Last Updated on February 26, 2023
I’m making a big change to my blog’s posting schedule effective immediately. But I realize that to most readers, they won’t notice much of a difference.
Over the years, people have asked me how I manage a daily posting schedule. Often, they’re probably really asking me if I’m crazy for having posted daily for more than six years now.
It was January 5, 2013, that I posted what was the first in a string of of daily posts. That was six-and-a-half years ago.
It’s funny, really. I didn’t set out to start posting daily on that date. I didn’t set out to create the “perfect schedule” when it came to posting content. I believe that schedule is different for everyone. And I’ve said many times that asking, “How often should I post?” is the wrong question to ask.
Honestly, I just hit a patch where I found a stride at being able to produce a post a day. It was a little while before I realized that I was actually posting every single day.
I’ve extolled the virtues of having an editorial calendar to help you plan what you’ll post about and when you’ll post it. I was using an editorial calendar back then as I still do. If you blog and you’ve never tried using an editorial calendar to help you with your planning, you just can’t imagine what a difference it can make!
I don’t remember when it dawned on me that I’d been posting daily. But it took a while to realize it. I guess that’s because things were going so well that I was just able to write and manage without thinking about it.
Last year, I marked the occasion of five years of daily posts. This year, the 6th anniversary rolled by in January.
People have asked if a daily posting schedule is difficult.
Of course it is. Imagine trying to come up with 365 posts a year. Every year. Year after year.
It can be a challenge, especially when you work a full-time job with increasing responsibilities.
I’m a homebody and that probably won’t change, but still, when other projects begin to eat away at your free time, a daily posting schedule becomes a monster.
In the past, I’ve joked that now that I’ve been doing daily posting for so long, I’m too stubborn to stop now.
Seriously, I hate the idea of “breaking up a set,” particularly one that has been going this long. It was always sort of a joke, but at the same time, I was mostly serious, too.
I had an epiphany recently. I realized that I was too concerned with keeping the streak going, even though I had having a harder time doing so.
That’s when I realized it was time.
It’s time to change my blog’s posting schedule.
I’m going to stop with daily posting effective now, July 1, 2019. My plan is to now post only on weekdays. That means I’m reducing my blogging workload by about 29 percent, if you want to get technical.
I’m still planning to post about blogging on Mondays, about grammar on Tuesdays and about faith on Fridays. I’m still planning to have Wednesday and Thursday as “wild card” days where I can post about whatever other useful information I can find.
On Saturdays and Sundays, I’ll use that time to write the weekday posts. I’m hoping that giving myself more time that way will make all of the posts better.
I’m also going to use the weekends to plan social media posts, something I’ve fallen behind on.
Blogging is more than what you post on your site. You have to market your blog to actually help people find you. Hopefully, once they do, they’ll come back.
But marketing your content and taking extra time to make that content better can’t be a mistake.
Yet I still feel guilty.
I really do. Saturday, July 6, 2019, will be the first date in six years, six months and one day that I won’t have published a post.
(Or maybe I will if I find something that I think can’t wait until the following Monday.)
But if all goes as planned, it’ll be the first time after 2,373 consecutive posts that one won’t go up.
I have to be honest: it bothers me. It’s not so much a sense of defeat that I feel as one of just being disappointed in not keeping it going.
You may recall that I started this post with a mention that the average reader may not notice much of a difference, even if I will. That’s because the analytics of my blog tell me that it’s the grammar-related posts that far out-perform all of the others. I usually only post on grammar on Tuesdays, though I sometimes throw in a second grammar post on Thursdays.
So that means that if I’m looking only at top posts, there’s usually just that one day of the week that is the true “hit” of the week. If that’s the case, I imagine most people won’t notice if I go from seven days a week back to five.
At least, that’s what I’m going to tell myself while I’m writing the next week’s posts on the weekend.
Of course, if I come up with something to talk about that feels urgent enough that I can’t wait to post, then you may see an occasional Saturday or Sunday post. Otherwise, know that on weekends, I’ll be spending my time trying to make the blog better on the sidelines…and I hope you’ll still enjoy new posts here at Patrick’s Place five days a week!
