Just got a good email from Chris from Passive Digressive with some good questions in it. I’m about to duck out now so can’t reply to him at this moment – but thought I’d open up one of the questions for discussion to see what you my wonderful readers think. Feel free to answer it below in questions from your own perspective. Lets learn together. Chris writes:
‘I’m curious as to what you think about *when* to post.
Typically I’ve heard that it’s best to post near the beginning of the week to make it more likely that your post will be read. This implies that the blogosphere has a sort of weekly “pulse”. The closer to the weekend you post, the less likely your article will be read seriously. What are your thoughts on this?’
Over to your expert opinion fellow bloggers.
Update: Great comments below, I think it mainly summarises my position on it actually – I get less traffic on weekends (well on US time weekends which is actually Sunday and Monday Australian time) and notice that most blogs tend to go quiet on weekends also (and news dries up a little). I personally have a goal of posting every day on my main blogs – I do tend to slacken off a little on the weekends but attempt to keep things ticking over.
If I have a big scoop I post it whenever I get it unless I’m assured that no other blog will get it. If I’m writing an original post that I think might get picked up by others I tend to hold off until Monday (US time) to post it. You’ll notice that I tend to post my interviews on Mondays or Tuesdays. I guess this is partly about discipline (I want to do them weekly) but its also to give them as much exposure as I can.
With the growth of RSS I suspect that it won’t matter quite so much which day you post – people can always read it later with RSS. However as Bobby rightly points out – this depends upon how many posts you publish and how many your RSS feed shows.
So – take home advice post regularly – post on weekends but if you can you might want to save your original non scoop like posts til a weekday.
Thanks for posting on this, Darren. :)
I Wish I got emails from Jesus!
From the limited experience I have got of this I’ve noticed that I do get more hits on each post the earlier in the week I post it, but at the same time I am getting hits from posts I blog at the weekend perhaps a week or so later, so it doesn’t make too much difference for me.
Perhaps I will notice more when I get more readers!
What’s a weekend? That concept is so 20th century…it don’t matter at all IMHO.
Yes it does, I call it the Blog Cycle, I did it on my own blog a while ago. I found that Monday is sort of the intro, with a majority of readers, reading on Wed and Thur, Sat no one reads Blogs. I also used Andrew Sullivans site stats as refrence.
http://gayguy.blogs.com/bloging_new_york_one_bad_/2005/02/the_blogcycle.html
Lol – thanks Bob – I’ll change the Christ back to Chris – I’m sure he would feel more comfortable that way.
On Saturdays and Sundays I noticed that there are both less news and readers.
Anyway, the best time to post is always before your competitors.
But if you post more than your feed can deliver, that is to say if you post 20 entries per day while your feed only deliver the last 10 entries, people not refreshing their aggregator at least once a day will miss several of your entries (50% in this example).
Thanks everyone, the advice is very helpful.
I’m not what you would consider a problogger, but I learned an interesting point in an email marketing seminar last year. Surveys show midweek emails are more likely to be read in full. Early in the week people often return to full inboxes and each email gets less time, if it doesn’t get deleted first!
I know blogs are slightly different, but some of the psychology probably still applies. When I was editor of a youth mag and sent fortnightly emails out, we consistently got more hits and replies when we communicated Wed or Thurs.
My 2c worth.
Nice tips Darren… thanks.
I have noticed (in addition to weekend fluctuation) the substantial increase in traffic during the first week of every month. I can’t explain the nature of this phenomenon, but this is a fact :-)
For my blog I seem to notice that Saturdays is pretty dead but every other day is pretty consistent. For personal reasons (like my sanity!) I do not post on the weekends but instead I write every weekday and schedule my posts to run at various times the next day. Of course my site is a music site so I don’t really get scoops and the like.
Interesting you should post on this. As a recent blogger, I’ve been following my statistics faily close in order to learn more about blog reader behavior.
The answer on when to post lies mostly in the concept of dayparts. Nielsen has segregated the week into five distinct dayparts. Each daypart is comprised of a majority of one consumer type. Each daypart is also associated with a particular type of content.
As I blog on small business, the daypart I am most concerned with is the M-F working hours. Based on two months of analysis, I know that most of my readers come during the work day and work week. I also know that the two biggest blocks of readers are located in the Central and Eastern U.S. time zones. I further know by looking at statitics for each day that peak reading occurs at 8:00 and at Noon.
I therefore publish each morning, M-F, by 7:00 a.m. Central to ensure that new content is online for Eastern readers at 8:00. I publish little on weekends.
A sports related blog may find the weekend daypart better for posting as Nielsen has identified that daypart as being best for sports. Likewise, political blogs may find better readership in the evening daypart.
It comes down to basic marketing — know your product; know your market.
Link to my public statistics is below.
I post seven days a week, with the major post done late at night to catch the business audience during the entire following business day.
As a business blog, my weekend traffic falls off quite a bit, but I still post once a day. I believe that RSS readers (who are a major portion of my audience) read posts at different times than direct blog visitors. It doesn’t pay, in my opinion, to tailor the posting times to the topic either, as some of my posts that I considered less interesting personally, were the most popular with my readership; and vice versa.
The best policy is to develop a regular posting habit and stick with it. Your regular readership will soon follow your posting practices.