This guest post is by Lindsey Dahlberg of Bloggingtips.com.
We’ve all heard the saying, “great content gets shared.” But what happens if yours isn’t getting shared? Does that mean you don’t have great content?
Not necessarily. It could mean you have top-notch content, but you’re not posting it at the most opportunistic times of day.
Maybe you aren’t interested in social shares but would like to know why your killer content isn’t generating lots of pageviews.
Perhaps you’re suffering from the same malady: your content isn’t getting viewed because you aren’t posting on the best days of the week.
According to Shareaholic, the day and time you post your content will determine how many social shares and page views it receives. The following information was taken from data received in 2011 (social shares apply to Facebook and Twitter).
Social shares
If your top priority is social shares, you’ll want to know the best day and best time to post your content. Here is a breakdown of both those stats.
Best days
According to research, content posted on Thursdays gets more shares than any other day—10% more in fact. From there, sharing days decrease in popularity as follows: Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Sunday, and Tuesday.
We can take two things from this information. First, people are using Facebook and Twitter at work. Second (and more relevant to you!), posts made later in the week do better than posts made earlier in the week.
Best times
Now that you have determined which days you should be posting, you’ll want to know which hours are best.
According to Sharaholic, 27% of all social shares occur between 8am and 12pm EST. There is a definite surge of activity between 9am and 10am. After that, social shares are on the decline for the majority of the day. There are two other small peaks of activity around 2pm and 9pm.
Apparently, we like to take in our information with the morning news, get an update after lunch, and check in before bed.
One popular blogger shares his posting schedule. He posts at 4:30am. That way, his content is ready for his US audience while his UK audience is still awake and active.
Pageviews
If you are interested in driving traffic to your blog, and you’re not too particular about social shares, your posting schedule will be completely different.
Best days
The four best pageview-related posting days are the same as the social share posting days. However, the winners are in a different ranking. Of the top 100 pageview days in 2011, 43% landed on a Monday. Tuesdays received 28%, Wednesdays 24%, and Thursdays finished the list with 5%.
Note Saturday and Sunday didn’t make the cut.
Best times
Most pageviews take place between 7am and 1pm EST, Monday through Friday, with the majority occurring between 9am and 10am. From there, views decrease significantly.
What this means for you
There are several takeaways we can gather from these statistics.
First, you need to determine how you want your audience to find your content. Do you want them to click from Twitter? Do you want them to subscribe via email? The answer to these questions will determine how you implement a response to these statistics.
Second, these statistics should act as a guideline only. They provide a nice place to begin your testing. However, you’ll want to check your own numbers and adjust from there.
These statistics don’t apply to everyone and they aren’t carved in stone. Pageviews and shares can vary from topic to topic, time zone to time zone, and country to country.
Third, you should determine which time zones read your content and when. Some businesses focus on the US east coast, since the majority of the country resides there. However, other companies draw a large band of followers from the west coast or Europe. Use your site’s analytics to determine where your target audience lives.
Lastly, be ready. Have your content up before the peak viewing time occurs. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to let viewers know it’s coming. A simple social media post along the lines of, “check the blog tomorrow at noon for a hot new post—you won’t want to miss it!” couldn’t hurt.
If you have been churning out stellar content and not receiving the traffic or social shares you’d like, try making a few changes to the times at which you post your content.
Lindsey Dahlberg is a blogger at http://bloggingtips.com and http://ppc.org/.
Great post, Lindsey
I recently changed my publishing time from 9:30 to 6:30 PST and it’s made a huge difference on my blog. Now people who rarely commented are commenting all the time.
I’ve also started promoting my articles heavily, making sure that people who missed the first link, see the 2nd or 3rd (I hope).
Thanks for these tips. I’m a daily blogger and I’ve considered moving to 3x a week (chosing popular days), but then I’d be scheduled out through March. For now, I’ll stick with daily, but I think I should use the information you shared to encourage people to subscribe to my feed.
Thanks!
Interesting information. Thanks for sharing.
I have tried to determine a pattern for my daily posts but haven’t come up with anything that’s consistent. I publish my posts at 1:00 a.m. so it’s there when my readers gets up and check their computers in the morning. I get a lot of hits first thing and last thing. The hits trickle in during the day.
I didn’t know that the best day and time also matters and plays a role in getting more pageviews and shares.
Thank Lindsey for clarifying it.
Awesome post!
This is really good information especially for a beginner blogger life myself. I was always curious about what times people were on the most, and I was actually surprised by the numbers! Thanks.
Hi Lindsey,
Super tips!
Posting at specific times can make all the difference in the world. I got ’em covered, as I am posting 4 to 5 times on each one of my blogs throughout the day ;)
Think about your target audience. How are these folks digesting your content? Are they living in a specific time zone? By drilling down persistently you can more easily post at the most opportune time.
Most fail to realize that this blogging gig takes work. It takes real, deep intense thought and planning, if you intend to become a success online. If you are willing to put in the mental work good things will happen for you.
If you are lazy, and never test, you will struggle to make a cent online. Experiment. Gauge your results. Adjust accordingly.
Thanks for sharing Lindsey!
Ryan
I think the reason why weekends dont receive any shares and pageview is that they are having fun outside and while in weekdays they are getting bored in office so they normally try to overcome their boredom using internet.
Thank you for this – it has been something I have been wondering about for a while. I have a daily tarot reading blog and I post a reading each day, just after midnight, but I usually don’t post things on my facebook page until later in the day – around 2pm, which is probably kind of pointless!
Thanks for writing this post Lindsey.
I had no idea that posting it at certain times and days was that important. Now that I’ve read this, I’m going to have to revise my posting schedule since I’ve been mostly posting in the afternoon and evening.
I confess, the whole issue of what time of day to post makes me crazy. I have readers all over the world so what’s the best time of day to hit both the Phillipines and the UK, and while I’m at it New York and Los Angeles? That aside, I get anywhere from 10 to 30 comments per post and I don’t have a set schedule as far as the days of the week I post. I post 2, sometimes 3 articles a week, on average every 3 days. That isn’t by accident – it’s by design, and it’s taken me nearly a year to get it down to a system based on my traffic flow. I probably could have figured this out earlier, but I was spending so much time trying to follow everyone else’s advice it took me awhile to get the courage to follow my own instincts. Fortunately, it worked out.
Awesome informative post. I was experimenting from many days about the best sharing time and my conclusions were actually much different from here. Maybe this is because of the different geography and countries I get the maximum traffic from.
But I will be sure to try these timings also in my experiment.
Let’s see!
Nice information I post my articles Mon – Fri and take the weekend off. Sometimes I will post if I am attending some event or if it warrants but I found the weekend not that popular with my readers. I post my articles 12am Eastern time which seems to work well for me. It is amazing all the little things that go into a blog that people do not think of. Glad you brought some light to it for the newbies.
http://www.nycstylelittlecannoli.com
Great article, I got to know about this points now only!
I love guidelines that give real specific advice, so thanks for sharing the statistics about best days & times. Thanks also for breaking it down into page views & social media sharing. In general, the information you shared was valuable. Of course, like you mentioned, it varies depending on the subject & content. Since nearly all of my posts are about trails and helping people find trails, I get the most page views on Saturday & Sunday except on three day weekends when Friday or Monday are the hot days. Your time suggestions were spot-on though. When it comes to blogging, the early bird gets the worm.
I personally view that as long as the content is valuable and original, any day and any time will be the best time. ;-)
Thanks for sharing anyway!
Great post,
I don’t bother too much with posting times at the moment as I’m just starting out with a blog, it hasn’t got a high enough amount of returning visitors to bother with at the moment. I’m writing content to get unique visitors for now, then I may look into post times a bit more. Good information nonetheless!
Thanks!
I have done some research on this and noticed that my blog gets more traffic on saturdays and sundays probably because more people are on the internet for a longer time during the weekends than the weekdays.
That’s why I now post more on the weekends.
Thanks for sharing such a great article.
Very useful article and interesting facts about the pageviews. I would also add that writing blogs that do encourage conversations will keep driving traffic to your site. Every comment posted is potentially the start of conversations and will lengthen the life-time of your blog post. Also, discovery tools such as Engagio (www.engag.io) will make it easier to discover content via conversations (which is how I find a significant portion of the articles that I end up reading!)
Thanks for the great info. It’s good to know that I’m actually doing something right, as I post every weekday at 0430 ET. I don’t have the numbers that I hope for, but they’re creeping up.
I really hate the ‘dip of death’ that occurs every Saturday. Anyone else have this problem? Would adding an article on Saturday mornings help, or is it more trouble than it’s worth? Guess I’ll have to experiment.
I have started to do that otherwise, I just plain don’t. It’s that simple. I have a reminder set up now and when it pops up, I know I better find something to blog about!
I never even thought about this so scientifically .I have been posting all my stuff on non sharing times so it does explain alot .I have to bookmark this for further use thanks so much for sharing I think every new blogger needs this info
Very interesting informations. I thought it would be rather evenings then mornings.