How Much Time Should You Spend Blogging?
Last night, I came across a blog post by Bob Bly (one of my favorite copywriters) that addressed the question of “How much time should you spend blogging?” Blogging productivity is something that’s almost always on my mind, so I couldn’t help but be intrigued by this post.
In his post, Bly states his theory of blogging. He says “Anyone who blogs more than 10 minutes a day — or more than an hour a week — is spending way too much time reading and writing on blogs.”
Needless to say, this caught my attention. 10 minutes a day? Bly thinks that spending more than 10 minutes a day writing and/or reading blogs is a waste of time, and I disagree.
See, Bly views blogging as something that’s fun, entertaining, and “possibly” useful. To me, blogging is more than that. Blogging helps you build trust with customers. I’ve acquired many new copywriting clients solely from my blogging efforts. They’ve read my posts, found me knowledgeable, and hired me to handle a copywriting project for them. Blogging keeps me visible and credible.
But that’s not the only benefit of blogging that Bly seems to be overlooking. What about the SEO effects of blogging? An optimized blog that attracts back links with fresh content every day can help your entire site rank better for important keywords. Once your site earns higher rankings, it attracts more targeted traffic. When you get targeted traffic, you get more customers. So, blogging can help you bring in more customers from the search engines as well.
I’ve also had success helping clients build their email list through blogging. Well-placed sign up links on a high-traffic blog can attract a high number of sign ups, which can then be converted into customers through effective email marketing.
Look, I’m all for being a more productive blogger. And I fully realize there are a lot of people out there who waste way too much time blogging. But to say anything more than 10 minutes a day is a waste of time is a bit silly to me.
What do you think? How much time do you spend blogging?
February 4th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
In the begin you should and will spend more time reading and writing. Some people are good at writing but most of us will need to build that skill. I would think an hour per day writing and writing is not unreasonable. Have a great day
Chris Martin
February 4th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
In the begin you should and will spend more time reading and writing. Some people are good at writing but most of us will need to build that skill. I would think an hour per day writing and writing is not unreasonable. Have a great day
February 5th, 2010 at 5:07 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eric_Brantner: RT @hostgator How Much Time Should You Spend Blogging? http://is.gd/7GYAt...
February 5th, 2010 at 10:23 am
I completely agree with you. But I would like to know….How much would you recommend on blogging per day?
February 5th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Hi Eric, I totally agree with you, blogging is an excellent method to build trust, acquire customers and backlinks and move up the search engines rankings. 10 minutes blogging is definitely not enough time to spend on reading and posting, if you intend to use your blog for commercial activity.
I don't think one can say that anyone spends too much time blogging. Spending an hour a day blogging to one blogger may be fine, whilst another blogger would find it too much time. It's an individual thing!
February 6th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Yeah definately for serious bloggers ten minutes/day is pathetic. Folks like Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan probably spends several times that. Of course, they have important blogs and follow important people. Now people that are just messing around with nothing to say and no one to say it to probably should limit their time. xD
February 8th, 2010 at 12:47 am
Blogs are too important to "whip off" in less than ten minutes. There is even a science about when to tweet & fb your blog posts:
http://www.microarts.com/culture/branding-insight…
February 15th, 2010 at 11:00 am
[...] Rushing a post—Everybody has different opinions on how long you should spend blogging. However, I think we can all agree that being productive, no matter how much time you spend, is [...]