A friend of mine just started their first blog and asked me for my feelings on the best time of day to publish new blog posts. In the past I would’ve told her not to over think this because in the past I used a bit of what was, in my mind, common sense and posted everything sometime in the evening. My reasoning was that most people work their 9-5 jobs and don’t have a chance to do their daily internet browsing until they get home.
Of course I live in and abide by Eastern Standard Time, so in an effort to reach the most readers in the US I’d publish around 8 p.m. my time, give or take. That became a moot point, however, as I subsequently learned that a staggering number of people do their browsing while at work whether that be during lunch/downtime or otherwise.
You might also care to account for recent statistics which have shown the “hot spot” or peak times for “retweets” on Twitter are in the middle of the afternoon whereas Facebook sharing hits its peak around noon. This suggests that sometime in the middle of the day is the best time to post blog posts.
The Best Time to Post Blog Posts
Even after all of this, there are additional basic but paramount factors to account for as they relate to your audience. This includes time zone and the topic of your niche. For example, if you have a site which blogs about the best nightlife spots to hit, then you’ll likely want to publish near the end of the work day when people start to plan their evenings or you might concentrate your posts heavily on the weekends. Of course not every niche is going to be that straightforward but it’s important to be able to put yourself in the shoes of your audience.
In a similar vein, there is clear (and a bit self explanatory) evidence which shows that blogs which feature more than one post per day see almost double the links and nearly quadruple the traffic in any given span of time than those which don’t average at least one post a day.
Something which can help you out if you are an email marketer as well is most email services like Aweber enable you to get specific information on your subscribers in relation to how they interact with your email list. One notable stat you can learn about is the time of day when your subscribers are opening your emails to them, giving you an insight as to when your audience is likely interested and has time to read information in your niche. The most subscribers you have the better of a measuring stick this works out to be for you.
You can even take a look at when you get the most comments being left on a new topic as this is a reflection of when most of your most dedicated readers and commenters are checking out your content.
While I know everyone reading this is looking for an easy one time/word answer (sorry), it is much more complicated than that. Ultimately, the absolute best thing which you can do is to experiment with your own publishing schedule, varying the time and day in which you publish something new over and over again until you find your own best time to post blog posts as it pertains to your unique audience, thus encouraging that you’ll reach as many people as possible.
Have you found a best time to publish new content? Is there a certain time which you swear by, or do you think too much thought goes into planning this?
WordPress Scheduled Posts Not Triggering
This is a good time to mention that if you’re having a problem with your WordPress scheduled posts not triggering when you want them, use the scheduled post trigger plugin to ensure that they go out on time.
On a related note, check out this post on the other end of the exchange, how to blog comment.