As businesses invest more into their inbound marketing channels, a common question digital marketers are asked is how often new content should be posted to a website.
A recent study by HubSpot suggests businesses should try to put out 16 or more high quality posts per month. HubSpot’s study found that companies who published 16 or more posts per month received nearly three and half times more traffic than companies that published four or fewer monthly blog posts.
However, when determining a posting schedule, instead of only looking at how often content needs to be posted, businesses should be focusing on how they can provide quality content. The truth is that while a business can publish thousands of articles, if only a couple are noteworthy & share-worthy they will be the only ones that provide true value to the website.
Although there is not an exact science to creating noteworthy & share-worthy posts, there are several statistics businesses should consider when creating their content.
According to a study by Mike Sall who is the Head of Product Analytics at Coinbase, the optimal post length is a 7 minute read. In his study, Mike used analytics on the read time of a post and compared it to the average time spent on page for each post. He found that while 3 minute posts had the most reads, a 7 minute post had the highest engagement rate. He also found posts longer than 7 minutes saw a greater drop off rate. It is important to note that Mike also stressed that “Great posts perform well regardless of length, and bad posts certainly don’t get better when you stretch them out.”
When businesses choose an image to use on their post or article they need to ensure that the image is sized in dimensions optimised for social sharing. A study done by Buzzsumo found that Facebook posts that used properly sized images had 2.3x more engagement than those without images.
In short, businesses that commit to publishing regular high quality content to blogs tend to see the best returns in terms of website traffic and lead generation. If companies post high quality content that is noteworthy & share-worthy the results can continue to pay out over time
TL;DR;
- Companies who publish 16 or more posts per month receive nearly three and half times more traffic
- The optimal post length is 7 minutes
- Facebook posts that used properly sized images had 2.3x more engagement
Last modified: December 31, 2019
