I seriously thought that there was a formula for knowing the better if not best days and times to post a blog. Wrong. I have to admit I looked at infographics and charts without taking the time to read the articles I found on the subject. OK, I did look at the bullet points to get reinforcement for the graphics I was looking at so thoroughly. Two of the most arresting items I saw were KISSmetrics’ The Science of Social Timing Part 3, which was introduced in 2011and shared repeatedly ever since. The other were Sharaholic's charts, used by Jason Keath on Jan.18.2012 in When Is The Best Time Of The Day To Blog?
These two sources actually contradict each other in some odd ways on blog post ideas.
KISSmetrics’ take-away includes these key points that the infographic throws light on revealing interesting trends. (This information is presented in Eastern Time (EST).)
- Average blogs see most traffic at around 11 AM.
- Average blogs are most likely to get maximum comments around 9AM, including Saturdays.
- Average blogs get the maximum inbound links at around 7AM, including Mondays as well as Thursday.
Pros and cons of blog post ideas early in the morning as opposed to late at night include:
Pros of blog posts early in the day:
Early in the day will bring more traffic to your blog. With increase in number of visitors, you will get more comments and hits for every article that you post. Hence, if you are looking more blog traffic, you must publish your blog post early in the day.
Cons of blog posts early in the day:
With more traffic, your blog is more likely to get buried under numerous other blog posts and hence loses its prominence. This happens due to added noise and hence the blog post does not stand out much. The bounce rate is more due to higher noise.
Pros of blog posts late at night:
Late at night has less noise and your post is more likely to get the added benefits of getting more prominence. Your blog can easily get front page promotion when there is lesser noise. Hence if you want more prominence, you should switch to publishing your articles late at night.
Cons of blog posts late at night:
With the added benefit of prominence, come many disadvantages too. The first one being that if you publish your blog post late at night, it sees fewer visitors. Fewer visitors mean that your post gets fewer comments and hits.
Sharing what Shareaholic Says
Shareaholic offered the day for social share blog post ideas was Thursdays, winning 10% more shares than all other days. In fact, 31% of the top 100 social share days in 2011 fell on Thursday. The best day for blog posts for maximum pageviews were Monday through Thursday. Pageviews also progress in a predictable order. Monday was top, then Tuesday is second, then Wednesday, then Thursday. We simply view more content on Monday and less as the week goes on. But we share more on Thursday.
What does Shareaholic offer as the idea about the best times of day for blog posts for maximum social shares and pageviews? Page social shares were the best posted between 9-10 a.m. EST while 27% of all content shares occur between 8am and 12pm EST. Pageviews were found to be at those same times.
So what is the problem?
If you read the rest of any of these articles, you learn that these figures relate to a general, average blog that doesn’t take your audience into account. Nor do they take the quality of your blog into account. So how do you come up with a good blog post system for your own blog?
Here are some questions that you need to answer for yourself:
- When is your audience online? If you write about stocking shelves at night, you don’t want to publish your blog at 10 a.m.
- If every blogger posts at the optimal time, when will anyone see anything? Too much noise and too many choices make you less likely to stand out.
- What about the quality of your content? Blogs are read and shared because they are great, not because of some magic day or time. The charts above can’t take quality into considerations because, let’s face it, quality is subjective.
- How can you predict how anyone will respond given the unpredictability of people? This is one of my favorite questions about blog posting among other things.
Here are the ultimate good blog post ideas from KISSmetrics, Shareaholic and other blog posts:
- You have to experiment with blog posting. One good experiment is to try to post at different times of day to see if you can get more views. You can also post on different days to get an idea of what days work best for your audience.
- One good way to get into a consistently memorable blog pattern is to blog on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, or Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday if you blog 3 times a week.
- You want to find out when your audience is in a sharing mood so your blog can be socially shared. More experimenting is needed to figure that out. Try to avoid the competition by not posting when everyone else is.
- Here’s another suggestion: Write teasers about upcoming blogs on your social media channels. You can say something cool like “Stay tuned for our blog tomorrow at 10 a.m. on ‘Blog posting.’”
And, even after you run your own experiments, don’t be surprised when some of your blog post ideas miss getting many hits. Why? Because it’s real hard to predict human behavior.
Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook - www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.