Blogging Tip: The Importance of a Post Per Day

Posted by Kyle Eslick on June 18th, 2007 | Category and Tags

I’ve usually got a few post ideas swimming around in my head and on weekends I will usually try to get these into writing and published on my site. I also use the weekends to get caught up on my feed reading and make any necessary site changes.

This weekend I was out of town for a good portion of the weekend and unable to publish any blog posts Saturday or Sunday. Today while checking over the comments on my site I noticed that my subscriber count took a nose dive, dropping from roughly 310 to 224. Yikes!

What is responsible for this? I truly have no idea, but I have a theory. Generally speaking, most people seem to use Sunday as a day to sort of clean up their feed readers. Is it possible people dropped me because I went two days without a post?

Looking back, I probably should have scheduled a post to publish Saturday and Sunday morning. In my opinion, I believe this shows the importance of placing at least one post a day. Making two posts today? Schedule the second one to publish the next morning.

Have you ever noticed anything like this before?

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Comment by Nirmal on June 18th, 2007:

Kyle,
Its not always that people clean up the feeds and remove them. Since its weekend most of the people may turn off their PCs and the people who have added you as bookmarks wont be available that time. Check your feed count for another 2-3 days more and then only you can confirm whether readers actually unsubscribed or not.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on June 18th, 2007:

Nirmal, Vijay - Good points!

Now that I think about it, I did read somewhere that Feedburner has trouble getting accurate feed counts on the weekends.
Comment by LISTIKAL on June 18th, 2007:

Yeah, it has nothing to do with you losing subscribers. Feedburner only counts subscribers that hit your feed. So, web based RSS readers are the only ones that count everyday. Offline readers, that are typically only used during the week when people are working, spike your readership significantly.

I’m starting to wonder about that as well though. One week, because I saw Connected Internet’s readership go drop down below 1000 one Thursday, only to see spike to 1500 on Sunday.

Feedburner/Google really need to figure this one out.
Comment by SEO blog on June 18th, 2007:

Feedburner doesn’t use an exact count, it’s actually an algorithm of sorts. I’m not sure exactly what it is but when you update your blog and it goes out to your subscribers, your count usually goes up. When you slack off for a while, it drops. I would be willing to bet people didn’t drop you, it’s just a reflection of your “active” readers or something like that. If you post a few days in a row, I’d expect your numbers to get back up to where they were.
Comment by K-IntheHouse on June 18th, 2007:

I agree with SEO blog and I’m glad you brought this up Kyle. I have been noticing the same drop every weekend and I thought it was because I haven’t posted on weekends but then during the numbers would go back up to close to the previous weeks high.

I just need a post again to restore some of the slack. This weekend mine dropped from 156 to 122! Last week it dropped to around the same number but it bounced back. And I hope it will again!
Comment by Kyle Eslick on June 18th, 2007:

Well, I put up a few posts today so I guess I’ll find out tomorrow
Comment by Madhur Kapoor on June 18th, 2007:

I have experianced it too . If you dont post anything for a day or too , your feed count drops . But if you post again , it will increase again .
Comment by Zia on June 19th, 2007:

Thanks for sharing this observation with us, Kyle. Yes, I guess our readers can be demanding sometime. In my experience, week-end is definetely the time to post something as we are more likely to get hits during that time.
Comment by Venu on June 19th, 2007:

Aah, I thought I was the only one facing the trouble. For me also it nosedived from around 130 to 60 (half) and somehow it has again crawled back to 140’s.

I have no idea as to how feedburner counts the subscribers (much like adsense, they cannot reveal the algo as it might also be “gamed”)

Anway I think, there are couple of bots having a watch on your feeds and if no new content is posted, they might not record a hit. Again on most weekends, when people switch off their PC, the RSS readers wouldnt hit the feed and hence you might record less hits.
Comment by K-IntheHouse on June 19th, 2007:

Just noticed this morning.. my feed count is back at 152.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on June 19th, 2007:

Mine only went back to 244 after 3 posts yesterday
So, that means I’m still down roughly 65ish subscribers. I guess I can still look forward to the fun of watching that figure grow over the coming days.
Comment by Calvin on June 19th, 2007:

I agree that the frequency of posting will certainly affect your feed count.

Nonetheless, not everyone can afford to post everyday due to time constraints and other committments. A post once every 2-3 days should be good enough!
Comment by Kyle Eslick on June 20th, 2007:

Yay! Back over 300 subscribers!
Comment by Michael on June 21st, 2007:

I saw an increase in subscribers and viewers on my site when I started posting at least once a day, I try to do 3 a day on weekdays and 1 a day on weekends.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on June 21st, 2007:

Michael - Thats a good plan. I try to do 1-2 a day, but it really just depends on my schedule.

Sometimes I use weekends to catch up on posting, while other weekends I’ll go an entire weekend without posting if I have a project I’m working on or a lot of family stuff going on.