Excessive = inefficient
Just like I currently say in my intro, I like to be efficient and I feel that although blogging best practices stipulate that you post often, in doing so, you may be performing a disservice to your readers - that is, making them waste their time re-checking your site or reading multiple posts when they could just read one and get the same thing out of it.
In the advertising industry, where I work, there is a lot of e-mailing. Tons of it. In lieu of conference calls and meetings, people e-mail. However, there is such a thing as e-mailing too much. Many people I work with will shoot off an e-mail or respond to one at the drop of a hat and without thinking it through. They do this because it’s easy. Just open a “compose” window, type out your thought, and press “send”. This is a very reactionary and inefficient most particularly to the people who are receiving your messages. Sometimes people will type out an e-mail, and then follow it up with 1 or 2 additional e-mails containing other thoughts on the same subject. Then on the receiving end, people have to open and read each one. If you have someone who is equally reactionary on the receiving end, you can easily get into a rapid-fire back-and-forth. Unfortunately, there are all too often people CCed on these e-mails who then have to open and read each e-mail in order to follow the conversation.
I’m not saying that one should stop e-mailing. I myself send out about 50 e-mails per day. However, efficiencies can be gained by simply being more careful and thoughtful when e-mailing. Limiting the people you CC (to only those who are directly involved) also helps, although this is at your own discretion as CCing is also seen as covering your back. I tend to be very minimal when it comes to CCing, and it has never gotten me into trouble.
Here’s a good article from 43Folders on e-mail and voicemail efficiency.