STUDY: When is the Best Time to Publish a Blog Post?

Timing and Blogging

Timing and BloggingAfter you’ve written an article you may have the urge to publish it right there on the spot and share your new masterpiece with the world. Should you post it immediately or is there a more optimal time of doing so? Well studies show that audiences are much more likely to read and comment on blogs at different points depending on the time and day of the week.

Timing is everything, and fine tuning when you should send out a post out in order to maximize your visitors and engagement is paramount to running a successful blog!

We’re going to look at two different case studies to help pinpoint the best times for you to publish.

Study #1 – The Science of Social Timing: Timing and Blogging

This infographic put together by KISSmetrics, with data collected by social media scientist Dan Zarrella and SearchEngineLand, explores how timing can affect the readership of your blog. Posting content during high traffic hours (day time) can lead to more visitors, comments and engagement but it’s more likely your post will be buried in the competition with other articles. When posting during low activity times (night time) you can expect more prominence within user feeds with less noise, but fewer visitors during off hours. The data also shows that most users read blogs throughout the day, with the highest percentage in the morning between 8am to 11am (peak blog views by hour). The average blog gets the most traffic on Monday but more comments on a Saturday when people aren’t generally working.

Timing And Blogging Infographic

Fast Stats to Tweet:
The highest percentage of users read blog posts in the morning. »Tweet This«
A higher percentage of men than women read blogs in the evening and at night. »Tweet This«
The average blog gets more traffic on Monday than any other day of the week. »Tweet This«
The average blog peaks in traffic around 11am Eastern Time. »Tweet This«
The average blog gets more comments and engagement on Saturday. »Tweet This«
The average blog receives the most inbound links on Monday and Thursday. »Tweet This«
The average blog receives most inbound links at 7am Eastern Time. »Tweet This«

Study #2 – Social Shares vs Traffic

Does the optimal time to share a blog post for traffic coincide with getting more social shares? Data presented by Shareaholic via Social Fresh shows that the best time for getting traffic is actually surprisingly different from the optimal time for shares from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

Best Day to Blog by Social Shares

Best-Day-to-Blog-by-Social-Shares
Sharing on social media can be somewhat unpredictable and has a lot to do with the quality, freshness and virality of your content, however Thursdays seem to have a significant 10% increase in sharing versus other days of the week. In fact, nearly one-third of the top 100 social sharing days in 2011 occurred on a Thursday. But wait didn’t the previous study show blogs got more traffic on Monday, what’s the deal here?

Best Day to Blog by Page Views

Best day to blog for page views
As far as getting page views is concerned, both studies show that Monday has the edge on all other days, with 43% of the top 100 page view days in 2011. The page views also indicate a more predicable pattern as we consume the most content to start the week and less and less towards the weekend (when we start to share more).

Best Time of Day to Blog for Social Shares

Best Time of Day to Blog for Social Shares
Social sharing peaks between 9am and 10am and continues to decline throughout the day, with activity spikes at 2pm and 9pm EST. The study shows that we like to consume and share content in the morning as we start the day catching up on the latest news. We eventually circle back after lunch and then in the evening after dinner.

Best Time of Day to Blog for Page Views

Best Time of Day to Blog for Page Views
It looks like the best time to blog for page views and getting social shares is similar. Blog posts get the most page views between 8am to 12pm EST during the week, where the drop off in traffic is significant in other time frames.

Fast Stats to Tweet:
The average blog post gets more social shares on Thursday than any other day. »Tweet This«
The average blog post gets the most page views on Monday. »Tweet This«
The average blog post gets the most social shares between 9am and 10am. »Tweet This«
The average blog post gets the most page views between 9am and 10am. »Tweet This«

Lessons to be Learned

Both studies support the fact that content gets more looks early in the week starting on Monday. The data from Shareaholic shows that posting between 9am to 10am increases the likelihood of both more page views and social shares, while the KISSmetrics study targets 11am EST as the peak traffic time to your blog. Either way publishing on weekday mornings is key, most organizations are likely to put their strongest content out between 8am to 11am. A lot of time and effort goes into creating an awesome blog post so don’t miss the chance to reach out to the full potential of your audience! These statistics mentioned here are a great place to start out but each blog has it’s own unique community, so keep testing to see what publishing schedule work best for you.

Have you found that certain blogging times tend to work best in your niche?

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Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

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