As a blogger I have a love hate relationship with weekends.
Less Work – On one hand they are great because the number of stories breaking on weekends drop (PR companies tend to make their announcements on weekdays and Journalists seem to favor them too for big stories) which means there is less work to do (meaning I get to relax and go to the football without worrying about missing a scoop).
Less Traffic – Of course on the other hand traffic levels go down on weekends as a result of less people sitting in front of their computers all day (and perhaps as a result of less posting there is less RSS traffic). This lack of traffic generally means a lower income level for the day (although some bloggers report that CTR goes up on weekends as people are in less of a rush and are more likely to explore links on your blog, including ads).
Of course I’m generalizing here (I know of some blogs who have their biggest traffic on weekends – sports blogs tend to do well for example) but in general the above trends are true.
The question that I’m sometimes asked by bloggers is what they should do about the traffic slumps on weekends? Some bloggers even get quite worked up about it and I’ve heard all kinds of strategies and opinions on the topic. Here’s a few that cover the spectrum of approaches to weekends:
- Forget about blogging and get a life – the thinking is that if your readers are not coming to your blog that you should go with that pattern and join them. Relax, rejuvenate and enjoy your weekend.
- Advance Post – some bloggers write a few extra posts during the week which they save for the weekends and set them to go off throughout it so that their blog is being updated while they relax.
- Catchup Time – some bloggers use the weekend to catch up on all the stories that they missed during the week as a result of busyness. They themselves have more time for blogging and use it as an opportunity to clear their news aggregators.
- Blog LE (light edition) – some bloggers only post ‘newsy’ or ‘light’ posts on the weekend to keep their blog ticking over. They never post original content as it’s less likely to be read and save any announcement posts or serious posts for weekdays.
- Save Biggest stories for the weekend – on the flip side of the Blog LE approach are bloggers who save their biggest stories for the weekend in the hope of keeping their stats up
I personally don’t have a real strategy for the weekends (at different times I’ve probably done some combination of all of the above). I tend to blog less (we do a lot socially on the weekend) and go with the flow. I tend not to post as much and I tend not to post announcements or posts that I think might get a lot of attention on the weekend – but if a story breaks i wouldn’t hold it back until Monday.
Being in Australia the weekend is little odd also as we’re quite a few hours ahead of the rest of the world. Saturday is Friday elsewhere and when we go back to work on a Monday here it’s Sunday for many of you. As a result I tend to hold some posts back until Tuesday.
The other thing that I do on weekends if I find myself with some spare time for blogging is use it to write longer posts or series which I save up for the week ahead. I find that I’m in a different head space on the weekend and sometimes this leads me to be a little more creative than normal.
What’s your weekend blogging strategy?
