Why Blogging Consistently is Overrated (& What to Do Instead)

Blogging is one of the best marketing strategies for busy business owners or those of us with low capacity or inconsistent energy.

You can publish content when you have the time, and that content will compound and bring you website traffic, subscribers, and conversions over time. It’s something you can front-load and see the payoff months or years after the fact.

Which is why I HATE when someone who wants to blog for their business feels like they can’t because they think staying consistent is a requirement.

What Does Blogging ~Consistently~ Actually Mean?

Consistency in blogging just means to publish new content on a regular, predictable schedule. By definition, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the FREQUENCY of new blog posts. It’s *technically* totally subjective, but what I’ve noticed is that when people preach blogging consistency, they usually mean around once per week.

I don’t hate the idea of consistency. Blogging consistently absolutely DOES have its benefits, and if it’s something you want to strive to do, then great!

What I don’t like is when content strategists teach it as if it’s a requirement for blogging. It’s absolutely not, and forcing a strict schedule completely defeats the purpose of blogging as a sustainable marketing strategy.

How Consistency Can Help Your Blogging Efforts

The more blogs you publish, the more website authority you’ll build and the more chances you’ll have to rank. So, blogging consistency *does* make a difference, especially if your website/business is new, simply because it helps you get new content on your site regularly.

Google lovesss a website that’s regularly updated with fresh content, and consistency does help with that, I’ll admit.

It’s also useful because as you write and publish more blogs, you’ll build topical authority on the specific topics you’re covering, you’ll have more opportunities to link between your blog posts (this is called internal linking and it helps your SEO), and you’ll have more content to promote.

But notice what’s doing the work in most of that: having more published content in general, not publishing on a consistent schedule. You can build all of that same authority and momentum without forcing yourself into a “every Monday at 9am” routine.

Why I Don’t Recommend a Traditional Consistent Blogging Schedule

Blogging isn’t like social media where the algorithm punishes you for not showing up regularly, or like email marketing where your list will forget about you if you ghost for six months. It’s one of the only things you can drop with NO ONE NOTICING when things get overwhelming in business.

Whatever blogging cadence you think you’re supposed to hit, I think the whole idea of blogging consistency is kind of counterintuitive when blogging is supposed to be a sustainable marketing strategy that doesn’t require you to be “on” all the time.

Consistency is not and will never be a complete recipe for blogging success on its own.

And if you’re forcing it, it’s actually more often than not a recipe for overwhelm, burnout, and disappointment in my experience. It’s why so many business owners give up after one or a handful of posts – because keeping up a weekly cadence feels like too much on top of everything else they’ve already got going on.

So no, I’m not going to tell you to “just publish consistently” when you start blogging for your business. I would much rather you focus on the CONTENT of your blog posts and whether they’re relevant and positioned well to support your business goals than focus on getting something new out every single week.

What to Do Instead

If you WANT to blog “consistently,” focus on getting between 1 and 4 blog posts out per month. Don’t concern yourself with making sure they’re published on the same day each week, or what time they go out, or spacing them out throughout the month. Just get them published whenever they’re ready. None of that other stuff matters.

But if the idea of staying consistent is stressing you out or putting you off blogging for your business, here’s what I’d tell you to do instead:

Instead of blogging “consistently,” I recommend blogging in CLUSTERS.

What I mean by that: Planning batches of 6-10 interconnected blog posts at a time, writing them however works for you, and then giving yourself a break in between if you need it.

Approaching it this way usually results in blog posts that are more tightly focused and related to each other, which means:

• More internal linking opportunities
• More topical authority with search engines on those topics

What I see with people who are very rigid about blogging consistently is that it often means they’re publishing random, unrelated topics each week because they’re more focused on just getting something out there to meet their monthly quota than how relevant the blogs actually are to their goals.

So, basically what I’m telling you is – topical authority + making sure your content builds on itself and works together matters more than keeping a set schedule. The SEO juice from topical authority you build by blogging in clusters makes up for what you lose by not showing up every single week or month on repeat.

The beauty of blogging this way is how accommodating it is no matter where you are in business, your current season of life, or what other things you have on your plate at the moment.

Now that you know consistency isn’t the end-all, be-all of blogging, here’s how I can help you…

→ Done-With-You Blogging, a 3-month program for business owners who want to blog but need help with execution

→ Blogging Club, free biweekly 90-minute coworking sessions for blogging alongside others

→ Free blog topic swipe file for service providers so you never have to wonder what to write about