Not to long ago my friend Sue Spaight asked the following question on Twitter:
“What is your take/experience on the three “best days” of the week to blog?”
First, if you are a blogger or blog reader I’d sure appreciate it if you could take a minute or two and share your thoughts in the comments. Sue is one smart cookie and if she’s asking it’s for a good reason. In this case it’s to help out a non-profit she is working with.
Next, after thinking about it for almost a week I decided to reframe question.
“If you could only blog three days a week which three would the be?”
Monday, and it would be a business or blogging oriented post (like this one).
Wednesday, It’s the middle of the week and folks can use some inspiration or a good business story to carry them through the week.
Saturday, what a fantastic day to write about whatever I want. Normally an inspirational or self improvement topic.
That’s how I’d do it. How about you?
I write my blogs all at one time based upon the “mojo” of that moment. If I’m feeling connected to my dogs and have inspiration, then I will write numerous posts for my dog blog and schedule them. Same goes for my two health blogs and, of course, my SEO and social strategies blog.
Shannon,
I love when I have the time to write in chunks. As recently as a month ago I had an 8 day cushion of scheduled posts. Then, I got busy and was writing the day before publication for most of the last three weeks. It’s still OK I just don’t get to review the posts as much before hitting publish. Flying home yesterday I managed to get four posts written so now I have a cushion again. Plus, a long flight tomorrow with plans to get 4 more done. Once the writing starts to flow it’s hard to stop it sometimes.
Jim
The three days I would blog are Tuesday in preparation for the mid-week blog updates, Thursday in preparation of #FollowFriday and Sunday, which is when I do my most blogging. I should note that I also do nearly all of my blogging at night (after 9 p.m.).
Thank you, Jim. I like your take, as usual. Sometimes I wonder if it’s hard to get traction on Mondays as people dig into the new week; maybe for a “softer” topic (like the nonprofit in question) that would be the case. But I agree, I think either Monday/Wednesday/Saturday, or Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday would be a good schedule. I’ve had some good success on Sunday mornings, too, which surprises me, but Sunday afternoons…crickets.
Sue, I like posting Saturday to catch that Sunday morning crowd – of course I also post Sunday morning but on my blog the two most recent posts are shown in full. Part of that logic was the weekend reading habits I observed as well. By noon Sunday it’s cricket time.
Jim
Personally I would think you’d look at two things, (1) hits per day on the web stats. If you’re just starting out use base stats based on topic area of the website and see what the in general busiest days are and go for those days. (2) Is this primarily a guest post blog where all content is created by guest posters or is it more an in-house blog? If it’s more in-house what days are your busiest? Schedule around that. If it’s more a guest post blog then you decide the publishing schedule you want and stick with it.
Otherwise, I’d shoot for a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday schedule because Monday is “catch up” day from the weekend, everyone wants everything by Friday, and Wednesday is a popular “heavy” meeting day.
I base my blog timing on JSOnline traffic, which is heaviest at 8 a.m. and noon Monday – Thursday. This is obviously because my blog is hosted there, but if I had a personal blog, I would follow the same schedule. When are the majority of people at their computers? During the workday. When are they checking non-work websites? Right when they get in, and at lunchtime.
I’ve actually found that I get a lot of traffic on Mondays, no matter the blog topic. I think this is probably because people take some time on Mondays to catch up on blogs. Or maybe it’s just because they want to catch up on news and they happen to see my little blog in the corner 🙂
Anyway, to answer your question, I’d probably choose Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.
Thanks for thinking about this – it was I who posed the question because we’ve just started a blog at my company. I had basically the same rationalle as you – and I also enjoyed your posts about writing a week ahead. I have taken that into practice and it’s giving me time to enjoy the new ideas that come to me while I’m writing next week’s blog. Appreciate your input!
Wow! Thanks to Kelly, Alison, Jeff (Fossil), Sue and Dan for sharing their advice and ideas as well. I love it when a post grows so much beyond what I originally wrote. You guys made this a learning experience for me and I thank you all for that.
Jim