Can there really be a good or bad time to publish a blog? For some people blogs might be a spontaneous action – have a thought, expand on it, publish it. But if you’re a small business using blogs as part of your marketing, you need to take a slightly more considered approach.

For my own business, I publish my blogs at around 7.30-8.00am. My audience is primarily UK based and the timing seems to fit well – people tend to check in to their blog reader first thing before settling down to work. It’s a bit like ‘the old days’ when we’d traditionally read the morning paper over a cup of coffee; personally, I really enjoy easing myself into my office-based days with a cuppa and my favourite blogs – it just seems to help get my mind warmed up for the business day.

There are expert bloggers out there who have analysed the art of blog publishing, almost to the extent of turning it into a science. And yes, it is a good idea to look at your blog analytics from time to time to see if you can identify any trends in when your readers view your blog.

Twitter activity is also a good benchmark, particularly re-tweets if you’re promoting your latest blog through this medium. Checking re-tweet activity for peaks and troughs by hour and by day can give you a good understanding of when people will be most receptive to your blog. Apparently, Fridays at 4pm on Twitter are meant to be an optimum time, but you need to see what works for you. If you use Facebook for your business, you should also keep a check of people’s responses there too. Evenings are often best as most people are barred from viewing Facebook at work, although smartphones are allowing people to sneak a peek!

Another thing to consider is regularity of publishing. There’s nothing more annoying than a blogger who doesn’t publish any fresh content for days and then suddenly publishes three new articles within an hour. And it doesn’t make great business sense either. Why run the risk of your readers missing one or two blogs that might have really valuable content, or to be presented with ‘part three in a series of…’ and having to backtrack for the first two posts. Mild moan over!

Don’t just take my word for it, there is some powerful new research out on blogging and the impact that frequency and regularity of blog posting has on website traffic and lead generation. Very insightful info I thought.

It’s actually very easy to control time and frequency through your blog software. I use WordPress for mine (I love it) and can have a number of articles ready for publishing at pre-determined times (I set a whole month up at a time to make sure I do it!), which means I don’t have to keep remembering to publish three times a week and can use my time more constructively – on a fresh cuppa and a bit more time spent reading other people’s blog articles perhaps!

Have you experimented with publishing your blog at different times?
What works best for your business? Let me know!

Photo credit: DigitalArt