If you’re new to blogging, you may not be aware of this but did you know you can publish blog posts for future dates and times? Just because the button says Publish, doesn’t mean you need to publish your post immediately!
Watch my video tutorial to see how to do it, but I’m going to talk below about why to publish later.
Why publish later?
There are a lot of reasons why later dates and times might be better for publishing your posts. Your ideal writing time may not be the ideal reading time. Just because I have a great idea at 2 AM, doesn’t mean my readers will be online at 2 AM to read it. Of course, that doesn’t no one can read it later but there are times that are proven to be better for publishing your blog posts. If you post during higher activity hours, you will get more visitors, more comments, and more engagement.
When is the best time to publish?
According to this infographic from Neil Patel, the highest percentage of users read blogs in the morning and you get less people reading the longer the day wears on and the average blog gets the most traffic around 11AM.
What I find most interesting about this data (and if you know me, you know I love data) is that the optimal time for reading blog posts is different from the optimal time for getting comments.
Set goals to determine post time
What this data means is that your particular goal is important to know when the best publishing day and time is. If you want the most traffic, publish on Monday morning. If you want more comments, then Saturday morning is the best time to publish.
A few tips for publishing
If you have a blog, here are a few things you should know.
- Do it consistently. Publishing consistently is your key to getting more traffic and pageviews to your site. This is why scheduling your blog posts is a good idea, because you can have a bunch of posts ready to roll even if you are busy.
- Watch your analytics and test. Yes, there are times and days that have a tendency to be better for publishing, but that’s based on overall user traffic and not on your specific website. Your users may be more inclined to read blogs in the evening or on Sunday. You can test this out by publishing on different days and paying attention to the results.
Scheduling blog posts is a great idea for many reasons and it’s not hard to do. Need some help? Contact us and we can help you get your blog ready to work for you.
Amy Masson
Amy is the co-owner, developer, and website strategist for Sumy Designs. She's been making websites with WordPress since 2006 and is passionate about making sure websites are as functional as they are beautiful.