What is The Posting Sweet Spot?

Darren Rowse asked his readers a week ago for reasons they unsubscribe from RSS feeds. I added my feedback by giving Darren ten reasons that I unsubscribe from a blog feed:

1. Posting frequency is too low (less than once a week)
2. Posting frequency changes drasticly (from 3 times a day to once a week)
3. Posting frequency is too high (over 5 or 10) posts
4. Posts are too long (just get to the point! I don’t read many long posts)
5. The primary writer of the blog leaves and someone else takes over
6. I lose interest in the topic
7. The blog writer takes the topic in a direction I don’t care about
For instance a blog on SEO that switches from primarily talking about getting links to primarily focusing on the topic of the overall SEO industry in general.
8. The blogger says or does something (more than once) that I find offensive. This happens more often than one might think.
9. The blog adds writers that are not interesting to me
10. I find several better blogs that cover the same topic without committing any of the above 9 mistakes.

The most common reasons have been 1,4, and 8 above.

Then Darren posted the results of his survey here. The top two reasons were:

1. Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming) – 37
2. Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead) – 29

Obviously, posting frequency is an extremely important factor in keeping readers on a blog.

So what is the posting sweet spot?

Well, originally I was going to give you advice on figuring that out, but here’s the real bottom line:

YOU CAN’T PLEASE ALL THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME!

There is no secret formula for keeping all of your readers happy. The most important thing is that you be yourself and do what you enjoy. Your passion and your “point of view” is what will separate your blog from other blogs. People will either like you or not. Just be yourself, post as much as you want to, and enjoy it. Sure, the more you post the better Search Engine rankings will be, but if you aren’t enjoying it then why are you doing it?

That’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth…