When you should update your blog

Hey, you’ve been around the block. You’ve launched a blog or two. But you haven’t yet decided what sort of update schedule to use for the blog you’re writing about your trip. In the past, you’ve found two ways to fight blogger’s block:

1. post in accordance with harshly self-enforced deadlines (i.e. Tuesday and Thursday)
2. post with no standards at all (i.e. in clumps, in droughts, whenever you please)

Option 1 is obviously more reader-friendly. But your goal at this point is more to collect content than to collect readers. For now, go with option 2.

So: for the moment, you’ll be posting sporadically, as you think of things to say. In general, though, if people want to visit your site once a week, that’ll probably keep them from missing much.

If your readers are determined to keep up with every post despite this irregular schedule, suggest that they subscribe to your blog’s feed using Google Reader or Bloglines. Or add have them add you to their Google homepages. These free programs don’t need to be downloaded, because they’re actually just pages on the Web itself. Using one of them to subscribe to a feed is like signing up for TiVo — they’ll grab your posts as they shoot past, keep them for your readers and keep track of which ones they’ve read.

If any of your readers are interested in figuring this out (they should! once they do, they can use the same programs to keep track of all sorts of blogs, news sites and other things) and need any help, suggest that they leave a comment below saying “help!” You’ll be happy to walk them through the process. It’s the least you can do.