Here’s a question that comes up, and it’s worth revisiting a lot: How often should I post? And the answer, of course is: It depends.

A big dependency is the platform you’re using. Or rather, the platforms. If you’re using Twitter, with its 140-character limit, posting less generally means posting more. (That is, fewer words leads to greater frequency). Plus, it’s really easy and you can do it while you’re on the go. (There’s that use of interstitial time again.)

Here’s something that’s almost cheating: Pipe your Twitter updates into your blog using an embeddable widget, and it’s a way to pass updates to your blog without doing a full-on blog entry.

And what about that full-on blog? In the Time Demands video (from the Solution Stars Video series), blogger/author Tim Ferriss says that, contrary to some rules that others advocate, he generally posts twice per week… but he’s sure to put effort into those two posts. (Of course, you would expect that, since he advocates for The 4-Hour Workweek). So it’s the quality-versus-quantity approach.

At the If You Build It, Will They Come? event, Frank Warren of PostSecret shared the method behind his unique variation of this — he updates once a week, on Sundays, which not only sets up his blog entries as appointment programming, but it also enforces an artificial scarcity: It keeps people always hungry for more. Obviously, this approach won’t work for most folks, but it goes to show that more isn’t better — better is better.

This ties in to the very important setting of reader expectations. If you know you’re going to be posting relatively infrequently (a couple of times per week, or even per month, or only when specific events happen), be upfront about it. Let people know what to expect, and provide ways that they can keep tabs on your blog. I’m thinking specifically of one-click RSS-to-e-mail solutions that pop off an e-mail when you update (Feedburner, among others, offers this) — it works great for blogs that don’t update that frequently.

Then, think about ways you can streamline your publishing workflow, and how you can optimize it to your writing style. Also at the If You Build It event, Rohit Bhargava said his ideal blog week consisted of three posts, with his typical posting schedule starting on Sunday night, with a goal of having a completed blog entry ready to publish at 1AM Monday, and two half-completed posts to work on during his train ride commutes during the rest of the week.

The most important thing to consider when looking at posting frequency is looking at your readers. Not just the analytics, but also commenting and other reactions and feedback. See if you can discern patterns in your traffic that relate to your posting schedule. You probably won’t be able to do strict A/B testing, but you can see if time of day or day of week posting affects your metrics. And try to find out from your readers if they’re getting what they need from your posts — whether they want more, or if they could do with less. Ask and listen.

Whatever you do, please avoid the temptation to shovel in filler posts to boost your post frequency. Filler posts dilute the value of your “real” posts. Just don’t do it.

I don’t think I’ve covered any new ground here, but I’m curious to hear about your posting schedule, and how you came about it. If you’d like to share, leave a comment below — when it comes to your posting frequency, are you a “more” or a “less”?

In a couple of my previous entries, I referenced an event last week, If You Build It, Will They Come?, a look at how Frank Warren of PostSecret, and Rohit Bhargava, author of Personality Not Included, used social media tools to build communities and a measure of stardom around their now-successful blogs.

Event sponsors were Network Solutions and Johns Hopkins University – Montgomery County Campus, with support from marketing blogger Mayra Ruiz. The event was held at the JHU campus in Rockville, Maryland.

Here’s my event recap; there are few holes in my notes, so you can use the power of distributed social media to get a near-complete transcript of the interesting bits by looking for items tagged “#socstardom”, including photos, Twitter posts (don’t miss Mayra’s posts, @marketingmisfit), blog entries and more.

Here are some highlights. First, here’s Frank Warren:

If you’re not familiar, PostSecret started as an art project a few years back. People mail Frank their secrets on postcards, and of the 1,000 he receives weekly, he chooses 20 that he posts every Sunday to the Web site.

PostSecret doesn’t follow the traditional blog model. It’s very minimalist — Frank doesn’t have commenting, archives, or ads on the site — nothing that would distract from the primary content (the secrets).

He acts as a curator for the content that people send him, and he hasn’t tried to guide the community that formed around the secrets, save by crafting the narrative that comes from choosing the 20 weekly cards.

Also, by posting only 20 secrets every Sunday, he enforces an artificial scarcity (by not including archives, he keeps people from gorging themselves on secrets — they can always buy one of the book collections), and he turns his weekly update into appointment programming.

Since the main PostSecret site is all about the secrets, a lot of the other community interaction you’d expect happens on related sites — PostSecretCommunity.com, the Facebook page and MySpace profile, each of which serves a different purpose.

Other observations from Frank:

* He used to see ebbs and flows of secrets, depending on media coverage, but now it’s a constant flow, so perhaps he’s reached media saturation.

* His biggest mistake: Not collecting e-mail addresses from visitors for the first 2 years, so he couldn’t keep them updated on new developments.

* He ends every week’s posting with a question, sees that controversy can be good, and incorporates interesting feedback into the posts to provide an example, as well as an incentive and notoriety for commenters.

Frank’s a tough act to follow (and apparently even worse to precede) but Rohit Bhargava was game:

Rohit is a blogger from a more traditional mold, though he also has a book — Personality Not Included.  Some of his insights:

* When he posts, being useful is more important than anything — he doesn’t try to entertain or provoke thought; he uses a lot of lists

* He always thinks of potential posts in terms of titles (which he spends a lot of time thinking about.)

* One of the first techniques he used to build traffic and attention around his blog was writing posts that he thought influential people would find interesting, and sending them the posts.

* A popular early post was 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization. Instead of trying to become the “SMO guy”, he leveraged that traffic to blog what he really wanted to blog about (marketing stuff in general)

* He entered a presentation contest (winning an honorable mention) to get the attention of Guy Kawasaki, whom he got to write the foreword to his book.

* The main drivers of traffic to his blog early on were accidental and viral; now, they include Google, Twitter, and StumbleUpon. Also, getting a high percentage of traffic from e-mail forwards is great, because it shows people are e-mailing the links to others.

* In order to keep up with new social media platforms and tools, Rohit will sign up to try new things during boring conference calls. This keeps him current, as well as reserving his username. The next tier of tools are things he actually uses, like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. And he knew he was getting serious about Twitter when he found himself thinking before posting, “Is this worth a Twitter post?”

* An ideal blog week for him is 3 posts — the first posted by Monday at 1am (to catch international readers), with two more half-written posts that he finishes over the week.

Both talks were lively, as was the Q-and-A period. As I said, you can get a fuller feeling of the questions and content by searching for items tagged with “socstardom” (I’ll do a roundup post of these items later on).

Lastly, in terms of the event title — if you bring in speakers like Rohit and Frank — yes, people will come.

If you’ve got your own event writeup, thoughts on the speakers or photos you’d like to share, please leave a comment below.

On January 14, 2009, at Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus in Rockville, MD there is going to be an awesome event sponsored by Network Solutions that you all should attend if you are going to be in the area.

What’s it called?

The event is called: “If You Build It, Will They Come?” and it is an exploration of social networks, including what’s working now and how to build and nurture a community.

Why Should I Attend?

Hear their story on how they succeeded… What Social Media tools they used for their success… What worked and what didn’t… And learn how communities are created.

About Frank Warren

Frank Warren is among the top 20 bloggers in the world and is a inspirational speaker and author of 4 books, including A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book.

About Rohit Bhargava

Rohit is Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy & Marketing, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence. He is the author of “Personality Not Included” and among the top 50 marketing bloggers in the world.

How do I sign up?

Go to eventbrite to this page to sign up. Admission is free and so is the parking.