This is Part I of a three-part series.

One of the biggest questions you see a lot when it comes to the subjet of blogging — be it for personal or professional reasons — is, “Geez, do I hafta blog every day? And if not, how often should I blog?”

Of course, the quick answer to that question is, “no.” You can blog as little or as much as you want. Of course, you may not be as successful at whatever goals you want to achieve if you don’t blog a lot. Or even too much.

So now you’re saying, “Well, Bob, now you’re acting like a politician. You haven’t really answered all of my questions. So I don’t hafta blog every day. So how often should I blog?”

At the risk of sounding like a politician, I can only answer that question with, “It depends.”

For most anyone professional who wants to blog, but doesn’t want to:

1. … appear like they’re obsessed with blogging;
2. … look like they have a ton of time to blog (in other words, they don’t appear to have any business — a very bad perception indeed);
3. … set up an expectation that they’ll be able to keep up with an ungodly posting schedule;

… I have some advice for you.

Until recently, it seemed to me that the standard for professional blogging should be two to three posts a week. But after reading some other blogs as of late about blogging, I’ve somewhat shifted my thoughts on the subject. I’m now of the mind that businesspeople should post twice a week, unless “breaking news” (sorry, old journalism thoughts breaking through) necessitates more.

I’d think about it like this: write feature-type of posts — I’d call this post a “feature,” for example — twice a week. Most blog platforms have a feature where you can write something and then post it later, at a time when you want. So, for example, you can write two posts on a Sunday night and have them post the next Tuesday or Thursday.

Then write about that “breaking news” as it happens, or as soon as you’re able to link to those items and expand on them with your thoughts. If you’re in the type of industry (or even company) that has a lot of breaking news, you could conceivably cut back to one feature post a week. But if you are in a field where breaking news isn’t the norm, then I’d go with two. Nowadays, though, most areas you can think of have at least one breaking story a week.

Even better, use a tool like Twitter for those breaking-news tidbits, and then import your Twitter feed into your blog with a free tool like Feedfuze or a similar tool or plugin like the one I have on this blog (if you’re on WordPress). That way, you’ve got an immediate presence added to your twice-weekly blog. If you’d like to find out more about how to import Twitter into your blog, drop me an e-mail. I’d be happy to help.

Then as you build your Twitter base, you can reference your blog posts in that feed, which will drive even more traffic to your blog. Or, heck, start out with doing that and let your Twitter base build because of your cross-posts to Twitter.

Remember, blogging is all about building your expertise in the eyes of your target audience. In my blogging and Twittering for my various client projects, I’ve been able to build my “brand” as an expert in those fields. It takes time and work, and just like crops in a field, you need to take care of your brand and audience. It can be done, and is done by all different kinds of professionals in all kinds of jobs.

For myself, I need to “stock” this new blog up with some content, so I’ll probably be posting three times (and maybe even four times) a week. That’ll be for just the first couple of weeks, though. After that, I’ll cut back to the schedule I’ve indicated above. Since I’m the boss of this blog, I can make those kids of calls.

I have a nice boss.

In Part II of this series (later this week), I’ll bring you a somewhat opposing view to this from another blog. Then in Part III (next week), I’ll share a quick and easy way to create more blog posts, with no muss and no fuss. I really hope I didn’t sound like Billy Mays there.

Contact Bob Woods at Infonitum.