How Much Blog Content Is Enough?

By Natalie Slyman

If we had a dollar for every time we were asked by leads and clients alike, "How much blog content is enough?" we'd be rolling in dough. On every sales call or strategy session we have about blog content, it seems to pop up without fail.

Unfortunately, there is no one right answer to this. There's no magic number of blog posts that every brand should create per month in order to see results. Sorry for the letdown, everyone.

The truth is, while the perfect amount of blog content doesn't exist, there is a range to shoot for. Depending on what your company goals are and what your capacity is for creating content, you can find your blogging sweet spot. So while we can't give you a magic number, we have broken down some options for you, explained what each will help you achieve, and outlined what you'll need to have in place to make those options possible.

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3 Options for Monthly Blog Content Output

In terms of consistency, there are really only three options to choose from: a slow trickle, a consistent flow, or a constant flood. But as the project manager for your content strategy, before you simply select one at random, you have to understand what each will help you achieve and see whether that makes sense for your company's capacity, resources, and overall marketing goals.

1. Slow Trickle

Think of this option as the bare minimum, as in one blog post a week or one blog post every other week. Either way, this option is typical for extremely small teams with limited resources.

What you can achieve:

Lead capture. As long as you provide a link to gated content within your blog post or as a CTA at the bottom, you'll be able to convert site visitors to new leads.
Email newsletters. You can send your leads a monthly roundup newsletter you’ve created from all of your blog content. This will help you stay top of mind with them, provide education, and nurture them as they go through the buyer's journey.
Consistent social publishing. Having blog content to share on social media will help you regularly post on all your platforms and engage with an even wider audience.
Material for employee training. Your blog is an opportunity for you to be a bit more promotional in the content you create. Discuss your company's process and services to educate your leads and your internal employees about how things are done at your company.
Thought leadership. Even if you're only publishing once a week or a couple times a month, you can still achieve thought leadership status for the leaders within your company. Putting out content directly from leaders in your company makes readers feel like they’re getting an intimate look behind the scenes. It's all about what the thought leader knows, not necessarily how often he or she is writing about it.

What you need in place:

Blog guidelines. Make sure you outline how you want your blog articles to flow and any rules you want each piece to follow. Do you have a desired word count? How do you want research to be presented? These guidelines will help keep all your contributors on the same page and guide them through the writing process.
A documented content strategy. This doesn't have to be terribly in-depth or lengthy, but you'll want to at least document your target audience and goals so that you can keep benchmarks. Your goal can be anything from generating leads to just having more on-site content. It's OK to start small, especially when your consistency isn't as frequent.
Project manager/content creator. You'll need someone to manage the editorial calendar, plan the blog content, and manage who will write, edit, and publish it. If you have a smaller team, this person may have to be a jack-of-all-trades type and do everything.
Marketing automation software. Automation software will help make everything move a little more smoothly. Find a platform that can help you create the blog content and track how each blog post is converting. This will help you determine which posts are the most useful in helping you meet your goals.
A distribution strategy. Don't let your content just sit there. Make sure you're sharing it effectively so the right people see it.

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2. Consistent Flow

This option is a middle ground and usually means you've got a groove down with publishing at least once or twice a week. This consistency is typical among companies that have a small but nimble team or a mid-sized team.

What you can achieve:

Along with all the other accomplishments mentioned in the "slow trickle" option, you can also achieve the following:

Content segmenting. The more blog content you create, the more opportunity you have to cover a variety of areas within your industry. On our blog, The Knowledge Bank, we segment our content into five areas: content marketing, social media, thought leadership, SEO, and industry news. This helps organize our blog and gives our audience an easy way to select certain pieces based on the areas where they need more resources.
Pillar pages and improved SEO. Pillar pages are longer-form blog articles that are crafted around keywords that you want your company to rank for in search engines. To really see results from these pages, it makes the most sense to publish them along with a steadier flow of blog content — hence the reason they're included in the "consistent flow" option. You can link to these pages in your off-site content, using keywords the page pertains to as anchor text. This will help improve your SEO around those words and allow you to lead a new audience back to your site to engage and hopefully convert.
Email drip campaigns. Drip campaigns are great because they allow you to segment your leads and share content with them based on where they are in the buyer's journey and what they will find most useful.
Webinars. Blogs can be easily turned into scripts or outlines for really fun and engaging live videos. Use your blog content to inspire topic ideas or areas you should cover during your broadcasted webinars.

What you need in place:

Along with all the other items mentioned in the "Slow Trickle" option, you'll also need:

A robust documented content strategy. The larger the output, the more in-depth the content strategy should be. Make sure to also include an editorial calendar and distribution plan.
A dedicated content editor. You need to make sure the content you're creating is grammatically in check, and you'll want someone who is totally dedicated to editing your company's content.
A content distributor. You want someone to take the reins and distribute content effectively on your social channels and to certain internal teams so that they can share it with their constituents.
A method for accepting outside contributions. A more curated blog is enticing to readers and inspires others to pitch their content for you to publish. You should make sure you have a process in place for accepting — and rejecting — article pitches from outside contributors. (To see an example of an organized guest contributor platform, check out our guest contributor page.)

3. Constant Flood

You overachiever, you! The consistency for this kind of output is typically a couple blog posts a day to numerous blog posts a week. Very large, segmented teams are able to produce this kind of content.

What you can achieve:

Along with all the accomplishments listed in the "Slow Trickle" and "Consistent Flow" options, you can also achieve the following:

Larger-scale content segmenting. This goes beyond what was mentioned above in the "Consistent Flow" option. Yes, you can use similar segmented areas, but you'll be able to publish more content more frequently for those areas.
More partnership opportunities. When you're creating more content that is covering more areas within your industry, you can leverage it to start conversations with other brands for optimal partnerships.
Bigger-picture content scalability. When you prove that you can create tons of content and do it well, then the opportunities are pretty endless. Not only can you use that content to apply for awards and speaking engagements for your company and its leaders, but you could even put on your own industry conferences.

What you need in place:

Along with all the other items mentioned in the "Slow Trickle" and "Consistent Flow" options, you'll also need:

Numerous teams. You'll most likely want a team for each vertical you're exploring, and this could mean a few project managers, editors, content distributors, and designers per team/vertical.
Public relations. A PR team will help get your blog more exposure and give you more area to cover on your blog. This team can be used as another channel to distribute your blog and serve as a source of blog contributors.
A graphic designer. Creating more content requires that you get creative with the ways in which you present it. A designer will help create images, infographics, videos, etc. to make your content more visually stimulating.
Larger-scale distribution strategy. Having one distribution strategy isn't enough. You'll need a specific strategy for each area you're creating content for.

Hopefully, this gives you some examples of the different approaches you can take to blog output. Based on what you hope to achieve and what you'll need, you can determine which output model is best for you and for your team.

How Much Blog Content Is Enough?