with your posting frequency, try outsourcing your blog writing for every other blog post.
For example, let’s say you want to write a blog post every Monday and Thursday but when Thursday comes around you don’t have time to write it however need to keep the frequency consistent in order to keep the search engines happy, so you pay someone else to write it.
Alternate between writing your own content and outsourcing it to a virtual assistant.
When you outsource blog posts, feel free to edit them however you’d like, this way you can adjust them for your “personality”.
· What’s Working for Others in Your Industry?
Personally I don’t believe in having “competitors”, I believe that other businesses within your industry are actually ones that you can learn from.
With that being said, if you’re not sure where to start when determining your blogging frequency, take a look at other painting blogs and see what’s working for them.
If they’ve been publishing blog posts for a while, there’s a good chance they’ve already figured out their optimal frequency.
Since you share a similar audience, you should be able to get inspiration from their posting habits when determining your frequency.
· The Size of Your Business
Posting frequency differs across different business sizes even in the same industry, and for a very good reason.
Generally, if you’re a relatively new and small painting company, chances are you don’t have a big audience yet; and because of this, you can get away with a lower posting frequency.
However, if you own a medium or large painting business that has been around for 5+ years with a larger audience, your audience will have higher expectations.
You will need to post more frequently to keep your large audience engaged, informed, connected, and your business supplied with a viable number of leads.
With those few determining factors, you should already be getting an idea of how often or how many blog posts you should start with.
With the current search engine algorithms, consistently publishing new posts on your blog is essential in having your website regularly “indexed” (or ranked), and in keeping your website fresh and relevant to your audience.
Below are a few guidelines to help you determine the best updating frequency and how many posts you should start with.
More Content Is Better Than Less
Generally, the more posts you can add on your painting blog, the higher your chances of attracting more traffic.
Companies that blog at least once a week receive two times more traffic than those that don’t blog at all!
While this doesn’t conclude the best posting frequency, it points out to the fact that painting companies that are investing more resources towards blogging are reaping more benefits than those that don’t.
Ensure Quality over Quantity
While more is better, you should not aim at sticking to a higher posting frequency if you can’t maintain high posting standards.
Publishing blogs that are not well researched, formatted and targeted will negatively affect your brand’s authority and reputation.
Make sure your content has better quality than quantity, this means:
- well-researched
- optimized for a certain key-phrase or keyword
- formatted neatly
- targeted relevantly to your target market
- grammatically correct
- valuable to your audience
This means that no matter how frequent you update your painting business blog, if the content is not truly valuable and addressing your visitors’ needs, your blog is not going to rank high and you’re not going to receive a whole lot of visitors.
Be Consistent
Other than the number of blogs you post per month, it’s also important that you maintain a regular posting schedule.
If you publish high-quality content on a regular schedule, for example, every Wednesday, your audience will learn when to expect new posts and will always look forward to it.
Services change, products change, processes change, ALWAYS update your blog posts to keep them current and up to date; this will not only keep your readers informed but it will rank your blog higher on search engines.
In addition, search engines tend to favor blogs that post regularly, at the same time and day each week rather than sporadically.
Know What Works For Your Audience
Just like posting on social media, your blog posts should come at the most convenient moment for your audience.
This means you need to find out what days and times of the week your audience is most active online.
If you have no idea when, you can get some insights from your social media posts based on the number of views, shares, likes, comments and post reach.
Monday through Friday at mid-day seem to work best for most painting blogs, but don’t just take my word for it, TEST and find out what works for your audience!
Consider Your Available Resources and Capacity
If you have limited resources or don’t have a dedicated blog writer, you might find it difficult to stick to a regular monthly posting schedule.
The most important thing is to determine a realistic posting schedule based on your available time or resources.
It’s also important to note that if you’re not naturally fond of writing, any posting schedule that seems slightly strenuous can discourage you…
…and you may end up giving up on your blog altogether.
Mind the SEO!
You could be sharing the most informative and practical tips and lessons about topics that your audience cares about, but if they can’t find it, you’re missing opportunities.
So as you observe your regular posting schedule, make sure each post is SEO-optimized for higher ranking in search engines.
High ranking posts attract more leads, enhance conversion rates, and are easy and enjoyable to consume.
A few of the elements to observe include keywords, subheadings, Meta descriptions, tags, optimized images, etc.
Test, Test, Test
If you’re just getting started with your blog and don’t have much user insight yet, you will need to do a lot of testing.
It could be that you’ve overestimated or underestimated your audience’s desire for new content, or maybe posting on Mondays doesn’t attract as many readers as posting on Thursdays.
You could come up with three different posting frequencies and test each schedule for a month then pick an option that gives you the best results in terms of post reads, views, shares, users, leads, etc.
I hope the above insights have opened up your mind to the importance of posting frequently and consistently on your painting blog, as well as why high-quality content should be your priority.
To summairse, in regards to the posting frequency:
- Consider the size of your business
- Consider the current number of existing blog posts you have already
- Learn from what’s working for other painting businesses
- Utilize resources like Google Analytics to find out the optimal times to post according to your audience engagement
If you’re just starting out with your painting blog and it has few to no blog posts at the moment, you might want to bump up the numbers at least in the beginning to gain an audience before settling into a comfortable posting schedule.
So for that, 6-8 blogs per month would be suitable to attract an audience and leads.
For existing blogs that have a large number of following with more than 100 existing blog posts, one blog post per week would be a good number to attract new visitors and keep the old ones engaged.
Overall, the more high-quality blog posts you post per month the better.
If you don’t have a dedicated blog writer or the time to keep up with your posting schedule, our team at DYB Virtual can help.
Check out our Monthly Search Engine Optimized (SEO) blog post packages for painting contractors and see what works for you.
Or better yet, let us know if you have a custom monthly posting schedule in mind and we can work with that.
If you have any questions please book a meeting with me here or shoot me an email at Nadia@DYBVirtual.com and I’ll be happy to answer any of your questions!
Happy blogging! (: