Comments on: Timing Your Blog Posts for Maximum Impact

By: emma

emma — Mon, 15 May 2006 09:59:09 +0000

Ya i agree with u that time is the most important factor. If your timing is right then everything else set in place. To get it right just do it right!

By: Centrerion Canadian Politics

Centrerion Canadian Politics — Mon, 15 May 2006 01:47:55 +0000

Having analyzed stats reports, I found most of my readership is on the East coast, so yes, I time my posts with that. In sitemeter, you can do this analysis by looking at the world map.
Another trend I found is people viewing my blog from work. This fits with the timing of the other traffic spike around the East Coast lunch hour.

By: Franck

Franck — Thu, 11 May 2006 11:03:58 +0000

I am too busy now to consider timing, but sure I will do it soon.

By: Twisted Humor

Twisted Humor — Thu, 11 May 2006 09:14:06 +0000

I would say once you find a groove, be consistent. Your readers get into a pattern. They want to know that they will see new posts whenever they visit.

For me, if I know a blog updates every week day and when I visit it’s not updated, I get frustrated. If that happens more than once, I will lose faith in the author.

In other words, keep your promise to the reader. Publish on deadline.

For my site, I get a huge spike at noon. I figure this is because the USA East Coast is at lunch and the USA West Coast is just getting to work.

I make certain my new posts are up before 6 A.M. EST every day because I figure most of my target audience (USA) doesn’t check the internet for entertainment until 6 AM at the earliest.

By: TLB

TLB — Thu, 11 May 2006 07:37:30 +0000

When I would announce the release of a new version of software to Usenet I’d do it Sunday 12am for maximum impact.

Many of the posts to my main blog were written before they appear; I usually time the most important to show up at 6am PST.

But that’s not all: I actually wrote this comment hours ago.

By: Miles’ Blog » Blog posting tip - timing is everything - Thoughts and errata from Miles Burke.

Thu, 11 May 2006 04:40:54 +0000

[...] Update: Darren Rowse has also posted about this topic today as well. [...]

By: Martin Roth

Martin Roth — Thu, 11 May 2006 00:20:48 +0000

I started my first blog early in 2002. In those distant days, bloggers craved especially for one thing – a link from Instapundit (Professor Glenn Reynolds). I recall several times when I had written something that I felt was good that I would check that Glenn was posting – in those days he seemed to post furiously, one item after after another, at many times during the day – then I’d post my item and whip him an email about it. As I live in Australia, this was usually late at night for me, breakfast time in the US. I’d even hold back my post until the next day if it seemed he wasn’t at his computer. It worked a few times. In fact, the very first time, I sent my email, then just a few minutes later refreshed my browser to check the latest Instapundit postings, and found a link to me. My blog was then new, and was attracting about a dozen visitors a day. Over a few days I must have received about 10,000 hits. Yes, timing can be a strategy.

By: John

John — Wed, 10 May 2006 23:01:52 +0000

Generally, when I put a lot of work into a post, I try to put it up late at night so that it is on my blog all night for readers outside North America and in the morning for North American readers. It is less a traffic consideration than that I want as many visitors as possible to see my best work, and the morning seems to be a peak traffic time.

As far as getting linked is concerned, I recently had the pleasure of being linked by Wonkette late on a Friday afternoon, which meant the link was on their front page until Monday morning. Sure, weekend traffic is lower, but I probably got more hits over the course of three days than if the link was put up early morning early in the week.

By: Chase

Chase — Wed, 10 May 2006 21:47:19 +0000

Timing is everything and if you do it right, you will get the most out of it.

By: WhyMyBlogStinks

WhyMyBlogStinks — Wed, 10 May 2006 21:05:36 +0000

It depends mostly on my blog. My business blogs I will post newsy stuff in the morining and mid afternoon. Come late afternoon I post product reviews and let them sit there until morning.

My new blog I just started I haven’t found a good rhythm yet. I have been posting mostly between 7am and 6pm. Nothing I have left up in particular to sit through the night.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 10 May 2006 20:46:49 +0000

I have some pretty random spikes in my traffic, as I get traffic from a bunch of different places around the globe. However, I have tried to time my submissions to places like Blog Critics to try to get them maximum front page exposure time.

It can work, but it’s pretty hard to get it just right.

By: Eric Giguere

Eric Giguere — Wed, 10 May 2006 19:05:07 +0000

Well, if I want a chance at being mentioned in ProBlogger, it’s best to put up my post before Darren (on the other side of the world) goes to sleep. How’s that for timing?

:-)

By: Richard Harlos

Richard Harlos — Wed, 10 May 2006 19:04:26 +0000

While I don’t get a lot of traffic, my logs for the last 7 months or so show my largest number of concurrent visitors in two time ranges: between 11am and 1pm, and again between 4pm and 6pm (these are EST and on M-F).

With that in mind, I time my posts to the highest concurrent viewers time frames and post at least once by 11am (to get the lunchtime surfers) and then again by about 4pm to get the after work surfers.

I also use the pinggoat service to broadcast that my blog has new content so that I get a fair amount of spiders/indexers visiting my site at elast twice a day.

I don’t know how objectively useful this metric might be for others but for me, well, it seems to be working well.

By: Bald Man

Bald Man — Wed, 10 May 2006 18:54:19 +0000

If I’m putting up more than one in a day, I like to spread the posts out a little. Say morning and afternoon.

raj,
Interesting “study.” I’ll have to give it a try. See if we can build up some more anticdotal evidence.

By: charles kirkland

charles kirkland — Wed, 10 May 2006 18:39:08 +0000

I have also noticed on some of my other blogs that posting late at night has the biggest jump in traffic for the am time frame. But posting miday does not do that much in terms of traffic untill the evening. It is if there was a 8-12 hr delay in traffic after each post.

Thanks
Charles Kirkland
charles@coastalhomedesigns.com
http://www.coastalhomedesigns.com
Read our blog at http://www.coastalhomedesigns.com/blog/

By: A.H

A.H — Wed, 10 May 2006 18:22:27 +0000

Wow, the same exact thing happened to me with Gizmodo linking to three of my stories:

1.http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/video-spy-glasses-a-surefire-way-to-make-new-friends-170743.php

2.http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/sunglasses-that-let-you-look-behind-you-171066.php

3.http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/shocking-lie-detector-172103.php

The 1st & 2nd ones were on the first in the frontpage for about 4 hours, the 3rdwas the first on the front page for more than 14 hours, the result: More traffic, more linking, and the spike was actually reducing more gradually =).

A.H

By: jimmy

jimmy — Wed, 10 May 2006 18:20:37 +0000

Timing and strategies is equally important. Don’t “bribe”, but join :-)

By: raj

raj — Wed, 10 May 2006 18:17:33 +0000

I live in the same time zone as Toronto/ New York. I found, unscientifically, that if I posted in the time period of 12 midnight to 3 am, I generated more traffic for the next day. Had I waited until the next morning to post, I’d get less traffic. Worse was waiting until the middle of the afternoon.

I did try this on several of my blogs, which have different topics, and found the same results. Now, consider that the bulk of my traffic comes from search engines and Technorati. It seems that 12 midnight to 3 am might be beating some nightly bots and getting me indexed for early the next morning, when people might be searching.

However, I don’t make a big deal of this. My study is unscientific.