Vijay S PaulShort answer
Yes, you should blog consistently if you are trying to build a readership.
Long answer
If you have been asking yourself the above question, I get where you come from.
All these years, I too would write only when I felt like writing. I too felt that writing to a timeline (unless for a client) isn’t my cup of tea. It would take the soulful experience out of writing.
But looking back, I was wrong.
Consider this. I started my first blog in 2009 when I was still pursuing my undergrad degree. Imagine the kind of audience I could have built if I kept blogging consistently!
And later, even around 2012-13 when I started off with my own personal blog on my own domain name, I still didn’t blog consistently. Once again, imagine the audience I could have built if I had done that.
And now, when I finally have started blogging regularly, I can see the difference.
We are what we are
As a writer/blogger, we are defined by our readers. Unless someone reads what we write. Gives feedback. And we improve our writing, I really don’t think we are a writer in the true sense.
Every doctor needs a patient. Every business needs a customer. Every writer needs a reader.
Yes, 100% of your audience might not actually value what you write. But there’s a 10% that would. And as a writer, I think it’s up to us to cater to that 10%.
Fear of recycled content
Many times you might ask yourself – this topic has been written about a thousand times already. What more can I add?
And I agree with your line of thought. To a certain extent.
Consider an example. A blog article on “10 reasons why you should have a blog”. Yes, there might be 10,000 articles on the web already about it. But I am pretty sure you would have a different perspective. A different experience around it as compared to someone else. That’s something you can capture.
That is something original.
In the end, it’s always your call
It’s definitely your call as to how often you’d like to write.
Just find a schedule that works for you – daily, weekly, biweekly, whatever. But stick to it.
In the past few months, I have found that giving myself a schedule to write is actually more beneficial than waiting for inspiration to strike. My writing speed has increased. My critical thinking has become more refined. And I have come to understand that while I might think a certain topic is absolutely worthless to write a blog post about, there are people out there who might find actual value in it.
One of my recent posts around how I read 40+ articles daily, actually saw the light of the day thanks to a friend of mine. I never thought it was a big deal to read so many articles. But through a random discussion with a friend, he told me that he really wanted to know how I did it.
So for his sake, I wrote that article. And it turned out to be a huge hit with a lot of people. That post alone brought me 3 times the traffic, as compared to the 4-5 articles before it, combined.
Once you train yourself to blog consistently, you start analyzing things better. Which in turn gives you more ideas about what to write. More perspectives. And the more you write, the better you become.
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Photo by Charl Folscher on Unsplash
