Blogging is very important for achieving success in online marketing. It provides evidence of your authority, gives your website better SEO and builds a platform to generate leads.
However, these benefits can only be collected when you publish your blog content at the best times.
There have been numerous studies examining when the best time to publish blog posts is. Their results vary. Sometimes this is because of the subject being covered but can also be different depending on the goals of the researcher or how they measured success.
It is also important to consider your blogging strategy. For those who are posting multiple times a week, you don’t want to consider a schedule that will limit an article’s effectiveness by releasing them too close together.
Likewise, you don’t want to be stupid and risk a quality article underperforming because you’ve published it on a day which sees no traffic.
How Many Blog Posts Should You Publish?
Research has found that posting multiple times per week is the best tactic for content marketing. Posting more than 15 articles in a month can increase the traffic to your site by 500% and the number of leads generated by 70%. It also offers more chance for inbound links.
However, this frequency of article generation is a significant undertaking. Your audience will want to see consistency. Therefore, you must make sure you can meet your schedule or you’ll risk appearing unreliable.
You should also consider that if you want to publish multiple blog posts in a day, you are likely to receive more attention online. Those who have published two or more articles Monday to Friday often obtain sales directly through their blogs, have a higher rate of inbound links and gain a better search engine rank.
Setting Your Blogging Goals
Once you have decided how often you will like to release articles then you need to consider your goals. Only poor online marketers, looking to fail, start their campaigns without a goal in mind.
There are different types of goals including interactions (social shares, comments, e-mails), sales/lead generation, inbound link generation and traffic. Each goal requires a unique publishing strategy
The best times for traffic will yield higher web traffic but also higher bounce rates and lower prominence of your blog posts within the community. This could make it harder for your content to go viral.
On the other hand, by posting at times when few brands are updating their blogs, you will gain less traffic but fewer visitors will abandon your site. This tactic will give you the best chance to generate leads. Your article will also have a higher prominence on RSS feeds and on promotional channels you use.
You might also want to consider when you will get the best interactions as traffic doesn’t necessarily relate to interaction either way.
When Is Your Audience Reading New Content?
Significant research has been conducted on when content is being read on the internet. Although there isn’t a significant difference between times; there are more visits to blog content in the morning.
The worst time to update or advertise your new blog posts is during the evening. Very few people take the time to read content after dinner. However, some research has discovered that 9pm to midnight is the best time to publish new content.
Research has also found that it depends on what content is being posted. For instance, informative content like instructional posts, how-to guides and similar are best in the morning. If you are looking to share some entertaining posts, you want to share the content later in the afternoon. This is the time when people on Facebook, and other social media sites, share content that makes them smile and laugh.
Some of the key facts for timing include:
- 70% of your audience will read content in the morning; however, some will also read content at other times during the day.
- Men are more likely to read content during the evening.
- The highest traffic for blogs is recorded at 11am.
- Comments are mostly left on a Saturday or at 9am during the week.
- More content is shared on social networks during the morning.
Research has found Monday will gain you more traffic; however, articles released on a Thursday will gain you more social shares. Wednesday and Friday are also days when social sharing is significantly higher than Monday.
However, you could publish your content on Monday and then promote the content on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to try to gain the most online shares.
Discovering The Time For Yourself
While research can be very useful, only by looking at your website’s statistics can you determine when the best time for your brand is. Look for times when you are generating the most leads, traffic and social shares. If there are specific spikes in your traffic, these will be the best times to update your blog.
At the same time, don’t concentrate your blog posts on one day. Even if Tuesday is the day when you have the most visitors; don’t be tempted to publish all three of your weekly articles on this day.
Instead spread out your content during times that are nearly as successful.
Don’t be reluctant to test your schedule either. Just because your current schedule is performing well; it doesn’t mean a slight change won’t do better. Therefore, always consider testing until you can be confident you have the right schedule for your brand.
Conclusion
Your blog is an important marketing tool for your brand. It can provide evidence of your authority, generate better search engine results and convince visitors to sign up to your email marketing list. However, to get to the best results, you should update your blog so that you are releasing material when your audience are likely to visit and interact with your content.
There has been significant research into which days are best for this. However, you should experiment yourself on what works best for your brand. You might find that your audience is more active at night or only shares your content at the weekends. You should build your blogging schedule towards these behaviours.
Once you’ve optimised your blogging schedule, your business will achieve significant online marketing success.
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