signal

I use an RSS news reader application to browse stories from blogs and websites that I am interested in following. To stay in my news reader for more than a few weeks, a website must do two things:

1. Consistently offer 'meaty' and well-written posts.
2. Not 'spam' me with posts (i.e. no more than 2 posts a day, unless the content is really good or really interesting).

If you'll notice, none of my criteria include "Have many, many posts a day." The reason for this is simple: My time is valuable, and I don't want to waste it browsing through mushy, meaningless content—even if that time is only a second or two. A lot of people think they should post early and post often, sometimes re-blogging what others have already said, but this is not a good strategy for retaining site subscribers and readers, even if it helps your search-engine rankings a little. Signal / Noise ratio is probably the single determining factor in whether a site will succeed in gaining loyal followers or not.