Yesterday, Syed Balkhi published one of his best posts lately: “Consistency & Frequency Are The Ultimate Downfall of Blogging“. While Syed was probably looking – as he stated at the article’s end – for a bit of controversy, he actually managed to create a very thoughtful post that made me write a follow up, something I rarely do.

Blogging “Experts” always preach that you must be consistent with your blog, and you should post frequently.

This is how Syed starts his article, making it clear where he’s going to hit, the famous “Be consistent, write frequently” blogging tip. While he makes some very good statement on consistency, I would have loved to see a more detailed explanation of what should be understood by “being consistent with your blog”, and since I did not find those, I’ll share my views in this article.

By blogging consistency you should understand that…

1. You should be consistent in quality

By quality consistency I mean that you should continuously thrive to improve both your writing quality and the usefulness of your articles. People follow you because of the practical use they have for your tips, or the fun factor you always provide and so on. If the quality is poor, make it good. If it’s good, make it better. There’s no perfect, but thrive for it, you’ll get close.

2. You should be consistent in writing style and tone

The folks that read your blog and follow you through feeds and Twitter, do so because of your personality. The more charming you are, the easier it is to get followers. When you’ve found that tone that suits you best, stick with it. Of course, with the occasional escapades. Once in a while it’s nice to break the blogging patterns.

3. You should be consistent in frequency

While frequent posting has its advantages in terms of traffic, when it affects the quality of your posts it can become your blog’s killer. If once a week is the rhythm than does not affect your creativity and quality, that’s how frequently you should post. Don’t post daily just because X does it. I don’t. Even more, whenever I feel that I come across a writer’s block I take a break from Blogsessive, and guess what. My readers are still here. My RSS subscribers are still here. Why? Because they understand and accept the fact that it’s better to sacrifice a week than sacrifice your readership and value.

All in all, Syed is a bit harsh and extreme saying that “consistency & frequency are the ultimate downfall of blogging”. But he’s got a point. Being consistent and frequent for the sake of it is wrong. Being constantly useful and frequently creative is what you should struggle for.

And one more thing to ponder about consistency…

Consistency is the key element in branding

Personal branding, just like any other type of branding is a compound of your actions. The better these actions are tied to each other, the more consistent your image/brand is. But just as with every other brand, there comes a time when you’re required to hit that “Refresh” button. And when you do that, it’s called rebranding.

The point of rebranding yourself? It’s infinitely better that instead of wasting time recycling others’ or your own ideas you should be using that time to reinvent yourself. Continue to provide value, just in a new shape.

My 2 cents on consistency: Be on the lookout for the best in you. Constantly!

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I’m sure that many of you have wondered why some bloggers have thousands of subscribers, why their blogs are called “authority blogs” and why they receive constant or growing traffic. Yes, their writing skills are excellent, they provide good insight on different matters and/or they have a charming personality, but when it comes to blogging, there is one thing capable of deciding your success in only a few weeks: Consistency.

Importance of blogging consistency

Why is consistency important and how much it affects your blog? If you’re a casual blogger, writing about you math class or how your fish did 3 back-flips last evening, it probably won’t affect you too much, since your target would most likely be your classmates or close friends; but if you’re serious about maintaining an online successful blog, than constancy should be a top priority to you.

We’ve all heard that quality is better to have than quantity, but what if you can achieve both? What if you really have what it takes to intrigue you readers, to make them come back for more? And what if your readers keep coming back, only to find no new posts or new comments? Then, all your talent is wasted, and your initial effort was in vain.

These days, when the online environment is full of wonderful tools like StumbleUpon, Digg or del.icio.us, that make our web experience more pleasant and help us find information easier, people tend to get comfortable, do less typing in the address bar of their browser. That’s why you can be certain that your blog gets a lot of traffic from RSS readers. From time to time, I do like to navigate through my favorite blogs, looking for new posts, or reading old posts that I’ve missed, but 90% of the time I use my RSS readers to keep an eye on blog updates. So ask yourselves this: How am I supposed to come to your blog, if you don’t alert me constantly? And how can you alert me? By writing new posts! Further more, if your posts are high quality readings, you’ve got yourselves a loyal subscriber!

How can you insure your blogging consistency?

We all have bad days, less inspiring moments or simply don’t have the time to write even 2 paragraphs on a topic. What can be done to overpass these moments? Take advantage of your less busy days. Write, take notes, read more, get informed and form opinions of your own. Sure you can write a post, publish it and then go back to writing and publishing another one, but wouldn’t it be great if instead of this publishing frenzy you would save a draft of your second post, only to publish later, at a time when you won’t have the same idea-flow you had that day?

From a subscriber-statistic point of view, publishing 2 articles the same day will get you X unique visitors and 2*X pageviews that day, while publishing one the next day will insure your X unique visitors for 2 days in a row, and you’ll still have a respectable pageviews quota. If you’d ask me, I’d go for the uniques!

What do the search engines say?

With a new blog launched every second of the day, who do you think will win the search engines’ blessing? I put my money on those that keep a constant publishing flow, provide relevant results and maintain a high traffic level.

This is why consistency is essential for your blogging success, a huge factor in getting quality traffic, backlinks and reader loyalty.

So, blogsessed friends, how do you overpass your bad days and keep your level of publishing constant?

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