There are some things that, if done properly, can really help you achieve more. Your posting schedule is one of them. A bad posting schedule may not necessarily harm your blog but nor will it do any good. On the other hand, a good posting schedule will only do your blog good.
Having the right posting schedule can really give you the edge over your competitors and will especially benefit you. Having a bad posting schedule will only hinder your progress towards the success of your blog, having a good one will only accelerate it.
In this post I’m going to be discussing how to keep the perfect posting schedule.
Publish Pillar Articles on Weekdays
The time you spend on writing pillar articles deserves to be awarded. You can justify the time spent by publishing your top posts on weekdays. I can almost certainly guarantee you that the days on which you receive the most amount of traffic will be weekdays. So obviously, it’ll be better for you if you publish those pillar posts on weekdays. The benefit is that almost all of your regular readers and visitors will see it.
Not a Rule of Thumb
However, this is not a rule of thumb. You must have noticed that these days people tend to post those speedlinking posts on Sundays. Almost 90% of the blogosphere is filled with these types of posts on the weekends. Here’s where you have an opportunity to stand out. Why not stand out from the crowd by publishing a great article on a Sunday? If you do so, your content will have a higher chance to be seen by people. The drawback is that a lesser amount of people will see it.
So, what to do?
I’d say you mostly stick to publishing your best posts on weekdays. However, once in a month or so post a pillar article on weekends. See how posting pillars on weekends does for you; look at your stats. If you see that your best articles receive more coverage on weekends rather than on weekdays, then good for you, you can publish pillar posts on weekends. However, if it doesn’t work out, then revert back to posting your great stuff on weekdays. In the end you’ll have to experiment a little to achieve the perfect posting schedule.
Don’t Post SpeedLinking and Off Topic Posts on Weekdays!
This is one of the most common mistakes committed by bloggers. Many bloggers tend to post those speedlinking type and off topic posts on weekdays. This is perhaps the worst blunder you can commit as a blogger!
Unless it’s absolute breaking news, don’t publish off topic stuff on weekdays. Keep them for weekends. In regard to this issue, one advice to Ben though: try to post your reader sessions on Sundays, unless someone asked a pretty good question and the response would be very thorough. Here’s one post which Ben could’ve published on a Sunday instead:
What Time of the Day is the Best?
Enough talk about on which day you should publish posts. Let’s talk about at what time should you publish them.
The time of the day you publish your post matters as much as the day of the week you publish it. Here’s an absolute fact: post at what would be the ideal time for your visitor, not what would be the best suited time for you. You should embed that into your brain forever!
First try to determine where the majority of your readers come from. In almost all cases, the major bulk of a blog’s visitors come from the US. If this is true for you then either choose ET (Eastern Time) or CT (Central Time) and blog according to those times. This is where the Time Stamp feature is especially useful. I’m sure you all know Time Stamp, if you don’t then Ben will be glad to tell you.
Conclusion
Your posting schedule doesn’t need to be a hindrance. Follow what I’ve laid out above and I’m sure you will be able to achieve much more by having a near-perfect posting schedule.
What do you think?
Do you follow any of the above? If so, how has it helped you? Do you agree with me that posting schedule can be one of those things that help you in achieving more? I’d love to hear your views…
This post was guest blogged by Ruchir of TechnoMoney. He’s only in 10th Grade but at his blog TechnoMoney he gives you tips about blogging, ways to make money online, ways to save money and anything related. Occasionally, you’ll also find him posting about computers and news about technology and the internet in general.
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Interesting perspective and tips, however I didn’t get why you think these tips help you and the things you said to avoid would hurt someone? Overall, my belief about blogs is the writer of the blog does it how they feel. If readers come through and like what they say, I think an audience will develop.
Monetizer, I think working with a posting schedule in mind is very good advice. I’ve seen some posts fall flat because of the time of day or week I posted. If you’re hoping to get traction on social media like Digg or StumbleUpon, getting noticed quickly by a number of people can be critical. And you need to consider your audience. A business oriented item post on Friday afternoon will essentially lay their until Monday. Essentially the point here is to know your audience and cater to their schedule.
I tend to stick to this in terms of days of the week though I dont post anything too wonderful on a Monday as I imagine that many people have a lot of those weekend posts to catch up with so they tend to skim more on Mondays.
I have no idea what is a good *time* of day to post though. I am based in the UK but the majority of my visitors are based in the US. When it a good US tim – morning? Evening?
Caroline, I’ve toyed around with different publishing times and haven’t really seen any good trends. Posts I think will do well on Digg or the other social sites I’m beginning to wait until late afternoon to publish just to try and maximize the amount of traffic I get if they do in fact become popular. Other than that though I don’t have a whole lot of data on times of day.
