There is probably no bigger issue I face as a blogger than finding a comfortable pace of writing – a “battle rhythm” for how often I post. It’s a challenge faced by anyone who writes on a schedule, of course, whether a mommy blogger or a daily newspaper columnist or a television commentator, and is key to building an audience.

If you’re new to the MarlinBlog, you may not realize that we’ve been in the blogging business for a long time – heck, we pre-date the term “blogging”. Back in ’98, we started a twice-weekly update on the offshore fishing conditions here in SoCal, combining the latest information with little snippets of gossip and snark and such to keep it interesting. But the Fishing News was seasonal, only publishing during the short offshore season, and that combined with a desire to check out true blogging software lead to the birth of the MarlinBlog in 2003. Ironically, the Fishing News – which was a blog long before there were blogs – is now a true blog, running on the same WordPress software as the MB.

In the beginning, I was cranking out MarlinBlog posts like a madman – sometimes several times a day. I guess I had a lot of angst and anger to work out, and nothing does the trick like a pithy blog entry. Over the time, the number of postings rose and fell like the tide, usually dictated by how busy and/or satisfied I was in my life. We’d cheat once in a while, using regular features like the Monday Sports Rant and Weekend Eye Candy as a filler, and focusing a lot of postings on the stupidity of life as captured in various online articles. Once in a while we’d find something meaty to rant about, but the truth is that there wasn’t a whole lot of meat on the bone.

Right about now, you’re probably wondering just what’s the point to this posting, and there actually is one. When people follow a blog, whether daily, weekly or monthly, they get used to the rhythm of the posts. Nothing will cause you to lose eyeballs faster than having someone visit your blog several times and find the same old content. I know this first hand, as it happened to us. Over the last year, as I became less disciplined in my posting schedule, we lost nearly half the regular readership of the MarlinBlog, and that’s kind of an issue – no one wants to rant in a vacuum.

So, here’s the point: I’m going to make a more conscious effort to stick to a regular battle rhythm with my postings. Expect to see at least three a week, more if I feel inspired. During the offshore season, they might get a little lightweight, as I’m still producing the Fishing News on Monday and Thursday (and which you are more than welcome to follow as well), and I do spend some time offshore tournament fishing and away from the keyboard. But the goal is clear – I’ll make sure that if you take the time to visit, I’ll take the time to make sure there’s a fresh tidbit for you to nibble on.