Depending on which blog you’re reading at any given time, you will likely read a completely different opinion on when to publish a blog post. Some will argue that you should post right away in the morning so that you’re front and center when all the coffee drinking, early risers are opening up their morning reading tabs. Others will say you should post late at night so that you get in front of the “oldest first” queues for those same morning readers. Others might say you should publish several posts a day for different time zones around the world. Yet more might say that they only post at the end of the week and over the weekend when the competition is lighter and they can command more attention.
But, this post isn’t about what others might say. It’s about what I say. (It’s my blog, I can do that.) And, here’s my take on publishing times. It’s completely up to you. Only about half of my posts are, like this one is, published in the future. The other half are usually published when I finish them, so they are at whatever time of the day that inspiration hit for the day. Of the ones that I future post, a majority of them are published mid-morning. For me, that works better. I find that if I post too early (<10am Central) the traffic is much lighter. I think this is likely because the post gets buried under all the 8-5 west coast bloggers who are posting stuff right away in the morning. If I post late at night, it also seems like traffic is lighter. My theory there is that many people read their blogs and such at work. (Shhh. I won’t tell.) Which is why I don’t like posting on the weekends either.
If I do future post, I tend to post somewhere in the middle of the day. Somewhere between 10 am and 2 pm is where I usually put them. And that seems to work quite well for me. But, results may vary. You may find that your readers are predominantly east coasters and like to read in the early morning before work. You may find that your readers are overseas, in which case their schedule will be drastically different from yours and you may want to future post late at night or very early in the morning.
What I’m trying to say is that there is no hard and fast rule about when you should post. You can’t template your blog to someone else’s blogging experience. You’ve got to forge your own path and find the methods that work best for you. That doesn’t mean that you can’t listen to some one else and try what they suggest. That’s how we all learn. But, in the end, what you do with your site may be different.
P.S. if you want to read a great post on some blogging rules that are not worth following, check out Lisa Barone’s post on The 5 Blogging Rules Killing Your Readership.
About Shane Ede
Thanks – I’ve been wondering about this topic!
What seems to work best for us at FanLit is to post our review teasers between 9 and 10:00 EST and our main content (interview, discussion questions, etc) at 10:00 on weekdays. At least that’s what I THINK works best. Hard to test empirically… Also, definitely fewer readers on the weekend, so we don’t post interviews, etc. on Sat or Sun.
I agree ,also posts that remain forever ,like how to’s ,tips,seo tricks etc would be an asset for our blogs forever instead of instant news
I think for me it is all based on content. If you do a lot of breaking news or sports etc. you need to post when stuff happens, or at least very early in the morning to keep up with the news cycle and what is the most fresh.
I think the best time to post a blog is in the morning to early afternoon, US time. Of course, we have to consider the US as here is where the bulk of visitors of our blogs and websites come from. Albeit in my opinion, time of posting is irrelevant so long as one publishes regularly on his blog.
According to me morning is the best time to post a new post, I noticed that US has a lot of readers and I receive hit most of the hits at US morning time.
I was reading a post from Hubspot (sorry I don’t have the link) and they were saying exactly what you are saying, mid-morning. All my future posts are scheduled around 11 am because of that post and now you are making me feel even better. I also do just post some posts when I write them. Thank you.
One thing I noticed, at least with my blogs, is that I get more traffic for new post when I post them in the morning. I guess this just shows that more people can notice it because people are still using the Internet and actively looking for things to read in the morning. They notice my post because other blog posts haven’t pushed it down yet on search results.
IMHO of course.
Thanks for sharing. I normally make post in the morning hours. But I am not confined to that. At times it depends on the content of the post.
Again thanks for the ideas.
The great thing about the Net is that someone in a completely different time zone is likely to be reading your blog, no matter where you are. Morning or midnight, it really makes no difference unless you are targeting a very select local group.