From my guts I agree that it’s smart to post the best content on weekday. As Caroline point out probably not on Monday, and not Friday afternoon either. One could analyse posting pattern of Top 25, Top 100 blogs, segmented in niches and probably geographic location.That had to go along with some analysis of Diggs, Stumbles, and Co. propably. … I don’t have time for that. Could be a thesis for some college student.
Most of my readers are from the US, but should I really abandon UTC and show EST times. My blog is very new and it actually seems that I post at random times (which is not so untrue) anyway. I don’t get significant correlations from my stats, either. Though, your reasoning for posting late afternoon makes sense. My 2 cents. –John
In some ways I think it is almost like trying to figure out when the best time to list an auction on ebay tends to be. I spent 5 years trying to figure that out and gave up and just listed when it was convenient for my ebay store.
I am not saying that is the best alternative but if you have a specific audience, it might be different. I do go by the rule of thumb of who works and when. I try to do my more professional posts during normal business hours and my more off topic posts on the “off times” or weekends.
Just the way I do it I guess… don’t have a clue if it works the best or not, thanks for the post and something to think about. Scott
I usually post an article on Wednesdays and Sundays. These days seem to work for me. Some weeks, like this one that schedule has not worked. It is Thursday and I have posted 3 articles this week and won’t get a chance to post one on Sunday because of a family emergency with my mother-in-law. My stats are steadily growing, even when I was gone for 3 weeks on my India trip and didn’t post any articles because I didn’t have access to a computer. I expected to come home and find my stats down because of my absence. It didn’t happen. I was a pleasant surprise.
Thanks re-guested to one of my sites!
I disagree. My advice is to blog any time and often. If that means you posted a pillar, a speedlink and and offtopic, thats fine. why? because you just tripled the possibilites of someone finding your post and liking it.
Well, you quadrupled your chances of being found if you posted on the right time…In my opinion, posting speedlinking type posts on weekdays is an absolute waste of opportunity and shouldn’t be done unless you’re having the classic writer’s block…
@ direct marketing, there is such a thing as posting too often. I’ve unsubscribed from several blogs because they post too often and fill my reader. Unless you’re a news type site, quality far outweighs quantity IMO.
My posting schedule could be hurting me? I don’t know. I don’t feel any pain. I post on a pretty irregular schedule. It’s a crapshoot as to whether I post at all for days at a time.
The only predictability is that Thursday I have a post from Chris C of Nothing to See Here.
I don’t know what effect that has, but I don’t see why it makes a difference. What’s the logic behind when you post mattering?
I’m new to the scene, but not to blogging, and it hurt me the last time, but thank goodness for the post dating articles option. I use that quite a bit.
I think if you have to think that much about your posting schedule, you are wasting time. Write what you can when you can. With good content people will come anyway. You shouldn’t have to worry whether you finish it @2am on a Saturday night or Wednesday afternoon. If you do – maybe you are posting too much and trying to add more value to your posts than there really is.
@ JT, if you don’t think about your posting schedule you’re wasting opportunity. First of all, when you write has nothing to do with when you post. You can edit the post date so it can go live whenever you want. Secondly, the point isn’t that people won’t come, it’s that you could be getting more people to come to your good content if you published your posts on a different schedule.
Yep, another reminder that I have got to get seriois with first, an editorial guidline, as in a certain typ eof post on Monday, Tuesda, etc. and second, paying better attention to the time of day.
On one of my blogs the traffic is very clearly coming in in the early hours of the US business day … my readrs, mostly business folk, are obviously reading me over coffee. I normally don’t even post on weekends.
But another blog which I am currently “resurecting from the near dead” gets almost all it’s traffic in the later everning hours … 9 to 11 pm Central time, seven days aweek. Clearly, this blog is read at home and I’m sure my readership on this one is muchmore balanced between male and female.
No better advice could be given than to adjust the schedule to when the vsiitors are dropping by … they are the driving force.
It could be that the posting schedule could hurt the blogger. But one thing I know is that you need to constantly update your site so that your readers will keep on coming back because they are excited for your next post.
Somehow I agree that posting schedule could be hurting but I think as long as you write good and truthful articles and update the site regularly, you will be just fine.
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pingback: Short Attention Span Topics #15 - [...] Blog Domination ? Chris C offers tips on Blog Promotion for You. This reminds me a lot of my own 12 Simple Rules Guaranteed to Improve Your Blogging. I especially like the advice on posting schedules. Conversely, Ruchir says Your Posting Schedule Could be Hurting You! [...]